Mention the name Nokia and for a whole generation it will bring back fond memories of near-indestructable mobile phones with mega battery life, playing snake to while away the hours and that ringtone. But that was back then, and during the age of the iPhone it appeared Nokia vanished into the background somewhat.
But no more as Nokia has recently made another bid for glory with a range of new smartphones, tablets and tech accessories. I was given the T10 tablet to test out - a compact device that will set you back just £129.
This price point pitches it in competition with the Amazon Fire tablets - and it’s more than up for the fight. Starting with appearance, the T10 is too big to be described as phone-sized, but its 8-inch HD display is not a million miles away. It looks - and feels - solid, with the green-tinged polycarbonate case providing good grip.
The rear panel houses an 8MP primary camera with auto-focus and an LED flash. The selfie camera is a 2MP fixed focus lens. Both are serviceable without being spectacular, but it does allow for face recognition unlocking which I found to be snappy and reliable.
With a sizeable bezel, the T10 does look a little dated from the front. If anything, it brings back memories of the first-generation iPad. The tablet has a pair of stereo speakers which are OK (chances are you’ll listening with earphones) but because of its size it was easy to block them with your hands when holding the tablet.
These are my only gribbles, though, as the tablet blew me away. It runs full-fat Android 12 rather then the anaemic version you often get at this price point, and this makes a huge difference. It’s powered by an entry-level processor but I found it to be quick enough and never found myself banging my head against it. The device is Netflix HD certified which means you’re going to get a good experience streaming content.
You get 32GB built-in storage but you can bump this up by up to 512GB using the MicroSD slot. Battery life is great, lasting for a few days when put through average usage. There’s no fast charging, but it only takes a couple of hours to get back to 100%. You can also use the T10 as a second screen with your Windows PC. I didn’t get to test this out but I’m not sure how effective it would be because of the size of the screen. Still, it might be useful if you’re on the road a lot.
To sweeten the deal Nokia is also guaranteeing two years of OS updates and three years of security updates - so you can at least have confidence the device is not going to become obsolete anytime soon. This is really rather notable as other manufacturers are not so generous.
The tablet is great for media consumption, web surfing, email and light gaming. You're not going to want to do, say, heavy video editing on the device but that's not what it's designed for. A load of Google apps are pre-loaded as well, meaning it's pretty much good to go out of the box.
I must admit I was a little bit skeptical of the advice (mostly due to a bad experience with Android many years ago) but the T10 has won me over in spades. For under £130 it truly represents amazing value, but the remarkable thing is that it doesn’t feel like a budget device.
And away from its affordability, I’d say the big attraction is the form factor. It really worked for me. So much so that I found myself grabbing the T10 before my other bigger (and a hell of a lot pricier) tablet.
Nokia Portable Wireless Speaker 2
As well as phones and tablets, Nokia is also getting into the accessories game. One of them is the Nokia Portable Wireless Speaker 2, which is a handy, waterproof Bluetooth speaker.
One of the big selling points of what is a pretty straightforward device is that its cloudy blue outer shell is made of 100% recycled materials.
Very easy to set up, the speaker fits in your hand but has plenty of oomph - delivering a powerful 5W sound. Battery life is excellent with Nokia saying you can get 22 hours of playback on one full charge.
The built-in mic is decent enough to make it a solid choice for video conferencing, especially as you connect two speakers together using Bluetooth. It’s got an IPX7 rating when it comes to being waterproof so taking it outdoors is not a problem.
All in all, it's a solid mini-speaker at an affordable price (49.99). And if you want to reward a company for going green, this could be right down your street.
