Nokia G42 5G | Snapdragon® 480+ 5G | 50MP Triple AI Camera | 11GB RAM (6GB RAM + 5GB Virtual RAM) | 128GB Storage | 5000mAh Battery | 2 Years…

Over all the phone is good but camera quality and sound is not that good what I was expecting

After using for a day…!!
Build quality: A typical Nokia product. In hand feel is good. The back panel looks so much good. Looks awesome.
Display: It’s doesn’t look like a 720p display at all. The overall experience with a 90hz refresh rate is smooth and punchy. But content watching like videos on YouTube may feel little dull.
Camera: The 50mp back camera is like 50/50. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s average. I haven’t tested the 2mp cameras. 8mp front camera is below average. Camera app has some cool features. Use GCam for a good result. Picture quality will be improved drastically especially the front camera.
Speaker: The single bottom firing speaker is loud and has good level of vocal details. But misses the bass. Overall average. It has a feature call boost volume which will increase the volume upto 10%. The earpiece is top quality. Wired earphone output is good. I’ve used Nokia earphones and quality is good. Also used Noise tws and got a decent output, no issues here.
Software: Clean Android 13 with some pre installed app which is uninstallable.
Overall a good phone in this price range. 5G bands only n28 and n78 available. Airtel 5G is working fine, don’t know about Jio. Compass sensor is missing. I’ve also attached some shots taken with Nokia G42 5G. Charging the battery will take 1hr45mins from 20% to 100%.

Hearing problem create something both with incoming and outgoing calls. Otherwise nice one.

3 day battery is not a reality unless you don’t use the phone at all.

Screen quality looks good as drop down notch is not an intrusion. refresh of 90Htz will drain battery Faster.

Camera looks good and I am not expecting it to work like an SLR or an apple for which you pay 5 times more.

fact – 5g drains battery.

This phone has two 5g bands only. 5g speeds on network is good but you cannot choose a 5g only option. Nokia ‘s global model has multiple 5g bands and they made this information hard to find for the device sold in India. They seem to have reduced the hardware to support multiple 5g bands which probably accounts for the drop in price of G42 over the model sold in EU. BTW, My previous Nokia 5.3 phone had all the Network listed on the box. this phone has listed 5g band info in the small booklet in very small prints. 5g seekers. Please validate your requirements before you choose.

battery –
2.5 hours of screen time used about 10% of battery which was mix of 1 hour youtube + 40 mins of call + other installations.

Choice over other phones for reasons below

1) Gorilla glass 3 ( older version, but at least some protection). Expecting Nokia should stop being stingy and move up to a more sturdy Gg5 . Wonder why people would want to buy a phone without a good screen protection. Fragile screen i.e. without screen protection should avoided. Eg. I could not find details of protection on motg54 which is an near equal device. 3rd party websites cannot claim a “some animal” glass when companies don’t mention it in their specs page. Consumers, please demand a sturdy screen with decent protection.

2) Charger made available alongside the phone which another big company has stopped giving and causing mismatched charger to be used by consumers. Customers are misled about environmental concern and your phone landing cost goes up by 500-1000 INR. That company should sell phone in 2 variants i.e. with or without a charger. The customers should be able to choose what they require…not what company wants them to do….
I reviewed the secondary market for charger, it is very tricky and has price fluctuations.

3) Back Case is now listed by Amazon as device content. Thanks for updating the specs page. No additional money to be spent out-of-the box.

4) Software Update cycle which allows it be used as BYOD device for office emails due to regular security patches.

5)Android 13 will be upgraded till Android 15. Clean Android to avoid unwanted ads and ensure better control over device.

A sturdy handset with promised update for 3 years and a clean Android. 5g speed is good but phone will latch to only 2 bands of which n78 is a common 5g band. A let down by Nokia on the 5g front because if India has only 2 bands, all other mobile companies are lying to us or reverse is true.
Nokia has not come out clean on this front.

I wonder how Reviewers could post a review after 1 day of launch and sing praises without even touching the phone.

Dear Amazon , my previous review disappeared from Amazon which was to highlight the missing aspects of the phone and I wish it could be attributed to technical glitch..

Delivery –>
Delivery was in a fragile package which had crushed the phone box, lucky that there was no damages to phone inside.

Post 7 days :

Attached the battery consumption for 4g ( 2days ) and 5g ( will last 1 day 10 hours after 100% charge). 5g speeds is very good but battery will drain out sooner. I have seen the same behavior in apple and other high end phones too. If you want to run longer, switch to 4g , switch screen refresh at 60hz.

hotspot on 5g makes the phone run hot. 4g hotspot does not.

Fingerprint scanner works much better now. Nokia 5.3 was not so good.

Android 13 seems smooth.

Charger (BIS certified) seems to be working fine. I could not understand why some users called it a fake charger and due respect to them , Works fine for me. It seems, the charger is not branded as Nokia which seems to causing the confusion. It’s on Nokia to uphold their brand value or not. All of us , Customers expect it to work as an original without any trouble.

Approx 2+ GB Ram is available as spare ram.

1 software patch received already. Nokia does maintain good Software update promise. My other device Nokia 5.3 was patched all thru the lifecycle of the device therefore making it a very safe and secure phone to protect personal data. All consumers must expect their phone company to provide software patches and security updates which is very important factor in today’s digital world.

Macro lens is good. Works fine.other Camera modules are ok for this price range.

Speaker quality is smooth but could have be bit louder. Call quality is very stable.

Nokia have dropped the price by 600 INR in 15 days into the launch price which makes the early buyers look a bit foolish who take the risk of buying a new phone at a slightly higher cost.

Phone call + safe browsing + online media content + chat + decent camera + charger + backcase + sturdy phone+ 5g speed (n78,n28) added with a safe and secure phone if that’s what one needs (I would guess would cover most of the needs ). Not sure about gaming because neither I play nor am expecting this device to be a gaming device.

Edit- (Day 14)
After I switched on the adaptive battery feature, the standby time has increased. Some battery consuming apps will restricted. The battery is projecting to last 3 day after a full charge and down to 55% after 1 day 17 hours. But remember, using YouTube or media apps will drain your battery Faster, this is universal fact for all phones.

Screen recording, dual standby works fine.

1 Star for playing down the 5g band and taking us for granted. 1 Star for making your loyal customers pay more for launch price. If someone wants to buy, a stable phone for no nonsense people.