Third on the list is the BoerHang Armor Case for Nokia G21. The inner surface of this case adopts a soft TPU design, thin and durable. The outer surface of the protective shell adopts a textured design and a non-slip and scratch-resistant material design which does not fade. The four corners strengthen the protection design. The protective shell is higher than the screen and camera, which can protect the phone more effectively.

This is classic Nokia, which has for years been the primary proponent of “naked Android” initiatives such as Android Go and Android One. A clean and clear interface is always welcome, although these days we find ourselves pretty happy using most manufacturers’ third-party skins. Thirty minutes of high-end gaming consumes 7% off the battery, suggesting that a full charge will last you a little over seven hours. Again, this is excellent. Ark: Survival Evolved had a slideshow-like quality with the graphics maxed-out. To get it to a nicely smooth playable speed we had to set the graphics to “low” and bring down the resolution, making it look more like a PS2 game. Why might the Nokia G21 benefit, in particular? It runs an unusually clean version of the software. No superfluous apps, and no contentious additional interface elements.However, in 2022 even fairly cheap display panels can be remarkably good. Sadly, this isn’t the case here. The Nokia G21’s panel is below average, despite having a 90Hz refresh rate that makes menus appear to scroll more smoothly – when they’re not afflicted by mild UI judder, which happens fairly regularly.

Having often struggled to compose shots properly as a result of the Nokia G21’s dim screen, we were mostly pleased with the results. That being said, I don’t think the Nokia G21’s cameras can do enough to outweigh the phone’s long list of negatives. Yes, the design is rather nice and the clean Android installation is always a positive, but the phone’s so-so performance and weak battery life don’t help the Nokia G21 pull away from the competition. However, it’s brightness that’s the Nokia G21’s major issue. On taking the phone outdoors to take some photos, we could barely see what was in the preview window. The phone just doesn’t offer the peak brightness required to deliver respectable clarity in high levels of ambient light. The Nokia G21 has a high-capacity 5,050mAh battery that Nokia claims can last up to three days between charges. Given two-day use is the typical optimistic claim we hear, this is a big one.It scores 1165 in Geekbench 5, which is far lower than the ~1640 achievable in a phone featuring the Snapdragon 480. That’s one of Qualcomm’s entry-level 5G processors. The clean Android 11 OS is a boost, providing an attractive blank canvas for your needs. It also means you won’t have to spend the first moments of your new phone’s life looking for and deleting sneaky pre-installed apps.

The battery does what it says on the box, lasting for a couple of days of normal use. Battery life obviously depends on how often you’re absentmindedly scrolling through social media, but the G21 offers a perfectly reliable companion for active weekends away from the sofa. The G21 also offers adaptive battery, flagging when a certain app is draining energy and reacting accordingly. Top marks for a budget phone. CameraGameloft’s Asphalt 9 ran much better. The frame rate wasn’t perfect, but it was completely playable at “high” graphics settings. We’ve seen theoretically more powerful phones run the game far worse, suggesting that either Gameloft has made some optimizations, or that the version of the game 720p phones run is less taxing than the one 1080p Androids get. Cameras Night-time images are fairly poor; but we actually expected them to be worse given the Nokia G21’s small sensor. There’s a dedicated Night mode, which takes somewhere between one and two seconds to capture an image, with significant improvements to detail – both in the darkest areas, and to the sharpness of detail in the brighter parts. When it comes to processing speeds, what you’re getting here is a low-cost phone that can just about keep up with Android 11’s various actions and applications, but don’t expect day-to-day performance to be stress-free.