Nokia XR20 Review | Super-Rugged, But At What Cost?

The Nokia XR20 is certainly one of the more distinctive and, dare I say it, mental smartphones that we’ve had so far in 2021. Boston a super-rugged design that means I can quite happily do stupid like this—I don’t even have to look, I just know it’ll be absolutely fine. Yeah, see, absolutely fine. Knew it. So durability is the key factor here, ideal for outdoor adventurers and people who just happen to drop their smartphone an awful lot. But is the Nokia XR20 actually a worthy everyday companion? Well, I’ve had my SIM slapped inside there for the last week or so. There’s my full in-depth Nokia XR20 review.

Design & Durability

First up, I’ve got to say that rough-and-tumble design means that the XR20 is an absolute brick. We’re talking chunky, heavy, and, frankly, I sometimes struggled to sit comfortably when it was stuffed in my shorts. You certainly can’t fault the durability of this thing—at least for the most part. The 3D nano-textured rear, for one, is in absolutely perfect nick so far, despite the fact that I’ve literally been chucking this thing about the place in a vain attempt to scuff it up. It does get a wee bit greasy when you’ve been fingering it for too long—unfortunately just the usual sort of smudgy, horrible marks—but you can give it a quick buffing up and then it’s looking absolutely fine. In fact, that slightly textured rear does help with the grip, and, yeah, so far that Gorilla Glass Victus display is doing a great job of not shattering, despite the fact that it has suffered many an impact. However, like other Victus displays that I’ve tested, that surface is still surprisingly susceptible to scratches, so I would definitely recommend chucking on a screen protector all the same.

The Nokia XR20 can also handle extreme temperatures, so, you know, the likes of sitting outside in the sun all day long doesn’t even begin to bother it, and you’ve got full IP68 water- and dust-resistance as well, so no worries if you want to take it in the swimming pool, the Jacuzzi, whatever you want.

Software & Support

As with other Nokia handsets, what you get here is a pleasingly clean stock Android 11 experience with only a couple of bonus additions chucked in there, including a bit of face-unlock support to back up the perfectly respectable edge-mounted fingerprint sensor. The most fantastic part of it all is that manufacturer HMD Global has guaranteed three years of OS updates and four years of security updates with the Nokia XR20 as well, which is even better than its rival the OnePlus Nord 2. In parts of Europe you’ve got a full three-year warranty as well, and in the first year, if that screen does happen to shatter, HMD Global will replace it for free. So all highly commendable stuff and light-years ahead of what most of the competition, including the likes of Motorola, is offering.

Quirks & Annoyances

However, gotta say it’s not all sunshine and unicorns and happy like that. For one, that pointless Google Assistant button is a massive pain in the ass. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve accidentally activated that assistant as I’ve just tried to squeeze the XR20 back into my pants. Not only is this the biggest button in the friggin’ world, but it seems to be perfectly positioned for you to accidentally catch it every single time, which, of course, usually—I’m listening to some music or a podcast or something—it’ll just immediately cut off with that little bleep, and I swear to God my Google Assistant search history now must just be a string of F and C words.

Also, I’d highly recommend not activating the “raise to wake” feature on the Nokia XR20 either, because I did find that often I’d have it in my pocket, I’d pull it out, and the screen will have been on for God knows how long—it’ll just be a string of numbers that it’s trying to randomly call. So a couple of little gripes there.

Storage

Another minor gripe on the storage front is that the base model of the Nokia XR20 comes with 64 GB of storage—kind of hoping for 128 GB minimum—but there is a 128 GB option if you want it, and it’s expandable via microSD, accepts cards up to 512 GB in size, so no worries.

Display & Audio

The Nokia XR20’s 6.67-inch IPS display is fine. Although the tech isn’t quite as clever as a fair bit of the competition, that display is a big’un for sure, but the Full HD+ resolution keeps visuals crisp all the same. While there’s no HDR support, I did find that the contrast was okay, and on top brightness I could see what I was doing even on a sunshiny day. It is a shame that this thing tops off at 60 Hz, though, when offerings from Poco, OnePlus, and others are sporting 90 Hz or even 120 Hz displays, while many rivals also come packing an OLED screen.

You’ve got stereo-speaker setup on the XR20, but don’t get too excited. On top volume, you know, it’s loud enough to clearly hear what’s going on in a fairly noisy environment, but the sound is quite tinny, so I’d definitely stick to a pair of headphones. Thankfully, you do have a headphone jack here on the bottom end of the Nokia XR20, and if you do want to go wireless, you’ve got Bluetooth 5.1 support. I did find occasionally the phone took its sweet time actually connecting to a Bluetooth device, especially for the first time when you’re trying to pair them up, but once they are getting all chummy, then absolutely no worries with that connection strength and stability.

Call Quality & Microphone

I did find I had issues with the microphone here on the Nokia XR20, though. For normal phone calls, everything was absolutely fine, but when I was trying to Skype or do anything where the phone was being held away from my face, that was when apparently the audio was a bit iffy.

Performance

One of the other disappointments of the Nokia XR20 is that the Snapdragon 480 chipset which runs the show is a platform that’s usually found on budget phones less than half the price of this, and on the Nokia XR20 that is backed by a very modest four or six gigabytes of RAM. But thankfully the everyday performance is absolutely fine. You’ll notice the odd bit of slowdown here, the odd pause when you’re trying to load the camera or whatever, but as long as you’re not trying to push it to its absolute limits, then it’s generally fine. And, yeah, you can even indulge in some light gaming on the likes of PUBG or Call of Duty Mobile, and while you’ll have to make do with the low-detail settings, I did find that my online experiences weren’t frustrating—the frame rate generally stays tidy and the screen is responsive enough for frantically blowing away some utter sh… who just happened to stumble away into your crosshairs.

And, yes, the Nokia XR20 does offer 5G support as well. It’s a feature that you’d kind of expect at this sort of price point these days—like the OnePlus, the Poco F3—all those bad boys, they do have 5G support as well for the same cost or less, while also generally offering stronger performance for the likes of multitasking and also gaming.

Battery Life

You’ve got a 4,630 mAh battery crammed inside of the Nokia XR20’s rather chunky frame, and I found that that, combined with the stock Android experience and that energy-efficient Snapdragon 480 chipset, means you’ll get all-day play, no worries. I tended to get at least six to seven hours of screen-on time before I was getting down into the serious dregs. However, there is an ambient-display feature here on the Nokia XR20, and that will actually sap the battery much quicker if you’ve got that active, because, of course, it’s an IPS display—it’s not an OLED—so it’s not going to shut off all of these black pixels. So I did find that with this active I tended to drain around 15 to 20 percent battery over a 24-hour period, so you’ll definitely want to keep that knocked off if you are quite a heavy, demanding user.

As for recharging, well, the 18-watt wired-charging support is a bit lethargic again compared with a lot of the competition at this sort of price point—again, the likes of the OnePlus, the Poco. However, the Nokia XR20 more than makes that up with support for 15-watt wireless charging, which is an exceedingly rare feature at this sort of price point—definitely very convenient indeed.

Cameras

While practically every phone these days tries to pack in as many camera lenses as possible in some sort of bizarre willy-waving contest, the Nokia XR20 is perfectly happy to make do with just a pair. It’s another Zeiss-branded setup headed up by a 48-megapixel sensor which shoots at four-in-one pixel binning, giving you 12-megapixel pics by default. That’s also backed up by a 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle shooter if you want a different viewpoint.

Main & Ultra-Wide

That primary camera on auto mode does an okay job for everyday pics. You will notice the colors go a bit wonky and saturation raises its ugly head when bright skies and other issues creep in. The Nokia XR20 certainly isn’t a match for the Pixel 4a as far as HDR situations go. Still, my test photos were detailed enough to look sharp beamed up to a telly screen, and live-and-breathing subjects are usually kept in focus. The only time the XR20 struggled on that front was when I swapped to the portrait mode, where it just decided to completely ignore my begrudging participants and just chuck out the background instead.

You’ve got a powerful dual flash for night shots which can really light up a scene—although to the point where human subjects are practically blinded. A more humane alternative is the night mode, although this doesn’t have the huge impact on dim conditions you might hope for. As for that 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle sensor, well, you do get a pull-back view to fit more into each frame, but at the usual expense of color accuracy, which already wasn’t fantastic to begin with.

Video & Selfies

Things don’t improve hugely on the video side either, despite the usual OZO spatial-audio smarts which can clearly capture everything being said and done around you. Picture resolution tops off at Full HD with a choice of 30 or 60 frames per second—there’s no 4K option here—so my footage did look a bit fuzzy when I checked it out on a monitor. Image stabilization is decent, but you’ll once again face those challenges when shooting in bright or dim conditions. And while I appreciate the cinema mode that shoots in 21:9 and offers up a variety of filters to jazzify your home movies, that low resolution is still very limiting.

Last up, the 8-megapixel front-facing shooter is as basic as you’d expect, again struggling with harsh light and darker scenes. If you want to fill your Insta with sharp, good-looking selfies, you might want to look elsewhere.

Verdict

There’s my full, final, frank review of the Nokia XR20 after using it as my full-time personal handset for a week, and I’ve got to say: if you want a super-durable phone, well, it’s definitely one of the best options out there, although you will find the likes of Doogee offer durable smartphones as well for about half the price. It’s highly commendable what HMD is doing with that OS and security-update promise—you get a good bit of peace of mind going forward if you want to keep your smartphone for a while—and there are some features packed in the Nokia XR20 that you won’t find at this sort of price point on other handsets, like the wireless charging.

I gotta say, though, if durability isn’t a key factor for you, well, if you want that stock-Android experience with the guaranteed updates, the Pixel 4a will be better suited for you, especially with the better camera tech on that OLED display. OnePlus Nord 2 also awesome as well—a fairly stockish version of Android, again some pretty good promises as far as the OS and security updates go, and, again, better display, better performance, better camera tech.

So that’s my thoughts on the Nokia XR20. It’d be great to hear from you guys down in the comments below. Have yourselves a fantastic rest of the week. Cheers, everyone—love you.