This video was sponsored by Brilliant.
As I was talking about the OPPO Find X in my last video it really hit me just how
willing flagship phones have become to trade usability for flashy designs.
And it has come to the point where I actually started recommending midrange phones
like the Nokia 7 Plus even to people who could totally afford to buy a flagship smartphone.
So this video will be a weird combination of a " The Story Behind" series episode, where I explain why
midrange phones are now kind of better than flagships in my opinion, and also a mini review of
the Nokia 7 Plus. Just to show you what I really mean.
So we generally expect the price and the quality of a device to be directly correlated.
If a company has a line-up, the cheapest device is supposed to be the worst one and the most
expensive device is expected to be the best one.
But I feel like lately this just isn't true anymore.
And here's why.
We have been saying for years now that the smartphone market is getting kinda stale,
right?
Big touchscreen on the front, cameras on both sides, hopefully a few ports you can plug
things into somewhere around the edges, and so on.
This standard formula works, but it's getting kind of boring.
So, phone makers need to find new ways to stand out, which they do by pushing this formula
to its absolute limits.
Bezels?
Nah, they apparently all try to get rid of those.
Cameras?
They fit like 3 or 4 of those on the phone.
Even motorized ones that just pop right out like this, ... or like this.
They also keep making phones slimmer and slimmer, and cover them in premium materials with fancy,
curved edges.
In making phones more "premium", everything gets pushed to its limits.
And here's the thing.
This is cool.
I'm a geek, I love innovation, I love progress, and this is what drives the industry forward.
And I think many companies don't even have much of a choice.
Because, as competition increases, if they don't push themselves to the limit,
they just fall behind.
But you, the consumer, you do have a choice.
And I feel like more and more, choosing the suuuper premium flagship phone with the crazy design
is becoming the impractical one.
Small bezels are impressive to look at.
Except, you either end up with a silly notch, or a motorized thing that makes your device
way more fragile and complicated than it has to be.
Phones with curved glass everywhere are pretty and certainly feel premium in hand.
Except, they break and scratch really easily, they are slippery and just slide off of surfaces,
so you might just end up putting a case or skin on them, in which case what was the point
of glass in the first place.
Thin phones are beautiful to look at.
Except they mean you don't have room for headphone jacks, or a battery that will comfortably
get you through a day.
Or if a smartphone maker does squeeze a lot of battery into a thin device, it might just
catch fire like Samsung's phones did.
Flagship phones happily sacrifice durability, battery life, a headphone jack and many other
really practical features for one main reason: becoming desirable.
A few years ago, a flagship phone was simply a better version of a midrange phone in pretty
much every category.
So you could just decide if you wanted to pay for the extra or not.
But not only has the gap become much smaller over the years, the ever-increasing pursuit
of premium flagship designs actually turned this equation around in some cases.
Now, depending on which phones you compare and which aspects of a phone you find important,
it is very possible that you will find a midrange phone that is not just a better deal for your
money like we are used to, but actually a better device for you overall.
And I think the Nokia 7 Plus demonstrates this perfectly.
I actually switched from a flagship to this midrange phone and I'm happier overall.
It's as if Nokia spent 0 points on being flashy and instead spent
all of their points on becoming practical and useful.
And because of this, the Nokia 7 Plus is significantly better in a couple of areas
than most flagships out there.
It is incredibly durable, as proven by Jerryrigeverything and it even comes with a silicon case, just in case.
It has all the ports you want your phone to have, so Type C with fast charging and a headphone
jack, and a fingerprint reader in a normal location.
Cause those are apparently a dying breed now as well.
Apart from a surprising number of early bugs, like Music that just stops playing in the
background for no reason, which I hope they fix, software support is impressive too.
Pure stock Android that gets regular monthly updates for 3 full years, which, apart from
Pixel phones, very few flagships can compete with.
And the same goes for battery life.
It's phenomenal, as this phone has a large, 3800 mAh battery that only has to power midrange
CPU, stock Android and a FullHD screen.
I get a comfortable day and a half with heavy use and up to two full days with light use,
which is fantastic.
Ah, living that midrange life.
So all of that is excellent.
But of course it doesn't outperform flagships in every category.
The 6 inch 18:9 screen isn't as jaw-dropping and bright as what you'd find on flagships,
and while I like the lift to wake functionality, bezels are a little thicker than what you
are used to as well.
A Snapdragon 660 and 4GB of RAM also make this phone just a tad slower than flagships
despite the efficient stock Android it is powering, but honestly, neither the performance,
nor the display are things that bothered me even once in my two weeks with the phone.
So, pff, I feel like on a practical level, these slight downgrades just don't really matter.
The only two areas that have me looking jealously at flagships are waterproofing,
which is sadly missing from the 7 Plus, and the cameras.
And don't get me wrong, for a phone that costs 399 Euros here in Germany, the cameras are solid.
They are what I would call 85% flagship in basically every area.
Dynamic range, low light performance, colors, they are all good, though not mind-blowing.
2x Zoom is useful occasionally, though the zoom camera is not stabilized and has a narrower
aperture, and 4K video is plenty sharp but other than the excellent audio quality, just
didn't impress me like a flagship phones usually do.
So for the price, this is great.
But, since I'm unfairly comparing this to flagships, I feel like this is the Achilles
heel of midrange phones.
Having slightly better performance or a slightly brighter screen honestly doesn't meaningfully
change how I use my phone.
But having an even better camera probably would.
So if I had to make the perfect smartphone in 2018, I'd probably start out with a no-nonsense
midranger like the 7 Plus, and then add waterproofing and truly flagship-grade cameras.
At that point, even if that would mean adding another 50 to 100 Euros to the price,
I'd see very few real reason to actually upgrade to a flagship phone.
So good job Nokia, and I hope you now know what to do for the successor of the 7 Plus
one year from now.
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