Nokia 7.2 review

Sort of three cams, but no tele

The Nokia 7.2 is equipped with a triple camera system, if we count the depth sensor as a camera. The main module is a familiar 48MP unit with a Quad Bayer sensor, which Nokia calls Quad Pixel. It's placed behind an f/1.8 aperture lens in the 'wide' category - likely a 26mm equivalent though Nokia doesn't specify it, nor does the phone embed it in the EXIF data. The second real camera is an ultra wide angle one, where the advertised 118-degree field of view translates to around an 13mm equivalent. This lens has an f/2.2 aperture, and the sensor behind it has an 8MP resolution.

The camera app on the Nokia 7.2 comes straight from previous Nokias with a minor tweak here or there. Side swipes let you switch between modes, and you can also tap on specific modes to go straight to them. The less important modes are tucked away behind a quad-square icon to reduce the clutter.

Up and down swipes in the viewfinder don't work for switching between front and rear cameras, that's only done with the toggle next to the shutter release. While using the rear camera you get the familiar tree designation for the main and ultra wide angle modules.

While in the Photo mode you'll get many toggles on the opposite side of the shutter key - flash, timer, single/dual/P-I-P (for combined front/rear shots) and motion picture, as well as Settings. There's yet another button next to the mode carousel and that's for the Beauty mode - it has a 0-10 range, but no specific options (like eye enlargement or face thinning or whatnot) like you'd find on some of the Chinese phones.

Pro mode is accessible via the mode selector or a swipe up from the shutter release button. It lets you pick one of five white balance presets (but no light temperature slider), focus manually, choose ISO (100-3200) and shutter speed (1/4000s-20s), or set exposure compensation (-3/3EV in full stop increments).

Photo viewfinder • Portrait mode • Extra modes • Pro mode

Daylight image quality

Daylight image quality out of the Nokia 7.2s main cam is a bit disappointing, considering what we've come to expect from similar (and similarly priced) hardware. Detail is decent, but there's a fair share of noise, which we've mostly gotten used to not seeing recently. Colors are off too and there's a noticeable green tint, particularly to the highlights. Dynamic range isn't great either, and that's one area where Quad Bayers should excel.

Daylight samples, main camera

Speaking of, a lot of the 48MP and 64MP phones out there can actually produce a lot more detailed full-res images in bright light and the right subjects than in their default quarter-res state. That's not the case with the Nokia 7.2, however, whose 48MP shots do look like upscaled 12MP ones.

Daylight samples, main camera, 48MP mode

The ultra wide angle cam comes with some of its own issues, starting off with a different color cast, magenta this time, though it did show some of the main cam's greenery in the third sample. It captures okay detail as far as these cams go, but does so with a particularly grainy rendition of noise, and there's a lot of it too. Top that with a severely limited dynamic range and you're only left to enjoy the perspective and the generally well corrected optics.

Daylight samples, ultra wide angle camera

Low-light image quality

After the unremarkable showing in good light, we didn't have very high hopes for the Nokia 7.2's low-light images. The thing is, they're not so bad - in the sense that they're not as disappointing when compared to rivals as the ones in good light. Detail is decently well preserved, where there's light to illuminate the subject and you're more likely to be okay with this much noise in your low-light shots, because, well, low-light shots are usually noisier.

The Nokia does a poor job of holding on to color, however, and suffers from major loss of saturation. Dynamic range is also mostly inadequate.

Low-light samples, main camera, Photo mode

Night mode helps a bit with the last two issues, bringing down highlights in point light sources, while also lifting the shadows slightly, as well as leaving some color overall. There's a detail penalty to be paid, however, and Night mode shots are noticeably softer.

Low-light samples, main camera, Night mode

Low-light shots out of the ultra wide cam are best viewed as thumbnails, as even at fit to screen magnifications noise is prevalent. Night mode deals with it by smearing it away together with any semblance of fine detail.

Low-light samples, ultra wide angle camera, Photo mode

Low-light samples, ultra wide angle camera, Night mode

Once you're done with the real world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Nokia 7.2 stacks up against the competition.

Nokia 7.2 against the Redmi Note 8 Pro and the Realme 5 Pro in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

Portraits on the Nokia 7.2 generally come out with good subject isolation, decently so even with fairly complex subjects. Perhaps you'll want to tone down the blur from the default 5/10 strength as it does come off as a bit excessive. The Nokia is also not too keen to bias the exposure towards getting your subject's mug right, so high-contrast/backlit scenes will be tricky.

Portrait samples, people

You can use the Portrait mode on non-humans too, to a varying degree of success.

Portrait samples, stuff

Selfies

The Nokia 7.2 has another Quad Bayer camera, this one on the front. The 20MP selfie cam outputs 5MP images by default, which is a bit low, though it's still plenty for general social media purposes. The photos have slightly muted colors and modest dynamic range, but after our experience with the main cameras, the selfies seem decent.

Selfie samples, 5MP

The 20MP mode does offer an increase in fine detail when there's good lighting, though it's less beneficial in dimmer conditions. (You may also notice these were taken at a different time, when we realized we had shot in 5MP only up until then.)

Selfie samples, 20MP

Portraits come out in 5MP regardless of the resolution setting for Photo mode. As with the rear cam portraits, these can benefit from toning down the effect a notch. Subject separation is similarly good, despite only having a single cam to work with. They do generally look a little darker than regular photos in the same scenes, despite listing similar numbers for the exposure parameters.

Selfie portraits

Video recording

The Nokia 7.2 records video up to 4K with its main cam and 1080p with the ultra wide. The limitation on the ultra wide is not explicitly stated in the resolution settings and you can have the ultra wide angle cam running, go to settings, check to see it shows 4K, and the video will still edn up 1080p. There are no 60fps modes on either camera in any resolution.

Stabilization is available in 1080p on both cameras, but not in 4K on the main one. There's no toggle to turn it off either.

The Nokia 7.2 is quite generous with the 1080p bit rate, treating FullHD videos to almost 20Mbps with 17Mbps more or less the norm. Meanwhile, 4K bit rate is a more standard 42Mbps. Audio is recorded in stereo at 256kbps in all modes.

4K footage contains a lot of detail, though it's also a little jaggy around straight lines, and it's also quite noisy. There's a bit of a cold greenish color cast, and dynamic range isn't great either.

1080p is, well, pretty bad. Dynamic range is even tighter, detail is mostly gone, and what's left of it is oversharpened, and colors are oversaturated.

Then there's the ultra wide angle cam's 1080p video which comes with a color cast of its own, magenta in this case. Even in the not so demanding realm of ultra wide video, the Nokia 7.2's is lagging behind, sadly.

If there are good words to be said at all about the phone's video capture, it's the stabilization that gets them, even though it only comes in 1080p. Then again, on the flipside it's the stabilization processing algorithms that are probably to blame for the unimpressive video quality, so you can't have it all. Anyway, the Nokia 7.2 will deliver nicely smooth and stable footage, with no wobble and trouble-free pans.

Here's a glimpse of how the Nokia 7.2 compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.

Nokia 7.2 against the Redmi Note 8 Pro and the Realme 5 Pro in our Video compare tool