Nokia announces a tempting trio of affordable Androids

(Image credit: Nokia)

published 27 February 2023

What do you think when you hear the name Nokia? For me it's a mix of toughness, reliability and Snake. The best phones today bear very little relation to the killer Nokias I loved in the 1990s, but the firm makes some very impressive and affordable Androids and its latest models are a great mix of performance, price and repairability.

There are three new phones, available this spring: The £149 Nokia G22, the £129 C32 and the £109.99 C22. All three run Android 13, and the G22 in particular has been made with repairability in mind.

Nokia's new affordable Androids last forever

Okay, maybe not forever. But with a claimed three days of battery life they all have serious stamina.

Nokia's not pretending that its sub-£200 smartphones are direct rivals for the best Android phones, but the specs are good for the money. The C32 has a 50MP camera with what Nokia says are "stellar imaging algorithms" and comes in a good-looking toughened glass finish; and the G22 is designed with easily and affordably replaceable parts including the display, charging port and battery – a replacement display will be £44.99 and a battery £22.99 – and the C22 brings back the fabled toughness of older Nokia feature phones.

According to Nokia the C22 massively outperforms rivals in drop tests. It has IP52 spans and dust protection, toughened 2.5D display glass, a rigid metal chassis and a strong polycarbonate unibody design. The camera here is 13MP but once again Nokia promises those stellar imaging algorithms. The only real downside here – something that's fairly common among budget Androids – is that the OS isn't the full-fat Android 13 but the simpler Android 13 Go edition.

As ever there are some nice colours to choose from with all three models. The G22 comes in Meteor Grey and Lagoon Blue; the C32 gets Charcoal, Autumn Green, and Beach Pink; and the C22 comes in Midnight Black and Sand.

The G22 goes on sale in March, with the other models promised "this spring".

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).