Nokia C12 Plus will be available for purchase in India soon
17. 05. 2023 Wednesday / By: Robert Denes / Reviews / Exact time: BST
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N okia Mobile India has already made available in its online store the expected release of the Nokia C12 Plus smartphone with pricing, which Nokia fans can buy for just INR 7999 (GBP 77, EUR 89 and USD 97). The display of the current price is a little deceptive, because at the time of its release, it is usually reduced by -2000 INR, which means that the real price will be only 5999 INR (GBP 58, EUR 67 and USD 72) in my opinion.
The Nokia C21 Plus features a large 6.52-inch 720p IPS display and dual cameras. A Unisoc SC9863A processor runs the show, along with 2GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, and a 4,000mAh battery. It uses a version of Android specially tailored for low-power devices, Android 11 Go, and Nokia also promises two years of basic Android updates.
Launched during a period of cost cutting and lending economy, the Nokia C21 Plus has obviously arrived in India at the right time, priced at just INR 7,999, making it one of the cheapest smartphones you can buy right now.
The Nokia C21's camera setup is inside a small rectangular camera block, and it's sensibly placed in the upper left corner, above the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. The latter worked well during testing.
The phone's SIM card tray has enough space for two nano-SIM cards, and it even has an extra slot where you can insert a microSD card if you want to increase the internal storage space. There is also a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top edge. Unfortunately, the phone does not support NFC payments.
My only other gripe is the inclusion of a micro-USB charging port on the bottom. As a result, charging speeds are excruciatingly slow, taking over two hours to fully charge from empty in my tests. At least Nokia includes the right chargers in the box, though.
Given the price, you shouldn't expect the Nokia C21 Plus to offer the best viewing experience in the world, but the phone's screen is pretty good for the price. Technically... it's just a simple 6.52-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 1600 x 720, but it performed quite well in our tests.
The color accuracy is a little weaker, the measured average Delta E is 2.87, but otherwise there is a lot to like, a contrast ratio of 1604:1 and a peak brightness of 390 cd/m2. It would be nice if Nokia could squeeze some kind of high refresh technology into its sub-£150 smartphones, but at this price you can't mourn its absence.
Nokia C21 Plus review: Performance and battery life
Nokia C21 Plus is powered by Unisoc SC9863A processor. It's an octa-core chipset clocked at 1.6GHz with an IMG8322 GPU, and in the UK it's backed by just 2GB of RAM - definitely the bare minimum for Android - and just 32GB of expandable storage.
That might sound a bit weak, but the Nokia C21 Plus is actually the fastest in its class by our standards. The previous winner, the Nokia 1.4, is 25% slower than the C21 Plus in Geekbench 5's multi-core test, and the differences between the two are immediately apparent after powering it on.
The Nokia C21 boots up faster, unlocks faster, and is generally faster to navigate. It still has its moments — especially when switching apps, where it occasionally stutters while scrolling — but you won't find anything as fast unless you pay significantly more money.
The graphical display has also improved a lot, although the image here is still quite swaiting The GFXBench Manhattan 3 gaming test's average frame rate of 16fps on the screen is more than three times faster than the Nokia 1.4's result, but there's still room for improvement.
Unfortunately, the battery life has dropped a bit. Lasting just 13 hours and 10 minutes in our video playback test, the Nokia C21 Plus is about an hour behind the Nokia 1.4. With such a low score, you'll need to charge your phone every night, even with moderate daily use.
The Nokia C21 Plus runs Android 11 Go Edition, a customized version of Google's mobile operating system designed specifically for low-end devices. This means the phone will launch with modified "Go" versions of Google apps like Chrome, Maps, and Gmail.
These take up less storage than the traditional versions – which is handy given the paltry 32GB of internal storage – and updates are also smaller. The way you use the phone is largely the same as the regular version of Android 11, although it has fewer easy-to-access settings in the notification drawer. The app switcher also doesn't display recent screenshots of open apps.
Another feature missing in this version is the icon in the corner of the camera app that used to indicate how many pictures you can take before your phone's storage is full. I've always found this incredibly useful, especially when space is limited, and I hope it returns in future updates.
The cameras on the Nokia C21 Plus are pretty basic, with a 13MP main camera, a 2MP depth sensor and a 5MP selfie camera on the front. There's not much to say here, except that they do a pretty good job in a short amount of time, and you'll need to spend a lot more if you're a happy Instagram fanatic.
Captured images have a decent amount of detail, and color balance is nice and neutral, but far from perfect. Depending on the light, photos can look soft, and in bright conditions it tended to overexpose images. There was also quite a delay between pressing the shutter button and the camera actually shooting.
Portraits also didn't have much background blur, and an obvious face-smoothing effect is applied, even when the slider is set to zero. At least the selfie camera wasn't bad.
Finally, video is recorded at 1080p and 30fps, up from the Nokia 1.4's 720p limit. Shots look good for the most part, but there's no image stabilization, so you'll have to be careful to hold the phone still while recording.
KIANEWS 
