Nokia
Nokia has a new 5G smartphone making its way stateside soon.
Announced on Wednesday, the $300 Nokia G50 is the brand’s latest affordable 5G phone that Nokia is billing as future-proof. Apart from 5G, the midrange line comes with a 6.82-inch HD+ display, three rear cameras and a large battery compatible with fast-charging.
The launch of the G50 phone lineup marks Nokia’s expansion of its budget-friendly 5G portfolio. In April, Nokia’s exclusive brand license, HMD Global, unveiled even cheaper Nokia-branded lineups: The C and midrange G series, which come in between $100-$200, as well as the the Nokia X20. But affordable 5G is a hotly contested arena, and Nokia’s recent entrants will likely face stiff competition from Samsung’s wide-ranging smartphone offerings.
Nokia/Screenshot by CNET’s Sareena Dayaram
The Nokia G50 runs on the modest Snapdragon 480 processor, which is backed up by 4GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a microSD card slot. Nokia says the G50 will with Android 11 out of the box, and promises three years of monthly security up dates and two years of OS upgrades. It’s also worth nothing that G50 will run on T-Mobile’s slower but more reliable 5G Sub 6 network, but not Verizon’s ultra-fast but less reliable mmWave network.
US pre-orders started Wednesday on Nokia’s website.