Nokia 5.3 Review: The Budget Phone That Thinks Big

HMD Global’s take on the budget market is the Nokia 5.3. Priced at £150 in the UK or $199 in the US, you get an Android One powered handset, a solid camera for the price point, and a large screen to deliver value for money.

Nokia 5.3

Ewan Spence

It’s worth remembering that the Nokia 5.3’s value for money is with comparable handsets. If you decide to put this up against the Samsung Galaxy S20, the iPhone 11, or even the OnePlus Nord, the 5.3 is going to come up short. But at this price point, there’s no reason not to have this Nokia on your shortlist.

Obviously this price point comes with a number of expectations, and the easiest way to pitch the Nokia 5.3 is to say that everything is just a little bit more than average for a £150 phone. Design wise it continues the subtle Finnish design seen across HMD Global’s range. There are some nice touches, such as the ‘breathing’ LED inside the power button, but there’s nothing garish or out of place here.

Nokia 5.3

Ewan Spence

The rear camera comes with four lenses, a main 13 megapixel lens, a 5 megapixel ultrawide lens, a two megapixel macro lens, and a two megapixel depth sensing lens. It certainly looks the part, but I wonder if these lower priced handsets need to stop chasing the visuals of the flagship and concentrate on using one lens really well. It’s an approach that both Apple’s iPhone SE and Google’s Pixel 4a make work.

Take the two megapixel macro camera. It’s fun, but it’s not something that stands out or really works as a selling point. There are noticeable shifts in colour between the wide angle and the main lens, and the lower specs mean that image processing feels slow. With good light you’ll get a perfectly workable main image, but once you present the handset with less than optimal conditions, there’s a noticeable drop-off.

At 6.55 inches this is a big screen on a budget phone. That means the compromises are evident, for example the LCD screen does not have the deep blacks and vivid colours of OLED, nor does it support HDR. The resolution is 720×1600 and the backlight is not especially bright (so expect color to wash out in direct sunlight). Yet for web browsing, social media, calendar and contacts work – areas where I think the Nokia 5.3 will be used extensively – the screen does what it needs to do well.

Finally, the use of AndroidOne really helps the experience. It strips out all of the bloat from the installation, leaving you a clean implementation that is incredibly close to Google’s vision of Android. With the Snapdragon 650 and 4 GB of RAM in the Nokia 5.3, keeping the OS as lean as possible helps the performance. The slower processor and relatively low RAM is going to be noticeable when you push the had set with modern games, HD video streaming, or intensive third-party apps.

Nokia 5.3

Ewan Spence

With all of these little dings, you have to remember that these are little dings not on a $1099 flagship, but on a $199 budget smartphone. Comparing the Nokia 5.3 to the other handsets in this space and there’s not a lot of competition. The closest is probably the Motorola G8 Power Lite, but the SnapDragon 650 has the edge over the MediaTek Helio P35 processor.

It’s also worth noting that in this market space, expanding your budget out by a small amount will make a noticeable difference to the specs. Jump from £!50 to £180 here in the UK and you are looking at Samsung’s Galaxy A21, which improves both the camera and the screen quality.

Nevertheless, the Nokia 5.3 knows where it wants to be, delivers a great experience in this space, and demands to be considered.

Disclaimer: HMD Global provides a Nokia 5.3 for review purposes.

Now read more about the misplaced nostalgia for Nokia Snake …