Nokia 5.4 review: worth it for the price?

HMD Global introduced the Nokia 5.4 as an ultimate camera phone. “Get creative with the quad camera and cinematic effects” is a tag line on their website. So, is this phone really what they say it is?

Design and Build

In terms of general look and feel, the Nokia 5.4 has the same understated look with a curved plastic rear that shimmers nicely when it catches the light and even the circular camera housing on the rear just as in the 5.3.

Out of the box is the phone itself, a transparent casing that you would actually need, a 10W charging brick, a USB type C cable, some paperwork and earphones.

Watch a quick unboxing of the phone below.

The phone comes in two colours, Polar Night and Dusk.

This phone has the fingerprint scanner sitting right below the camera housing on the back, a USB-C connector for charging and networking is on the bottom, and a 3.5mm headphone jack is also present — just like the Nokia 5.3.

By all appearances, it’s a stylish-looking phone, especially for the budget market. It fits comfortably in the hand, but the plastic shell gives it a cheap feel – it even creaks a little when squeezed.

The phone accepts twin nano sim cards and offers space for your micro SD card for complementary storage.

Display

The Nokia 5.4 features a smaller display than its predecessor, with a 19.5:9 IPS LCD display measuring 6.39 inches, and the waterdrop notch has been replaced with a hole-punch camera.

With a slightly reduced resolution (720 x 1560), this means the pixel density is not as good. Text isn’t quite as sharp as it could be, images look a little soft and it’s the same story when watching video too.

If you’re not used to high-resolution screens, it might not be obvious at first, but it could be a deal breaker if you plan on watching a lot of YouTube videos or playing games.

The display is likewise restricted at 60Hz, which is to be expected. The brightness is its saving grace; with a maximum brightness of 461 nits, it isn’t the worst smartphone to use in direct sunshine.

Camera

The camera stack on this phone includes a 48MP primary lens, a 5MP ultra-wide lens, and 2MP depth and macro sensors.

The primary lens does a fine job with good light. Test shots were crisp and depth of field was well-represented. In Portrait mode, however, noise and foreground blur was noticeable in all shots.

With or without Night mode, the primary lens performs admirably in low light. In virtually all test photographs, I noticed edge noise and blooming, but the depth of field was outstanding, and there was less blurring than I usually see in budget-phone photos.

Some great daylight test images were taken with the ultra-wide lens. The color fidelity was great, and the foreground items were crisp. Although the backgrounds were a little soft, and I saw mild distortion in a few of our test photographs, the photos were suitable for social media sharing. Low-light ultra-wide test images, on the other hand, were flat and mushy across the board.

The macro lens was terrible, as were nearly all smartphone macro lenses. Our test images were flat and hazy around the borders, with fringing. A tripod or a steady hand might produce a better shot, but not by much.

Photos captured with the 16MP front-facing camera in daylight were sharp and detailed. With the selfie camera, portrait mode works great. Even when it’s turned all the way up, the Beautification mode on previous Nokia phones was a touch too forceful, but it’s barely apparent on the 5.4. I was unable to use a feature that apparently allows you to change the bokeh from a typical blurred background to a range of forms.

The selfie camera’s low-light images were terrible. Our test images had noise around the edges, and they were flat and muddy. Portrait mode exacerbated the problem by blurring the foreground and turning the murky backgrounds into smears.

A separate indepth camera review is in the works but here are some images of what you can expect.

Performance

The Nokia 5.4 packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 chipset along with 4GB of RAM. There’s 128GB of internal storage, with about 111GB available out of the box. You can add up to an additional 512GB of storage with a microSD card.

With a Snapdragon 662 and 4GB of RAM, the Nokia 5.4 was never going to be a real powerhouse, but performance feels adequate for the sort of tasks its expected user base is going to be throwing at it.

Performance is good for the price. Apps open instantaneously and there’s no lag with screen transitions. Multitasking works like a charm as well. The boot-up process takes a beat longer than we’d expect, but you’re unlikely to notice it unless you’re staring at your phone waiting for it to start.

I played some DLS 21. During an hour of gameplay, the app did not crush but there was some intermittent frame-skipping. 

Battery

The Nokia 5.4 is powered by a 4,000mAh battery. During our battery drain test, which streams HD video over Wi-Fi at full brightness, it eked out 10 hours and 17 minutes of battery life. It should get you through a day of moderate use.

The 5.4 does not, and its charging speed maxes out at a disappointing 10W. It took one hour to get to around 55% and about 2 hours 20 minutes to get fully charged from zero.

Speakers

The single bottom-edge-mounted speaker is loud enough, however the sound quality degrades at greater volumes. When you add in my disappointment with the screen, you have a device that isn’t ideal for media consumption.

Android 11

The Nokia 5.4 ships with a stock version of Android 10. I however updated this particular one to Android 11. You won’t find bloatware or branded productivity apps on it. As an Android One handset, it should receive snappy OS upgrades for two years, along with an additional year of security updates.

The Android 11 let’s you enjoy some features such as;

• Dynamic media controls.
• A built-in screen recorder.
• Greater control over conversation notifications.
• Recall cleared notifications with notification history.
• Pin your favorite apps in the share page.
• Scheduled dark theme and more.

This phone is really good at it.

Conclusion

If you want long-term software support, need dependable battery life and want a clutter-free Android experience, the Nokia 5.4 will give you that. If you value a good camera experience, want the best quality screen and are a power user, this device is not for you.

Also read my review of the Xiaomi Redmi 9T here.