The Nokia G10 comes in blue or purple, and there’s not much difference between the two. Our test unit was purple, but in many lights it looked blue. With a height, width, and depth of 6.5 by 3.0 by 0.4 inches and a weight of 6.4 ounces, it’s the right size to hold in one hand for a long commute. The backplate and chassis of the phone are made of plastic. The back of the phone has a textured, matte finish that doesn’t show fingerprints and makes it easy to hold. The plastic has a thin feel to it. A round camera module is in the middle of the top of the backplate. The back of the phone has a big Nokia logo in the middle.
The top edge has a headphone jack, and the bottom edge has a USB-C charging port and the speaker grille. On the left side, there is a button for Google Assistant and a slot for two SIM cards or a microSD card. On the right side is a volume rocker and a power button that also has a fingerprint reader built in. The hybrid fingerprint sensor is slow, but it works well.
The front of the phone is mostly made up of a 6.5-inch LCD screen with a teardrop-shaped cutout for the camera. Only the bottom edge has a small Nokia logo. The rest of the bezels are very small. Even though the resolution is only 1,600 by 720 pixels (269ppi), the display is clear. As with all of the Nokia phones we’ve looked at, the colours tend to be cool, and the screen isn’t bright enough to use in direct sunlight.
A Nokia representative told us that the phone can handle water and has a stronger glass screen. There is a screen protector on the phone and a jelly case in the box, but neither will do much to keep the screen from cracking if you drop the phone face-down on the pavement. But the plastic body should be able to handle small drops without getting too damaged.
The Nokia G10’s best feature is that it comes with stock Android 11 right out of the box. It comes with two years of major Android OS updates and three years of security patch updates, which is a lot for a cheap smartphone since not many OEMs make that kind of promise.
Fast charging is built into the Nokia G10. In terms of cameras, the Nokia G10 has a 13-megapixel main camera, a 2-megapixel camera, and another 2-megapixel camera on the back. Autofocus is built into the back camera. It has a single front-facing camera with an 8-megapixel sensor for taking selfies.