A New Smartphone After Four Months

2023-05-12

At the end of December, I purchased a Nokia G21 TA-1418 to replace my Samsung Galaxy Note8.

The Samsung ran well for the most part and performed the tasks I needed, but my current job requires me to install certain MFA tools on my smartphone, and the Note8 was reaching end of support for some of those tools. Of course, the screen also had major burn-in and the battery barely lasted a day on standby, but those were relatively minor concerns for me. I chose the G21 as a replacement phone since it still offered SD-based expandable storage and a 3.5 mm TRS jack: increasingly rare features among US smartphones.

I immediately experienced problems with the G21. HMD boasted that the main camera had a 50-megapixel sensor, and while this is technically true, the image processing after the fact was terrible. Full-resolution pictures appeared to be composed of blurred blobs of color rather than sharply-defined objects, giving the entire picture the feel of an oil painting. The smartphone's OZO-enhanced audio capture system refused to work with my third-party camera app. Spec sheets reported that the G21 could capture 720p video at 60 frames per second, but I couldn't get the official camera app to do it. These are significant concerns for me, as I take many pictures and videos with my smartphones.

Build quality was also poor. The G21 is made with plastic, making the sides and back of the smartphone more durable than the glass slabs on an iPhone or Galaxy S. I was happy with this, as I strongly dislike using cases. A few days after I received the device, however, the rear plastic panel--which is only attached using adhesives-- began to peel off. Since the rear panel also contains a lip that reinforces the sides of the phone, the section that peeled away left its corresponding side of the phone more susceptible to damage from bumps and drops. Indeed, that edge is more banged up than any of the others. The screen protector became scratched up immediately, as did the camera bump on the back--though the lenses themselves did not scratch. The rear plastic is ridged, ostensibly to make holding the device easier, but the plastic is smooth enough that the G21 slipped right out of my hands unless I held it almost horizontally.

Some issues were my own fault. Because I don't like cases, I didn't use one with the Nokia. However, about three months in, it fell out of my car door one evening when I returned home. I managed to catch it on the top of my shoe before it hit the ground, but it then slid off my shoe, and the six-inch fall to the concrete was enough to crack the screen. An unfortunate slip out of my pocket onto a tile floor broke the glass even more, and now many pieces only stay in place because of the screen protector. Naturally, being an international phone, none of the local repair shops had replacement screens for the G21.

The worst problem of all was its poor connectivity. TA-1418 is the international version of the G21, primarily available in Hong Kong and India. A cross-check with T-Mobile's networks informed me that the smartphone would be mostly compatible with their US frequencies, but a few bands would be left out. Little did I know that the omitted bands are those primarily deployed in my region of the country. Most of the time, the G21 had extremely bad reception--calls would drop or become garbled, the person at the other end of the call wouldn't be able to hear me, and in many places calls wouldn't go through at all. The device would have trouble connecting to LTE bands and often revert back to EDGE, leaving with download speeds in the hundreds or even tens of kilobits per second. Further, the smartphone seems to have a software bug in its radio: if I lost connection to cellular data services, even if I entered an area where the signal was very strong, I would need to cycle airplane mode to connect again. These problems also made my cellular hotspot completely useless.

The connectivity problem was the dealbreaker for me. My job requires me to be on call on a regular rotation, and the reception problems with the G21 precluded me from being able to take work calls or connect my laptop to a portable hotspot. Thus, after much discussion with my wife, I decided to retire the phone last week, after using it for just over four months. The smartphone I replaced it with is the Nokia G400.

Interestingly, T-Mobile sells the G400 directly through their stores. The G400 is like a slightly larger and beefed-up version of the G21, with a little better performance, camera and features. It also still has that venerated SD storage and headphone jack. In some ways I feel like I haven't changed devices at all. And while I still hate them, I did get a case for the G400.

Time will tell if this new smartphone pans out better.

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[Last updated: 2024-10-06]