After rumours, HMD Global has announced the Nokia XR21, the company’s latest rugged smartphone. It is a waterproof phone (IP68) with a sleek casing that is made to the MIL-STD-810H military standard. It has IP69K standards to be drop-proof, dust-proof, waterproof and life-proof, says the company.
The phone has 100% recycled aluminum chassis and tough materials as well as Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection. It has a smaller 6.49-inch FHD+ punch-hole display, but gets an 120Hz LCD screen. There are two programmable buttons, so you can make your most frequent task more accessible.
The phone is powered by Snapdragon 695 5G SoC and run Android 12 with three years of software upgrades and four years of security updates. It has 64MP main camera, and a 8MP ultra-wide camera, but the ZEISS Optics is gone. The front camera gets an upgrade from 8MP to 16MP. It retains 3.5mm audio jack, stereo speakers and OZO spatial audio.
The battery is now 4800mAh, an upgrade from 4630mAh battery and there is also 33W fast charging, but this doesn’t have wireless charging which was present in the XR20.
Nokia XR21 specifications
- 6.49-inch (2400×1080 pixels) FHD+ 20:9 aspect ratio display, 120Hz refresh rate up to 550 nits brightness, Wet hands and gloves compatibility, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection
- Octa Core Snapdragon 695 8nm Mobile Platform (2.2GHz x 2+1.8GHz x 6 Kryo 560 CPUs) with Adreno 619L GPU
- 6GB LPDDR4x RAM, 128GB (UFS 2.1) storage
- Dual SIM (nano + nano)
- Android 12
- 64MP rear camera with ƒ/1.79 aperture, LED flash, 8MP ultra-wide camera with f/2.2 aperture, OZO Audio
- 16MP front-facing camera with f/2.45 aperture
- Side-mounted fingerprint sensor, 2x Quick access buttons
- 3.5mm audio jack, Extra loud Stereo speakers (96dB), OZO Playback
- Water, dust and drop proof (IP68 / IP69K), MIL-STD 810H certified
- Dimensions: 168.0×78.58×10.45 mm; Weight: 231g
- 5G SA/NSA, Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz) 2×2 MiMo, Bluetooth 5.1, GPS/ GLONASS/ Beidou/ QZSS/NavIC, USB Type-C
- 4800mAh (typical) battery with 33W wired charging
Pricing and availability
The Nokia XR21 comes in Midnight Black and Pine Green colours and is priced at £499.99 (US$ 625 / Rs. 51,190 approx.) for the single 6GB + 128GB model. It will roll out in the UK starting from June.