Nokia 8 hopes to beat Apple and Samsung with ‘bothie’ – the new selfie

Nokia has launched the most important new handset in its attempts to revitalise the once world-beating brand for the modern smartphone era dominated by Samsung, Apple and China’s Huawei.

The Nokia 8 marks the culmination of efforts to bring the Finnish telecoms brand back to the mainstream handset market, which kicked off six months ago with the nostalgia-inducing remake of the classic Nokia 3310 feature phone.

The Android flagship smartphone, designed to compete with the likes of the iPhone 7 and Samsung’s Galaxy S8 , features a polished aluminium body, Carl Zeiss cameras, spatial audio pulled from Nokia’s high-end 360-degree camera and a high-resolution 5.3-inch screen.

Nokia handsets are being revived by HMD Global, a private equity-backed firm led by former employees of the Finnish company.

The company is pushing what it calls the “bothie” as the next evolution of the selfie, using Nokia’s Dual Sight technology to fire up both the rear and front-facing cameras at the same time, shooting video or photos of a subject and the smartphone operator simultaneously, which can be shared live directly to Facebook or YouTube.

“We know that fans are creating and sharing live content more than ever before, with millions of photos and videos shared every minute on social media,” said Juho Sarvikas, HMD chief product officer. “People are inspired by the content they consume and are looking for new ways to create their own.”

The 7.9 mm-thick smartphone has similar specifications to other top-end rivals, but lacks the super-slim bezel designs of the best devices from 2017, with large panels above and below the screen, which have been eliminated by rivals.

Nokia’s rekindled partnership with Zeiss has produced dual 13-megapixel cameras for the back of the phone. The new so-called computational photography technique is similar to that employed by Apple, Google, Huawei and LG in their latest smartphones.