Military grade certification for super tough Nokia XR20
Nokia says its new ‘military grade’ smartphone can survive huge shocks and extremes and it will replace the screen for free should you crack it within the first year.
The custodian of the Nokia Brand has released a smartphone it claims offers military grade toughness. HMD Global’s Nokia XR20 is a large smartphone with a 6.67-inch full HD display.
It is heavier to hold than most smartphones at 248 grams and has an IP68 rating, offering resistance to dust, sand and being dunked in water.
However the claims do not stop there. Nokia says the phone can survive drops from up to 1.8 metres, the height of it falling out of a bunk bed, and it can survive temperatures between -20C and 55 C. You could use it anywhere from Mt Kosciuszko in winter to Marblebar in the midst of a scorching summer.
The most notable claim is ‘military grade certification (MIL-STD-810H)’. This certification means the phone has survived specific shock and vibration testing, high and low temperature tests and shock temperature testing.
“Even though MIL-810H is a military standard, many commercial products are tested for it,” says Keystone.compliance.com.
“Other types of testing include altitude, corrosion, ingress protection, contamination, solar radiation. Some of the more specific tests are explosive atmosphere, acceleration, pyroshock, gunfire, ballistic shock and rail impact.”
The phone’s display is made from Corning Gorilla Glass Victus rated to survive a two metre drop, and the hard plastic back and rubberised sides gives the impression of the phone being solid and hard to break.
Nokia is backing its claim with a free display replacement should you crack the screen in its first 12 months of use.
While it’s a hardy phone, it’s not the fastest handset on the market by any means according to our tests.
The phone supports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G processor which is mid-range and behind in performance compared to the top-of-range Snapdragon 888 5G processor used in phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S21 series, the Oppo Find X3 Pro, and Asus ROG Phone 5 series.
That is born out in our benchmark tests. I ran the AnTuTu benchmark and achieved an overall score of 327995 with CPU performance rated as better than just 15 per cent of submitted phone tests to AnTuTu, Graphics performance better than 12 per cent, memory operation better than 24 per cent and user experience better than 18 per cent.
These are hardly stellar performance results but for ordinary everyday use the XR20 should be fine especially if you plan to use it in challenging environments.
You get 6GB of memory and 128GB of storage, and the phone comes with the Android 11 operating system with three years of software updates and four years of monthly security updates.
There are two camera lenses on the back; a 48MP main lens and 13MP ultra wide lens, each with a flash.You get an 8MP front-facing selfie camera. Photo quality in daytime is okay, but photos of a sunset that I took lacked the beautiful colours I could see with the naked eye.
The XR20 supports a NanoSIM and you have the option of another NanoSIM or a microSD card of up to 512GB capacity. There’s a programmable button at the top of the phone that you can set to instantly access a favourite application.
The phone has a modern USB Type-C connection, supports a 3.5mm audio jack and, yes, HMD Global is defying the trend of Apple and Samsung by still including a charger (18W) in the box.
The second biggest feature of this phone is the big, juicy 4630 milliampere hour battery. Nokia claims up to two days of battery use before it needs recharging.
Long battery life cements this phone as a good option for the outdoors for people who don’t like wrapping up their phone in cotton wool and hiding its looks in a tough case. You have Android 11 too. But just don’t try anything fancy performance wise.
The Nokia XR20 is available now for $879 for the 128GB storage model from Australian retailers JB Hi-Fi, Officeworks (online), Harvey Norman, Big W (online) and The Good Guys (online) and Nokia.com/phones. You have the choice of ultra blue and granite.
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