Nokia 6 (2018) is official and it’s a speedy upgrade

The original Nokia 6 has a premium design for the money, and it looks like the newly announced Nokia 6 (2018) will retain that, while upgrading the specs.

The main change is the use of the mid-range octa-core Snapdragon 630 chipset, up from the fairly low-end Snapdragon 430 used in the previous model. 

Performance should get an additional boost from the 4GB of RAM that comes as standard (where the original came with either 3GB or 4GB).

The design has also been tweaked, with the fingerprint scanner moving to the back, navigation buttons being moved on-screen and the dimensions changing, as the Nokia 6 (2018) comes in at 148.8 x 75.8 x 8.25mm (or 8.6mm where the camera juts out). That makes it smaller but slightly thicker than the 154 x 75.8 x 7.9mm original Nokia 6.

Moving the fingerprint scanner to the back likely means that the bottom bezel of the new phone is also slightly smaller, but the metal-heavy design is otherwise similar, and so are the rest of the specs.

Image 1 of 2

2018's phone has 2017's specs

Both phones have a 5.5-inch 1080 x 1920 screen, a 3,000mAh battery, a 16MP rear camera, an 8MP front-facing one, 32GB or 64GB of storage, a microSD card slot and currently run Android Nougat. The only other minor changes to the Nokia 6 (2018) are its use of USB Type-C for charging and an upgrade to Bluetooth 5 from Bluetooth 4.1.

So if you already own the old model this probably isn’t worth upgrading to, but it sounds like the few changes that there are will be for the better.

If you like the sound of it though you might have a wait as it’s currently only official for China. However, there’s a good chance that the Nokia 6 (2018) will get a wider launch later in the year.

If and when it does arrive the current price is 1,499 yuan (around $230/£170/AU$295) for the 32GB version and 1,699 yuan (roughly $260/£195/AU$335) for the 64GB one, making it potentially slightly cheaper than the $229/£200/AU$399 original Nokia 6.

So it could be a real bargain, though the actual price may well be a bit higher, as it’s unlikely to be a direct conversion.

• The Nokia 9 could also be on the way

Via Nokia and GSMArena