Want a pink phone but don't need the iPhone 15? Nokia's got you covered

You don't need to spend big on Apple's new iPhone to get a phone that's pretty in pink

Nokia G42 in Pink
(Image credit: HMD)
Carrie Marshall
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published
in News

The iPhone 15 is another technological triumph with great cameras, a fast processor and all kinds of impressive things inside it. But one of my favourite things about it is that it comes in pink. I'm the first to complain about pointless pinkification – you won't find me shopping for pink power drills or Barbie-hued consumer electronics. But I think like any brightly coloured phone, pink phones are fun frames for today's big-screened devices.

If you share my enthusiasm but don't want to spend big money on a phone, Nokia may have just the phone for you. The Nokia G42 in So Pink looks just as fun as the pink iPhone, but it costs a lot less.

Nokia G42 in So Pink: what you need to know

Let's start with the money. The G42 is £199, so it's a quarter of the price of the iPhone. Its battery is longer too, with up to three days between charges. It's running Android 13 on a Snapdragon 480+ 5G. And while it can't quite match the new iPhone cameras you're still getting a 50MP main shooter with f/1.8, a 2MP macro camera and a 2MP depth camera. The screen is an IPS LCD with 560 nits peak brightness and it's just over 6.5 inches, so it sits between the sizes of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.

I really rate the recent Nokias: while they're not quite as bomb-proof as my beloved Nokias of the late 1990s they look good, work well and deliver a lot of phone for not a lot of money. And they're repairable too, which is an important consideration if like me you're clumsy or buying a phone for your kids. According to the consumer experts at Which? you're looking at an average of £170 for a new iPhone screen; Nokia's one is £49. That's less than the excess on my phone insurance.

I'm not going to pretend that I'd buy this phone over the iPhone 15 Pro Max I'm going to order later today. But you could buy six Nokias for the same money. So if you're looking for an affordable Android that delivers a pretty good spec for a pretty good price, I'd definitely suggest you think pink.

Carrie Marshall
Carrie Marshall

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).

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