HMD, the company behind Nokia, announced its first multi-band 5G smartphone for the US. Not only that, the $699 Nokia 8 V 5G UW, coming to Verizon November 16, is Nokia's first phone available through a US carrier in six years.

For the most part, the Nokia 8 V 5G UW looks like your standard flagship, made of glass and aluminum. It has a 6.81-inch FHD+ display with a hole at the top for the 24MP front-facing camera, and a thick bezel at the bottom. It comes in a glossy finish called Meteor Grey. 

The phone packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G chipset along with with 6GB of RAM. Storage comes in at 64GB, though you can add an additional 1TB with a microSD card. While the specs seem pretty predictable for the price, Nokia hopes the phone's camera will help it stand out among the competition: It sports a rear camera module with a 64MP quad-pixel lens and a 12MP ultra-wide lens, as well as a 2MP depth sensor and a 2MP macro sensor.

Like most Nokia phones, all the lenses on the 8V 5G UW are tuned by Zeiss. It also features Zeiss Cinema, a camera app with advanced editing features. 

The Nokia 8 V 5G UW ships with Android 10, but HMD says an Android 11 upgrade is forthcoming. And while the 8 V isn't an Android One device, HMD promises it won't come with any preinstalled apps and that it will receive two Android upgrades and 18 months of security updates.

As mentioned, this is the first Nokia phone to be sold through a major US carrier in six years. Originally intended to launch with the James Bond No Time to Die film (which has since been postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), Nokia is planning an aggressive marketing campaign in the US that will continue into next year when the phone is prominently displayed in the film. 

We'll be getting a Nokia 8 V 5G UW in for testing, so check back soon for a full review.