iPhone 7 vs Nokia 8

The Nokia 8 has been announced, at an event in London on 16 August. It’s going head to head with Apple’s iPhone range, so in this article we compare the specs, design and pricing of the Nokia 8 with the iPhone 7 to help you decide which of these two industry heavyweights is right for you.

(In fairness, of course, the Nokia 8 will really be competing with the iPhone 8 by the time it launches. Once we know more firm details about the iPhone 8 we will update this article to include that phone in our comparison.)

Design & build quality

Both of these are attractive, sleek smartphones.

The iPhone 7 has essentially the same look Apple has been selling to us since the launch of the iPhone 6 in 2014, but we’re the first to admit that it’s a design classic. The Nokia follows the more current look of a centralised camera lens on the back; from the front we’d describe it as a smart but relatively standard-looking Android handset design.

Aesthetics are a personal thing, so let’s look at some photos.

iPhone 7 photos

Nokia 8 photos

Note that the Nokia has a headphone port, which the iPhone 7 (controversially) does not.

There’s a couple of other aspects of design worth discussing separately:

Waterproofing

The iPhone 7 is rated as IP67 splash-, water- and dust-resistant. In this regard it’s a long way ahead of the Nokia 8, which is rated as only IP54. Here’s what those numbers mean:

• IP67: Dust tight (no ingress of dust); water-resistant up to 1m depth immersion
• IP54: Dust protected (ingress of dust is not entirely prevented, but does not interfere with satisfactory operation of the equipment); protection against splashing water

More on the IP rating system here.

Colour options

The iPhone 7 is available in six colours: silver, gold, Space Grey, black and Jet Black (all offered at launch) and the charity-supporting Product Red (which came out a few months later). Jet Black and Product Red are available in the 128GB and 256GB capacities only, so start at a higher price.

The Nokia 8 will come in four colours: Polished Blue, Polished Copper, Tempered Blue and Steel.

Features

Moving on from design, what have these handsets got in their feature sets?

Taptic Home button

The iPhone 7 has a clever Home button that doesn’t actually click downwards – it just tricks you into thinking it does by activating a small taptic ‘buzz’.

Opinion differs over how realistic this is: we find it slightly less convincing than the trackpad on recent generations of MacBook, which also do not physically click, but still feels completely ‘normal’ after a few days of use. But it brings a number of advantages.

The physical Home button was a common point of failure in earlier generations of iPhone (particularly the iPhone 4); even after Apple improved its reliability in later models, customers in some markets continued to worry that it would go wrong. (In China, we understand, it has become commonplace for people to use the software Home button accessed from the accessibility options, so as to preserve the physical button for resale.)

You can also to a certain extent customise the way the taptic Home button feels.

Camera features

The Nokia 8’s dual-lens camera enables a number of interesting features and modes. Nokia says ‘Bothie’ photos are created by combining snaps from the front and rear cameras to get the whole picture, while Dual-Sight lets you stream photos and video over live services.

Ozo Audio

The Nokia 8 comes with Ozo Audio, which captures 360-degree audio thanks to three mics and the company’s own acoustic algorithms. This sound can then be enjoyed in high fidelity even on devices that don’t support this audio standard.

Tech specs

What you tend to find when comparing iPhones to Android handsets is that the Apple devices offer lower specs for the money; the payoff comes with the more coherent optimisation between hardware and software that you get from iOS, advantages in terms of security and privacy, and a generally more user-friendly experience.

One area of the iPhone 7’s specs that is highly impressive, however, is its processor. In many of our tests the A10 Fusion produced faster results than all of its rivals.

Of course we’ve not been able to test out the Nokia 8 and its Snapdragon 835, and look forward to seeing how it compares to the iPhones. (But you can get a hint of its power from our review of the Sony Xperia XZ Premium, which uses the same chip.)

iPhone 7 specifications

• A10 Fusion processor chip with 64-bit architecture, embedded M10 motion coprocessor
• 4.7in Retina HD (1334×750 pixels, 326ppi) display with 1400:1 contrast ratio and 625 cd/m2 max brightness
• iOS 10
• 2GB RAM
• 32GB/128GB/256GB flash storage
• 12Mp rear-facing camera, ƒ/1.8, OIS, Autofocus with Focus Pixels, Quad-LED True Tone flash
• 7Mp front-facing camera, ƒ/2.2
• IP67 splash-, water- and dust-resistant
• 1,960mAh battery
• 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 4.2
• NFC
• Fingerprint scanner
• Lightning port
• 138.3mm x 67.1mm x 7.1mm; 138g

Nokia 8 specifications

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor
• 5.3in Quad-HD (2560×1440 pixels, 554ppi) IPS display with 700 nits brightness and Gorilla Glass 5
• Android 7.1.1 Nougat
• 4GB RAM
• 64GB storage plus microSD support up to 256GB
• Dual 13Mp rear cameras (one colour, one mono), f/2.0, 1.12um, OIS, Laser autofocus, dual-LED flash
• 13Mp selfie camera, f/2.0
• IP54 splashproof
• 3,090mAh battery with Quick Charge
• 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 5.0
• NFC
• Fingerprint scanner
• USB-C
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• 151.5mm x 73.7mm x 7.9mm; 160g

Price

Neither of these handsets is cheap, but you’re likely to get a lower price on the Nokia 8. Let’s discuss pricing.

iPhone 7 UK prices

• iPhone 7 (32GB): £599
• iPhone 7 (128GB): £699
• iPhone 7 (256GB): £799

You can buy the iPhone 7 direct from Apple’s website, or you can peruse our roundup of the best iPhone deals.

Nokia 8 UK prices

We don’t yet know the UK pricing for the Nokia 8. The manufacturer has so far announced European pricing only: €599. Based on that we’d expect to pay around £549 in the UK.

Obviously if that’s correct it would represent a solid £50 saving on the cheapest iPhone 7, while offering twice the storage and microSD support to add more, but we’ll update this article when we know more.

Release date & where to buy

The iPhone 7 was launched in September 2016 and is available now.

The Nokia 8 will go on sale in September 2017, which should coincide with the launch of the iPhone 8, 7s and 7s Plus, Apple’s widely anticipated tripartite follow-up to the iPhone 7. As mentioned above we will update this article to take those devices into account once we’ve got more concrete details about them.