Nokia C21 Plus review: budget price, big ambitions

Cheaper phones are all the rage these days and that makes the market much more competitive. Nokia, once the king of mobile devices, is now banking on budget-conscious consumers who don’t want their device to go cheap. too much many corners.

Nokia C21 Plus is almost the same. It offers a big screen, solid day-to-day performance and features like a fingerprint reader and face unlock for around £100. While there are trade-offs to achieve this, it’s really hard to argue with the £109/€129 price tag given what’s on offer here.

Design and build

• Large display with bezels and chin
• Micro USB port
• Rear fingerprint scanner

Bigger phones are starting to unify little by little, and Nokia’s latest phone isn’t much different from the crowd. The C21 Plus offers almost all of the screen front you’d expect elsewhere, save for a small chin at the base of the display.

However, the bezels are still there, and unlike something like the Motorola Moto G22, you won’t find a punch-hole camera – the front camera is hidden in the top bezel via a waterdrop notch.

The top edge has a 3.5mm headphone jack, while the left side is blank except for the SIM tray on the top side. On the right, there is a volume rocker and a sleep/wake/power button. There’s also a small, circular fingerprint scanner on the back, but for those with larger hands it can be tricky to spot, but there’s face unlock as well.

However, the biggest disappointment is the micro-USB port at the bottom. Truth be told, I haven’t seen it in a while, and its irreversible nature makes plugging the C21 Plus into the included charger a minor issue that I thought USB-C made easier.

My test sample is a dark blue variant, but the other variant is a warm grey. The matte finish does a good job of eliminating fingerprints, but you should still get some smudges.

Screen and speakers

• 6.2″ 60Hz LCD
• Resolution 720×1200
• Only one speaker

I used to be critical of LCDs, especially at this resolution, but because of the low price here, the 720p display seems at least a little easier to swallow than on some phones that cost more.

Watching videos on it, either through downloaded Netflix shows or streamed through YouTube, was a passable experience. This may sound like a curse with weak praise, but I’ve tested some phones where the resolution makes content appear devoid of color and detail. Unfortunately, the viewing angles are not great.

Lloyd Coombs / Foundry

Another issue that is very common in phones in this price range is the lack of dual speakers. There is only one here, located at the bottom of the phone, which means that the high, mid and low frequencies pass through the same point.

While things get a little tinny as the volume is turned up, we have to give Nokia credit – while bass and treble fade into the mids, this mid-range “eq” effect isn’t too annoying. Again, this is perhaps an ambiguous compliment, but often you will find that the sound on phones in this price category is so heavily limited by the mids that even your favorite song can be ruined.

Characteristics and performance

• Low benchmarks don’t tell the whole story
• 32 GB or 64 GB storage with microSD support
• The phone is clearly not for gamers.

If you look at the specs of the C21 Plus, you’re sure to get a little worried; 32 GB of internal memory is not much, and 2 GB of RAM is very little in today’s world, where phones have the same power as some computers.

The bad news is that the benchmarks aren’t much better. A multi-core Geekbench score of 475 is unlikely to give you confidence, and the GFX Bench test suite only delivered about 5.7fps on the normal Aztec Ruins Vulkan benchmark (3.3fps on the high version).

This almost rules out many popular games (and many of the ones we’ve used for testing in the past), but the numbers only tell half the story. This is because Android 11 Go, the lite version of Google’s mobile OS, is much better optimized for such a device.

This means that, despite the low numbers, switching between apps, especially Google anchors like Drive, Docs, YouTube and more, is much faster than you’d expect. Even the keyboard, which can sometimes lag a bit on phones with such modest specs, feels fast and responsive.

Of course, you can always work faster, but if you’re buying a phone to text, make calls, and send emails, the C21 Plus will really serve you well.

Lloyd Coombs / Foundry

Camera and video

• 13MP rear camera
• 2 megapixel depth sensor
• 5MP selfie camera

It’s clear that compromises have been made with the C21 Plus’ 13MP camera to reach this price point, and any aspiring photographers should definitely avoid both front and back shots here.

That’s not bad in itself, but indoor images are devoid of color, and in low-light conditions, photos will be dull (see two images of a dinosaur for examples).

Drying out the color due to overexposure also results in a reduction in detail, which is noticeable in the photo of flowers from the outside. Outdoor shots are better for the most part, although low-light scenarios can cause a long delay in image processing. Moving the camera in this window can also result in very blurry images.

The front camera is no frills either. The 5MP sensor absorbs a lot of light, but tends to make things look a bit dim. too much bright, dropping contrast and resulting in much softer images.

However, the portrait mode works well. As you can see in the example, it distinguishes hair and ears well, although in testing (before cutting!) it struggled with longer and fluffier hair.

In terms of video recording, you can record 1080p video at 30fps, but you’ll want to play it elsewhere for the best viewing experience thanks to the device’s 720p resolution. You’ll also need a steady hand, as no optical stabilization is offered.

Battery life and charging

• Requires daily charging
• Slow charging via micro-USB

The 4,000 mAh battery is non-removable, and although our testing app crashed a few times, the Nokia C21 Plus was choking on charge by the end of the day with normal use.

It’s a shame because of how impressive some budget phone batteries can be, but that micro-USB port also contributes to very slow charging. We managed to get just 17% when charged with the included 10W charger for 15 minutes and 32% after 30 minutes.

Lloyd Coombs / Foundry

Software and Applications

• Android 11 Go lightweight
• Some apps won’t start
• It takes some time to get used to being touched on the chin

While I know the tests I’ve logged don’t pull trees, the key point is that Nokia recognized this as well. As a result, the company skipped installing full Android on the C21 Plus and opted for the much lighter (and less bloated) Android 11 Go.

It has some drawbacks, of course. In addition to the fact that some applications simply cannot work, there are additional incremental updates. On the plus side, however, the installation is smaller and you still get access to many of your Google favorites like Docs, Drive, and Chrome. Nokia promises two years of updates until 2024.

There’s something a little off during testing; while the C21 Plus never felt particularly sluggish in any of its normal tasks, the small chin at the bottom of the screen sometimes made it difficult for me to swipe up to get home. After a few tries, I learned to get around with it, but in those early hours, I felt less responsive than I could have been.

Price and availability

Between the 720p screen, a functional camera at best, and a micro-USB port, it’s fair to say that the C21 Plus has plenty of minor flaws.

And yet, with such a low price, I am ready to forgive many of them. The C21 Plus costs just £109 in the UK. available directly as well as Amazon Argos as well as Highly. It’s not on Nokia’s official website in the US, but you can buy a 3/32GB model on Amazon for $124.

It costs 129 euros in Europe, where you can get it directly from Nokia.

A phone with such a large display would have once cost a lot more, and unless you’re desperate for better battery life, it costs £50 less than the Motorola Moto G22 but offers significantly better performance.

Of course, you can opt for a larger internal storage option, but for the money, I would suggest just popping in a microSD card for expansion.

Verdict

Little things like the micro-USB port and the lack of a big battery shouldn’t keep a budget-conscious user from considering the Nokia C21 Plus. The test results may seem unflattering, but the actual performance in everyday use is stable.

With two years of Android updates and face and fingerprint unlock expected, the C21 could very well be your daily driver for the next few years. It’s not an all-singing, all-dancing device, but it does more than enough to justify the modest cost.

Specifications

• Android 11 Go version
• Screen 6.52 inches with an aspect ratio of 20:9 and a resolution of 720 × 1600.
• Chip Unisoc SC9863A Octa Core 1.6GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• 32/64 GB internal memory
• microSD card slot (up to 256 GB)
• 13MP main camera with 2MP depth camera
• Main camera 5 MP
• Back panel Fingerprint scanner
• Face recognition
• Heart rate monitor
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• Headphone jack
• Micro USB
• Non-removable 4000 mAh battery
• 76x165x8.6mm
• 191 g
• Starting colors: dark blue, warm gray.