Verdict
The Nokia G22 is a phone you could repair yourself , without the need for any real expertise or expensive equipment . However , the telephone itself is just OK , and is n’t that much playfulness to use as it feel quite boring .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The Nokia G22 is a canonical phone with a great turn . you may mend it yourself . Nokia has partner with ego - repair schoolmaster iFixit to render kits to supervene upon the shelling , the rearward book binding , and even the exhibit or USB socket . No specialist equipment expect , just a piffling patience , maintenance and manual dexterity .
That ’s swell . But how long you will actually want to live with the Nokia G22 is another issue . Your standards had better not be too high , as this phone has a short central processing unit .
Not being able-bodied to encounter complex 3D games well is no handsome result , but the labored feel of basic navigation is . The Nokia G22 is a nice phone for those with patience . ensure you have enough of it .
The Nokia G22 was released in early 2023 and cost £ 169 . This makes it something of a competitor to another “ G22 ” speech sound , theMotorola Moto G22 .
Design and screen
Nokia makes a lot of basic plastic phone that cater for people who do n’t want to spend too much on , or spend hours research , their next phone buy . The Nokia G22 is one of these .
However , it does look a little slicker thansome entry - stratum Androids . It has a gloss plastic back and a evenhandedly nicely - designed camera area . It looks and feels nice , but glossy plastic never age too well , not in my hands anyway . minuscule nicks and scuff will be shown off pretty clearly .
The Nokia G22 is not notably water tolerant either , with a poorIP52 valuation . It has a sound excuse , though .
This speech sound is design to be pulled aside , using pecker so basic you could improvize some of them . The crux : a Nokia G22 ’s back is not glued in piazza . That was the number one nightmare when I tried to supervene upon the screen of a flagship Huawei speech sound a few years ago . It did n’t end that well .
The process here is comparatively easy , but will still be restrain to some . You stick a plastic bomber tool in a little gap on the side and fly the coop it around the earphone ’s side to untie the clips . The rest just requires a small screwdriver and some manual sleight . You do have to deal with a fragile ribbon overseas telegram for the fingerprint image scanner , and some fiddly , lilliputian , shielding panels . But when I went through the process of switching the battery , it bring around five minutes .
Why is n’t it like the quondam days when you could rip off a sound ’s back and just slot a new barrage brick in ? The aim here is to make the Nokia G22 look , feel and run like a normal headphone . To use the sure-enough stylus would command a much smaller battery or a much thick-skulled earpiece . maybe both .
Other famed component here include the Nokia G22 ’s headphone jack — it really has one — and its single speaker driver on the bottom , for onboard audio . It does n’t vocalize brilliant or embarrassing . Maximum volume is solid enough , but like most cheaper Androids it lacks the lower - frequency poke of the sound phones speakers .
The Nokia G22 has a large but somewhat rude screen . It ’s a 6.5 - inch 720pLCD panelwith a90Hz refresh rate . You may notice the lower resolve when read articles or when multi - tasking . At times the picture looks almost sharpened , with a slight white halo around text edition in certain place , while the rest period of the time it lacks the pristine show of a 1080p headphone — usable for just a little more money these days .
However , for the most part it ’s a absolutely whole sieve for a low - cost phone . Sharpness is OK , colour does n’t appear top-notch - undersaturated and contast is acceptable . Sure , if you whack up the cleverness in a glowering way the lightlessness will start to look gray , but headphone like this turn up you have to go pretty cheap to find a unfeignedly high-risk display .
Want to know some deeper impressions ? The Nokia G22 is a bad example of a 90Hz screen . you could set it to an Auto style that uses 90Hz when it makes sense , or lock it to 60Hz . However , you ca n’t appreciate the higher refresh charge per unit too much here as riotous motility causes a smutch result in the panel and there are vulgar stutter on scrolling .
luminosity is not radical - in high spirits either , but could be a lot worse believe the Nokia G22 ’s miserable price . At first I take on the phone had no “ high brightness way ” , which headphone alternate to when out in the sunshine , to plow high ambient lighter levels . The screen door does n’t become unclear , but it does sputter .
However , it turn out there is a svelte boost in such status , just not a dramatic one . The Nokia G22 will reach a decent 534 nits indoors , 648 nit in lustrous sun . Not bright , but not bad at all for £ 170 .
Performance
The Nokia G22 has a Unison T606 central processing unit , used in few pop mobiles to date bar the premature - generationNokia G21andSamsung Galaxy A03 . It is a poor CPU , despite have got eight cores like the openhanded batsman .
Its benchmark performance is wretched , earning 1231 point in Geekbench 6 ( 1193 in Geekbench 5 ) and a blue 421 points in 3Dmark ’s Time Spy test . These are bad scores , and roughly 20 % down in the mouth than also - weak rivals like theXiaomi Poco M5s .
To an extent benchmark are a bit pointless in an entry - level speech sound like this . And I do n’t conceive it weigh if the Nokia G22 ca n’t handle biz like Fornite well . However , it does need to give birth at least self-colored baseline execution , and I do n’t think it does .
App loads are slow . jump off between apps is too . Lag is a uniform Satan on your articulatio humeri , reminding you of your previous purchase decisiveness . You had better trust in the Nokia G22 ’s sustainability cred . There ’s a sense you have to wait for the G22 to get up with your commands at time . It amaze honest-to-goodness quick , particularly if you will be shift from an sure-enough phone that still runs Android well .
Want more info on the gaming side ? The Nokia G22 ca n’t take on Fortnite at all . The Epic app simply list the phone as “ unsupported ” . Ark : Survival Evolved is moderately slideshow - the like when graphics are maxed - out but it is comfortably playable if you drop off a few circumstance down a bit . Despite pathetic benchmark scores , it can run some game in general weigh demanding OK .
The slow worldwide feel of the Nokia G22 does n’t seem to be down to the storage . The generous 128 GB interior memory might have been considered flagship - grade a few age ago . Its read specs of 430MB / s and writes of 313MB / s are not far off those of aSATA SSD .
you could find fault the fallible quad - pith CPU and 4 GB RAM for the G22 ’s performance problems . And there ’s no extra software to drag it down either .
The Nokia G22 runsAndroid 12and has a very clean plan of attack to computer software with virtually no bloat . There ’s a moderately folderol My twist app made by HMD / Nokia , but a exclusive bare app can only cause so much umbrage . And I would n’t have even noticed it was here were I not see a little deeper for this review .
Android 12 is n’t the latest version of the organization , though . Android 13launched in August 2022 , and other phones like the Nokia C32 already have the computer software . This disparity is down to the headphone ’s launching take a second longer owing to long development times and the want to get the iFixit partnership quick for meridian time .
This is also a 4G - only phone . While this may not inconvenience too many of the folks who would be concerned in this model , it does mean you are locked out of one of the biggest recent mobile advancements , 5 G mobile internet .
Camera
The Nokia G22 has three rear photographic camera , but this feel very much like a single - camera earphone . Meaningful additions would be a wide or zoom , but the G22 has a 2MP macro and a 2MP depth camera . These are tacky filler cameras that do not tot up to the experience all that significantly .
Nokia ’s depth television camera is the best of the two . It means you’re able to take Portrait mode pics of any national , not just people . Portrait is where the backdrop is blurred , emulating the feeling of a widely - aperture DSLR lense .
Macro images are poor , and Nokia does its best to hide the mode from you anyway .
How are the “ normal ” images ? They are passable . The Nokia G22 has an impressive - sound 50MP sensor , but up close pictures have the almost painted smell that often accompanies canonical processing and/or a camera with very small sensor pixels . Sure enough , the Samsung JN1 sensor is small for a 50MP chip .
However , I would n’t expect anything less when shopping with this budget , and the Nokia G22 is perfectly capable of capturing decent photos . I also like that there ’s a 2x zoom preset in the app , even if it is just a craw of the main television camera .
At time I ’ve been enjoyably surprised by how close daylight look-alike get to those of a much more expensive sound . Dynamic kitchen range is sound and the impression of item is good , even if images can attend a little sharpen and semisynthetic decent down at the pixel level .
However , at times the range ’ colour can wait a second sickly and unrealistic , as if the processing has taken an image with a somewhat limited colour deepness and just amped up the impregnation .
I have also spotted some HDR obsess on a couple of occasion — a uncommon sight these 24-hour interval — likely make by either the Nokia G22 ’s inability to capture the grammatical constituent frame fast enough , or not take the smartness to compensate for motion during the compiling part of the processing stage .
The Nokia G22 also has a Night modal value , one that take significantly longer to take photos because it ’s a computational musical mode that unite frames .
Neither mode — night or automobile — produces respectable photos at night . While the Night fashion ’s image are a bit bright and more colorful , details have all the solidness of vegetable puree . There is an resolution , though . The Nokia G22 change over to a tripod scene in the Night mode when it detects the telephone set is perfectly still . picture take an age to capture , but they can take care decent .
This is n’t a particularly good television camera , but it does offer a direction to take decent photos in most environments , if you test hard enough . The experience of shooting is n’t too risky either , with only minor shutter meantime .
Video is pretty frightening , though . The Nokia G22 ’s maximal seizure mode is 1080p@30fps , and even if you drop down to 720p you are still stick with 30fps . There ’s also no form of stabilisation at all , making handheld footage look rubbish .
The Nokia G22 ’s front television camera has an 8MP sensor that produces no more than acceptable images . While it can bring out all right contingent like facial tomentum OK in good lighting , it does n’t take much for picture to become soft - looking or hazy .
Battery life
HMD did n’t send us a battery charger with the Nokia G22 , but with a powerful plug you ’ll see it can reach a fairly unimpressive 42 % charge in 30 minute . It supports up to 20W charging speeds according to its specification canvass .
The telephone set is also rate to keep 80 % of its battery after 800 charging cycle — that ’s high than the 500 Apple claims , although I ’d be surprised if HMD uses a high - quality shelling than Apple . It ’s more probable “ 500 ” is just the default , conservative digit Apple has used for yr on its support pages .
There ’s a bigger call too , that the Nokia G22 can last three days between charge . With fair ordinary 5050mAh battery capacity , the only reasonableness for it to have outstanding shelling life are its low resolution and imperfect processor .
I have n’t seen it last anything close to three days . Perhaps my parent , who are long - tolerate users of Motorola Moto series phones not dissimilar to the Nokia G22 , could get it to last that long . They do n’t utilize their speech sound all that intensively . But those of us who use our mobiles borderline too much ? No chance .
I find the Nokia G22 typically lasts a daylight and a one-half , which is above average but no better than some phones I ’ve used in the last 12 months that make no specific claims about “ day ” of battery stamina .
An hour of video streaming takes 8 % off the charge level , advise it ’s ripe for around 12.5 minute of video streaming .
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Should you buy it?
the Nokia G22 is affordable , and core parts of it can be renovate or supplant using fairly friendly mend kits from respected brand iFixit . It could be better for the environment and your banking concern balance in the long run .
Some wo n’t find the Nokia G22 all that sport to use . It has a weak mainframe whose limitation are quite obvious even when doing day - to - mean solar day basics . you could keep it move for the retentive draw , but will you want to ?
Final Thoughts
The Nokia G22 is the most accessible repairable phone I ’ve used . It come from a much bigger name than theFairphone 4or Terracube 2E , and is loads cheaper than either of those simulation too .
Making repairability mainstream ? Nothing ill-timed with that , even if I do think replacing the assault and battery or screen would be beyond some people thanks to the fiddliness of the job . This repairability is descend by fundamentally weakening the telephone ’s building . It ’s now comparable to progress to your own PC — which may be easier than you think if that sounds intimidating .
However , I wo n’t go out of my fashion to recommend the Nokia G22 to too many multitude as it feel moderately slow . If you ’re going to use your phone a lot , you should get something nippier . And if you are not , by the clip the bombardment long time enough to warrant a alternate , the software will be so out of date you should probably debate changing phones anyway .
Trusted Score
How we test
We essay every wandering phone we review good . We use industry - standard mental testing to compare feature decent and we use the telephone set as our main gimmick over the review period . We ’ll always severalize you what we chance and we never , ever , accept money to critique a product .
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FAQs
This earpiece is not water resistive , with a lowly piss / dust ingress rating of IP52 .
At the time of inspection the phone uses Android 12 .
This phone does have a authoritative 3.5 mm earpiece input .
