Review: Nokia XR20

I'll admit it. I was ready to rag on HMD Global's newest Nokia phone before I even took it out of the box. It costs $550, yet it uses a processor you'll find in phones as cheap as $240. And unlike on the similarly priced Google Pixel 5A or Samsung Galaxy A52 5G, you don't get an OLED display for those wonderfully inky blacks. What gives?

It turns out that fixating on those individual flaws takes away from what's actually a pretty great Android smartphone. HMD has packed in other perks like a headphone jack, expandable storage, customizable buttons, and wireless charging at a respectable price. It also channels that classic Nokia “brick” philosophy: It looks like a smartphone, but this thing is tough. If you tend to drop your phone, but you hate using cases that add bulk, then look no further.  

Photograph: Nokia

The XR20 is a rugged phone, but it doesn't look like most rugged phones. Don't get me wrong; the XR20 is still heavy, thick, and big. I wouldn't call it pretty. But it's much more svelte than the usual rugged designs, which are often thick and needlessly ugly. 

It has a grippy polymer composite back welded to an aluminum core. (The edges are aluminum too.) It feels tough. The front screen is protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass Victus, the strongest glass you'll find on any Android phone, and it's IP68 water- and dust-resistant, so it'll survive being submerged in up to 1 meter of water for 30 minutes. 

On paper, this is some impressive protection for the money. But just because the XR20 is using Gorilla Glass Victus doesn't mean this screen won't shatter. Pricier flagship phones also use the same material and crack when dropped. Thankfully, the lack of glass on the back of the phone means there's one less area you need to worry about. 

It's not too often a manufacturer advertises dropping a phone. But on the XR20's product page, HMD says you can “drop it, get it wet, and even record your kid’s football game in the roughest weather.” So I dropped it. Three times, to be exact, on a sidewalk, from around 6 feet up. The screen … drum roll … didn't crack. There are a few minor scuffs on the polymer casing, but the display is pristine. Obviously, this is no guarantee it'll withstand your first drop, but the results are promising. 

Other uncommon features include a spot to attach a lanyard on the bottom of the phone, in case you want to hang the XR20 from your wrist or neck, and dual SIM support (it's a hybrid SIM tray, so the MicroSD slot doubles as a secondary SIM slot). Along with the power and volume buttons, there are two additional ones on the left and top edges. The first activates Google Assistant, but the second is configurable. 

I set it to turn on the flashlight with a single press, and to launch an app with a long press. I've noticed that I use the flashlight more at night now that it's much faster to access, and I routinely use the Google Assistant button to turn on my living room air conditioner before I get home. 

All of this is made better with the inclusion of almost every smartphone feature you'd want. Headphone jack? Check. Expandable storage? Yep. There's also NFC so you can use it to make contactless payments at the grocery store. But my favorite? Wireless charging! It's pretty rare to see on a mid-range phone; the TCL 20 Pro 5G is one of the few others with this feature. I have wireless chargers all over my house, so I'll take plopping down a phone on a stand over fussing with a cable any day.    

HMD promises three Android OS upgrades and four years of monthly security updates. That's the best software support you'll find on any Android phone—on par with Google and Samsung—though I should note that the company is slow to issue updates. The software experience is fairly clean and slick. There are a few preloaded apps, like Amazon and ExpressVPN, but you can uninstall them. 

Photograph: Nokia

My biggest worry was performance, but it's actually pretty good. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G chip and 6 gigs of RAM allowed me to run all my favorite apps with no trouble. 

Even games like Dead Cells run just fine. Sure, there are some choppy animations here and there, and a slowdown now and then, but none of it was noticeably detrimental to my everyday experience. Benchmarks put the phone a little behind the new Google Pixel 5A, but not dramatically so.

I would've liked to see an OLED screen, which would've been less demanding on the battery, with darker blacks, nicer contrast, and vibrant colors. But the 6.67-inch LCD panel is bright, colorful, and sharp. It's perfectly fine, and it still has an always-on display. 

Speaking of the battery, there's a 4,630-mAh cell here, and it lasts a little more than a full day with average use. I usually had around 30 percent left by midnight. On busier days, when I was out and about, extensively using the XR20's GPS and camera, I had to plug it in by 10 pm. It's not as great as the nearly two-day battery life on the Pixel 5A, but it does the job.

That leaves the camera system, which is surprisingly decent. The shutter is a little slow, but the results from the main 48-megapixel sensor are detailed during the day, and decently bright at night if you use the dedicated Night mode (and you really do need to use it as soon as the sun is on the horizon). That said, the Pixel 5A easily wins out with better colors, and it's consistently brighter and sharper in low light. 

The XR20 also has a 13-megapixel ultrawide for some added versatility, but it's only useful when there's lots of light—Night mode isn't supported on it. And the hole-punch selfie camera could be better. You need to stay very still for a blur-free shot when taking selfies indoors. Annoyingly, the camera itself has a bit of a visible shadow around it on the display, which is distracting and doesn't feel refined.

There are some issues that might make this phone a nonstarter for you. It doesn't work on Verizon, and due to weird rules on AT&T's part, you won't be able to access 5G on its network, just LTE. There's sub-6 5G here, which is the slower kind, so it's not like you'll notice a big difference over LTE most of the time anyway. 

The rest are minor quirks. The power button, which doubles as the fingerprint sensor, barely feels like a button. You press it once to turn it on and twice to launch the camera, but the XR20 almost always thought I was pressing it twice when I just wanted to turn the darn screen on. The single speaker, which is on the bottom edge of the phone, is too easy to block in landscape mode. At least it gets pretty loud. 

If those quibbles aren't a big deal for you, and you like everything else I've said about the XR20, you'll be thrilled to hear that it has a two-year warranty, a rarity in the US. (In Europe, you get a free screen replacement if it breaks, but apparently we can't have nice things.) 

Could it stand to be a little cheaper? Yep, but it's worth noting that HMD usually has discounts during big sale events, so you should wait to pick one up. The XR20 is built to withstand abuse, has long-term software support, and stands out from a competitive field. That's pretty darn good!