In a beautiful open air setting near the Qutub Minar, Nokia held the Nokia 8.1 launch event in New Delhi yesterday. HMD Global unveiled their flagship Nokia 8.1 in India.

The Nokia 8.1 boasts several premium features, such as the HDR10 supporting display, the dual rear cameras complete with Zeiss optics, and the rather modern Snapdragon 710 SoC from Qualcomm. To recall, the smartphone was launched in Dubai last week, and is essentially the global variant of the Nokia X7 that was launched in China in October.

The smartphone is part of the Android One programme, which assures it of timely updates and an optimised stock interface - it runs Android 9.0 Pie out-of-the-box. Another major highlight of the Nokia 8.1 is the 18W fast charging support on its 3,500mAh battery.

Additionally, the company is touting its ‘Bothie’ feature, which allows both front and rear camera to be used simultaneously, as well as its Pro Camera UI, with several manual camera options. The dual rear camera setup will help create portrait shots featuring a bokeh effect, the company said.

The smartphone was launched here in its sole 4GB RAM/ 64GB inbuilt storage variant priced at Rs. 26,999. It will be available in Blue/ Silver and Iron/ Steel colour variants. The smartphone will go on sale in from December 25 via top mobile retailers such as Croma, MyG, Reliance, and Sangeetha along with Amazon India, and the Nokia.com/phones says a report by NDTV Gadgets. However, pre-bookings start via retailers and Nokia.com/phones from today and pre-order shipments will begin from December 21st.

Nokia 8.1 specifications

It sports a 6.18-inch full-HD+ (1080x2244 pixels) display with a 18.7:9 aspect ratio, 81.5 percent screen-to-body ratio and HDR10 support. The Nokia 8.1 is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 SoC clocked up to 2.2GHz, coupled with 4GB of LPDDR4x RAM.

In the camera department, there is dual rear camera setup at the rear with Zeiss optics. A primary 12-megapixel camera featuring a 1/2.55-inch sensor, 1.4-micron pixels, OIS, EIS, 2PD (dual photodiode) tech, and a dual-LED flash and the secondary 13-megapixel fixed-focus lens is meant for depth sensing. At the front, the Nokia 8.1 bears a 20-megapixel fixed focus lens with 0.9-micron pixels, and 4-in-1 pixel tech for better low-light photography.

The Nokia 8.1 runs on a 3,500mAh battery that is rated to deliver up to 22 hours of talk time, 24 days of standby time, and up to 11 hours of video playback. The company is also touting the presence of 18W fast charging.