The Nokia 5.3 is one of the best value smartphones you can buy, and we not only gave it a great review, but also added it to our roundup of the best cheap phones available today. HMD Global has now announced the sequel, the Nokia 5.4, and plenty has changed to make it even more tempting, at a price that simply can’t be ignored.
Made from polycarbonate and available in two colors, Polar Night and Dusk, the Nokia 5.4 has a 6.39-inch LCD screen on the front, The teardrop notch from the Nokia 5.3 has been replaced by a more attractive and less visually intrusive hole-punch cutout for the selfie camera. New colors aside, the back of the phone is fairly similar, with a circular camera module top-center and a fingerprint sensor underneath.
There are four cameras inside the module. A 48-megapixel camera is the headliner, joined by a 2MP depth camera, a 2MP macro camera, and an ultrawide camera. On the front is a 16MP selfie camera. The 48MP camera is a significant upgrade over the Nokia 5.3, as is the selfie camera. We hope it represents a performance improvement, as the camera did disappoint on the Nokia 5.3.
A Snapdragon 662 processor drives the phone, providing a zero-lag shutter on the camera, and also a comprehensive video mode. Features here include night mode, portrait mode, a 24 frames-per-second (fps) 21:9 aspect ratio mode (with the option to increase to 60fps in other modes), image stabilization, and a color-grading tool. There are three different models, two with 4GB of RAM and either 64GB or 128GB storage, and another with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage.
Other features include a 4,000mAh battery that should return two days of use before needing a recharge, a MicroSD card slot, face unlock, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and Android 10 installed at launch. The phone will receive an update to Android 11 during the first three months of 2021, something that phones costing four or five times as much may not match. HMD Global will release the Nokia 5.4 in Europe soon after Christmas, when it will cost 159 British pounds, or 189 euros.
Currently, there’s no release date for the U.S., but the Nokia 5.3 did eventually get a release, so there’s no reason not to expect the Nokia 5.4 to arrive after the initial global launch is complete. The price should be around $230, making it slightly more expensive than the Nokia 5.3, but it appears to still represent excellent value.