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DDesigned to be able to remove the back and replace the battery in minutes, Nokia’s new G22 isn’t the first smartphone that can be repaired yourself, but the Android device is the first to be offered at a budget price.
The new phone, which costs less than £170, already has spare parts available from just £19. The repairable design is halfway between the truly modular £449 Fairphone 4 and the £849 iPhone 14, which has been designed to make professional repairs easier.
At first glance, the G22 looks like a normal smartphone, with no hint of repairability. But if you pry the back of the frame apart with a simple guitar-pick-like tool, you’ll see that everything is secured with tiny screws and tabs on the inside. Everything can be taken apart with a little care without needing to use thermal pads, knives, or alcohol, as you would with most other phones.
Finnish company HMD Global, which makes the phone, has teamed up with repair specialists iFixit to put together comprehensive, easy-to-follow guides and sell replacement parts for the G22. Hopefully, you’ll never need them, but if you do crack the screen or run out of battery, you can fix it yourself or access cheap professional repair options.
On the outside, the G22 has a simple design. The large 6.5-inch LCD on the front isn’t very sharp, but it has a 90Hz refresh rate, so scrolling and animations are fairly smooth. It was plenty bright indoors, but struggled a bit outdoors in bright sunlight. It’s covered in Gorilla Glass 3, which is a much older version of scratch-resistant glass than that available on high-end phones, but it does the job if you treat it with care.
The frame is plastic on the outside and fits snugly into the back, which is made from 100% recycled plastic. It feels much better in the hand than you’d expect for the price – a solid piece of kit.
Budget
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Screen: 6.5 inches, 90 Hz, HD+ (269 ppi)
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Processor: Unisoc T606
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RAM: 4GB
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Storage: 128GB + micro SD card
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Operating system: Android 12
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Camera: 50 MP, 2 MP depth, 2 MP macro, 8 MP front
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Connectivity: 4G, Wi-Fi 5, NFC, Bluetooth 5.0, 3.5mm headphones, FM radio, GNSS
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Water resistance: IP52 (rain)
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Dimensions: 165 x 76.2 x 8.5 mm
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Weight: 196 grams
Three-day battery life
The G22 has a low-performance chip made by Chinese firm Unisoc. It’s slow in all respects, but manages to be fairly snappy in general interactions: menus pop up quickly, the phone unlocks quickly, and the keyboard responds well.
You have to wait a second or two for heavier apps like Evernote to open and load content. Some sites on Chrome have trouble loading images as you scroll down the page, and you can forget about trying to play Fortnite or anything other than simple games.
What the G22 lacks in raw power it more than makes up for with long-lasting battery life. The phone lasted 72 hours in my tests, racking up over eight hours of active screen use, five hours on 4G and the rest on Wi-Fi.
Note that the G22 doesn’t support 5G and only has Wi-Fi 5, not the latest 6E. Overall, I found it to be pretty fast, but I did struggle to connect in areas with weaker signals where other Wi-Fi 6 devices had no trouble connecting.
Sustainability
HMD rates the battery to maintain at least 80% of its original capacity for a minimum of 800 full charge cycles. A replacement It costs from £22.99. Other parts They are also availableincluding the £18.99 charging port, £22.99 back cover and £44.99 display, while HMD and iFixit publish Do-it-yourself repair guides.
The back is made from 100% recycled plastic. The company publishes environmental reports and offers subscription, exchange and return of circular phones. recycling schemeseven for non-Nokia phones.
Android 12
The phone runs Android 12, which was released in 2021 and is a bit disappointing to see, having been replaced by Android 13 in the summer of 2022. Still, unlike what most smartphone makers use, Nokia’s version of Android is very similar to what Google offers out of the box without any major modifications. That makes it fast and clutter-free despite the low-power processor. But it also includes some unwanted pre-installed third-party apps, including Booking.com and ExpressVPN, all of which can be uninstalled.
HMD will offer two years of major Android version updates and three years of monthly security updates, which is competitive for the price but poor compared to the best on the market, which offer at least five years of software support.
Price
The Nokia G22 comes in blue or grey and costs £169.
For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy M13 costs £169, the Motorola G13 costs £149the Google Pixel 6a costs £399 and the Fairphone 4 costs £449.
Verdict
The Nokia G22 is a low-end Android smartphone that stands out from the rest in two ways: it has a long battery life (three days) and a more service-friendly design, allowing for do-it-yourself repairs.
You won’t need any special tools for heating or prying, as the back comes off without glue and the components can be unscrewed. You will need some more general tools and the screen repair is still a fairly laborious affair, but it can be done with enough patience after reading iFixit’s comprehensive guides. Battery replacement is much easier and you can get these components to do repairs at home, which is the first hurdle in any repair. Hopefully, this is the start of a positive trend.
Otherwise, the G22 is a pretty cheap phone. It’s fairly slow, the camera isn’t anything to write home about, it runs Android 12 (not the latest 13), and the 90Hz display is okay but far from great. It’s nice to see a microSD card slot for adding more memory and a headphone jack. But one of the big downsides is a short support lifespan of just three years.
No matter how many times you can repair your phone, once it no longer receives security updates, you should not use it.
Advantages: Self-repairable design, with guides and parts available, very long battery life, clean Android version, OK camera, microSD card slot, headphone jack, low cost.
Cons: slow, average screen, only rain resistant, only three years of software updates.
