The HMD-built Nokia 2.3 is now available for pre-sale in the US at at least one retailer, with another sales site reportedly planned soon.
Set at near the bottom of the price bracket for Nokia handsets, the device is a clearly-defined budget handset. But the Nokia 2.3 is also a more well-rounded handset than many in its market segment. Not only does it feature a respectable battery. The cameras, hardware features, and design also fall into a range closer to the mid-range bracket.
That makes it one of the better handsets around when it comes to the sub-$200 segment of the Android market.
What kind of device is the Nokia 2.3?
As noted above, the HMD-built Nokia 2.3 is a decidedly budget-friendly smartphone. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not only is Android continuously adapting to serve budget devices better with each iteration. The gap between budget, mid-range, and top tier handsets is slowly but surely shrinking.
The 6.2-inch Nokia 2.3 ships with an HD+ display panel that takes up most of the front thanks to a minuscule waterdrop notch. The notch houses a 5MP selfie camera and the overall handset format comes in a taller-than-average ratio. Under the hood, a sizeable 4000mAh battery powers a MediaTek Helio A22 chipset. HMD Global backs that up with 2GB RAM and 32GB storage.
On the back half of the handset, Nokia includes a 12-megapixel primary snapper with a 2-megapixel depth sensor. That comes complete with portrait mode features and a Google Top Shot-like feature driven by AI. That latter feature could either be great here or not. It was not well-received when it first launched on Google’s Pixel in 2018.
Here, buyers are getting an Android One program handset, aligning with the Nokia 2.3’s predecessor. That means it will see at least two years of firmware updates and three years of security-specific updates. It also means, thanks in part to how quickly Nokia updates its handsets, that the updates will arrive faster than usual. But there may actually be a caveat to that here.
While the timeframe means that the Nokia 2.3 should eventually see, tentatively, Android 12, it still doesn’t have Android 10. It’s possible that’s going to count against it, depending on when the twelfth version of Android arrives and how quickly it can be ported over to this specific handset. Regardless, this handset should see three years of security. So it will still be usable for at least a year longer than many handsets.
Face unlocking and a dedicated Google Assistant hardware key are part of the overall package too.
Pre-sales and pricing
In the US, the HMD Global-built Nokia 2.3 is available at a starting cost of just $129. That’s a bargain for the styling and internals but there is also at least one caveat. Namely, HMD Global is not bringing its less commonly seen Cyan Green hue stateside. Instead, buyers can only pick up the device in Sand or Charcoal colorations.
Pre-sales are opening up this week at Best Buy first. Amazon is slated to begin next week, giving consumers in the region two places to pick one of these Nokia-branded budget phones up.