The last time I used a Nokia phone was more than a decade ago, so when I had the chance to spend some time with the Nokia XR20 smartphone, I honestly had no idea what to expect.
The Nokia XR20 phone feels like you are holding a phone, it’s heavy and big but in a really good way. It’s a rugged phone, but not like your typical rugged phone. It is much nicer than your usual rugged phone, and it looks good too. One of the things that I love about it, is that it’s a tough phone. As in, it can withstand most of the things that can break most phones.
The front of the Nokia XR20 looks like your modern smartphone , with the back part of it making it easy for the hand to grip. As I mentioned earlier, the phone is big, and it comes with a 6.67-inch display. But it still fits perfectly in your hand.
The Nokia XR 20 comes with bold claims . . . that it is resistant to pavements, puddles and dirt, and that it’s designed to withstand life’s roughs and tumbles.
We wanted to test out these claims and we subjected the Nokia XR20 to several durability and toughness tests. One of the tests that we did was test the water resistant feature and I must say, it aced the test with flying colours. We completely immersed the smartphone in soap water for a ew minutes and when we took the phone out of the water, it was working like nothing happened.
We also tested it on how tough it is, by dropping it on concrete and on hard soil and tree trunks . . . it aces that too, without showing any signs of impact or distress. The military-grade design comes through for this phone, and it proves just how tough and durable it is. It’s definitely the perfect phone to handle life’s tumbles and rumbles.
The Nokia XR20 smartphone comes in a 6.67-inch FHD+ display. The display is bright, and the outdoor readability is very good. I also enjoyed the display for media consumption and gaming on this device was actually quite enjoyable.
I have no complaints about the audio output quality on the Nokia XR20. The audio is loud and it is of very good quality, because of the Nokia OZO Playback and extra loud Dual speakers. As I mentioned earlier, I enjoyed consuming media on this device and the gaming experience was also very good.
The Nokia XR20 smartphone rear camera is very good. It boasts a 48 MP multi purpose dual camera, and the picture and video quality is very good, I was impressed.
The Nokia XR20 comes with an ultra-wide 13MP camera . . . one of the best ones that I have experienced on a Nokia smartphone. So, with this phone, you will have no issues capturing portraits or landscapes, we found the pictures and video results quite pleasing.
The camera on this smartphone does not only perform during the daylight, the pictures taken at night were not bad. This was a great surprise on this phone!
I also loved how you can put a watermark of your choice on the pictures, with a quite a few options to choose from. It just makes it easy for your pictures to be recognizable and for branding!
Nokia XR20 boasts the Snapdragon 480 5G processor and it comes through for this phone. We used the phone for both basic and not so basic smartphone tasks, and the phone performed very well. It can handle browsing, gaming and many apps running in the background, and we didn’t have any issues with any of those tasks.
Nokia XR20 smartphone offers very good call quality, I did not experience issues during calls and the reception was very good.
Nokia XR20 Battery Life
Nokia XR20 boasts 18W wired fast charging, and the battery life was quite impressive. With a full charge of the phone, I could enjoy over 40 hours of battery life, while being on social media, browsing the internet, streaming some shows on Netflix, taking pictures and video, so that was very impressive.
The Nokia XR20 is powered by Snapdragon 480 5G processor, and for a great smartphone like this, it deserved a better performing processor.
I didn’t experience any problems with it, but with age and software updates over time, that may slow it down a bit.
We subjected Nokia XR20 5G smartphone to some rigorous and tough tests, and it passed very well. . If you are looking for a phone that is tough, that can withstand life’s tough environments, that is “rugged” but that still looks good and has the look of a smartphone, then this is it.