A few days ago, HMD Global rolled out Android 9 Pie update to the Nokia 7 Plus, making it the first device under its product portfolio to get the latest iteration of Android. It’s not a small feat to roll out a major Android update to one of your smartphones within less than 45 days of time since Google rolled out to the Pixel phones, and HMD has achieved that, thanks to the Developer Preview programme. With Android 9 Pie update, the Nokia 7 Plus is a different device altogether- in terms of performance. I have used the Nokia 7 Plus when it launched back in India in April 2018 with Android 8.1 Oreo, since then, the phone received various stability updates every month. But the Android 9 Pie update is possibly the much-needed update for the Nokia 7 Plus because it made the phone stable and removed all the quirks which existed in the past.

Nokia 7 Plus With Android 9 Pie: What’s New?

The Nokia 7 Plus is an Android One device, meaning it runs stock Android. Actually, stock Android allowed HMD to rollout the update this faster. That said, all the features which were introduced by Google with Android 9 Pie are present on the Nokia 7 Plus. The update brings along new user notification centre, redesigned Settings app, all-new gesture navigation system, and more importantly, several features inside the new OS works on AI.

Google has added Adaptive Battery and Brightness features to Android 9 Pie which works on Artificial Intelligence, meaning they’ll learn your smartphone usage habits and tweaks the settings accordingly.

Gesture navigation on Nokia 7 Plus doesn’t come enabled by default, but you can enable it by heading it over Settings>System> Gestures> Swipe up on Home Screen (Enable it) as it comes disabled by default. To give a brief about gesture navigation on Android 9 Pie, it removes the recent apps shortcut from the navigation bar, and you’ve to rely entirely on the home button. To get into the recent apps screen, you’ve to swipe up from the home button; Swiping twice from the home button will take you to the app drawer as it’s the only way to access app drawer on your Android 9 Pie running smartphone.

Other features such as App Actions, background restriction for apps, notification management and so on are present on the Nokia 7 Plus.

Nokia 7 Plus With Android 9 Pie: How is Experience?

I have been using the Nokia 7 Plus since the day it received Android 9 Pie stable update, and it’s worth noting the update changed the device entirely, in a good way. Earlier, when the device was running Android 8.1 Oreo, it had severe performance issues- even though the phone had the decent mid-range hardware. Now, the issues faded away. One issue which I faced very often was the stutters while switching between apps, which is not present on Android 9 Pie.

Other features such as App Actions, Adaptive Battery & Brightness are working as expected. Speaking about the battery life, it’s as good as previous- over five hours of screen-on time is a piece of cake. Gaming performance is alright- slightly better than earlier as PUBG is running without any issues like on Android 8.1 Ore. Dual 4G is working alright too.

Overall, the Nokia 7 Plus got a new life with Android 9 Pie and the special credit here goes to HMD Global.