Although the Nokia brand has a history of producing durable phones, HMD Global’s new Nokia XR21 goes above and beyond what we’re used to seeing. It has a MIL-STD-810H ruggedness grade and an IP68 water and dust resistance rating, but it also adds IP69K to the list. The phone can withstand extremely high-pressure jets of water, dust, or steam coming from any direction thanks to this odd rating, which we couldn’t recall seeing on another phone.
What kind of pressure are we discussing? According to the manufacturer, it will continue to function even when hit with a torrent of water at 100 bar pressure and up to 80 degrees Celsius. In light of the fact that the majority of home pressure washers work at roughly 100 bar, you should have no problems giving it a pretty thorough cleaning beneath a faucet.
The XR21 otherwise resembles a typical Android phone in terms of appearance, but with to its aluminum frame, robust rear panel, and Gorilla Glass Victus covering the 6.49-inch screen, it is also externally very sturdy. In case of emergency, the phone comes with a three-year standard warranty as well as a one-year screen replacement guarantee (in certain territories). The Nokia XR21 offers a lot of tranquility.
Although it appears to be durable, the technology isn’t particularly innovative. The Android 12 operating system is powered by a dated Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 CPU, which isn’t a very current setup even if three Android operating system updates are promised. Just one of those, which ought to have been installed by now, will be wasted on Android 13.
Good news: the 6.49-inch screen features a 120Hz refresh rate. On the back, there is a 64-megapixel primary camera. An 8MP wide-angle camera is included, but from our experience, these aren’t often particularly impressive. A 16MP selfie camera is located at the top of the screen, and the phone’s 4,800mAh battery supports 33W rapid charging. A side-mounted fingerprint sensor and a 3.5mm headphone jack are located on the body.
The Nokia XR21, the model that replaces the Nokia XR20, was introduced in 2021 and is available in Midnight Black or Pine Green. There is only one configuration, which includes 128GB of internal storage and 6GB of RAM.
