The new avatar of Nokia 3310 was first introduced in the Indian market. It received mixed reactions. The remaining two Android smartphones Nokia 5 and Nokia 6 have not been made available in the market yet. To be honest, it was the Nokia brand that grabbed the most headlines at the Mobile World Congress 2017. But there is a big difference between headlines and sales. Sales of these handsets will be high only when the customer feels that these are powerful phones.
HMD Global is marketing the Nokia 3 as a handset that has a great design and will give customers a pure Android experience with regular updates on a budget. The price of Nokia 3 has been kept such that it is directly competing with many popular handsets. However, the path for this is not easy. To carve out a niche in the Indian market through phones, HMD Global will have to beat handsets like Xiaomi Redmi 4, Moto G5 and Yu Yureka Black. It is also being said about Nokia 3 that this Android phone has all the important Android features. Is it enough? Let’s try to find out.
nokia 3 design
Nokia 3 has been introduced in a white colored retail box. It will remind you of Nokia days. Looking at the phone, you will also be reminded of the Lumia range of handsets running on the Windows Mobile platform. But the similarity is limited to design only, as Nokia 3 runs on Android. If you look at the smartphones priced below Rs 10,000 in the market, you will find that all these phones have metal unibody and their designs are also similar. Be it Yu Eureka Black or Xiaomi Redmi 4. In our view, Nokia 3 feels new in the budget segment. Nokia 3 is not a full-metal body phone. In this, polycarbonate has been used on the back part and due to the metal frame, the design comes out brighter. Nothing unique, but it doesn’t feel cheap.
The feel of this phone in hands is by far the best in this segment. During the review, we used this phone with one hand without any hassle. Due to the square design, the phone is easy to grip from all sides. We received a matte black unit of the Nokia 3 for review. It is also available in silver white color. The power and volume buttons are on the right side. But their color has also been kept black to match the body of the phone.
On the left side you will find separate slots for both SIM cards and microSD cards. This is a good thing, because in recent times companies have shown more confidence in hybrid slots. At the bottom you will find a charging port along with a speaker grill. At the same time, 3.5 mm audio jack has got a place at the top. If you look carefully, you will also be able to see the antenna bands on the top and bottom. The Nokia logo is on the front and back, just like older Nokia handsets.
Typing on the phone was easy. With a thickness of 8.48 mm, this phone is thinner than Redmi 4. But Xiaomi phones have a bigger battery. During the review, we found that the power and volume buttons are placed higher up than is convenient. While using it with one hand, we found that these buttons were not easy to reach. We also missed the fingerprint sensor which is common in handsets at this price point today. The capacitive buttons of this handset are not backlit. This means that you will have trouble finding them in the dark.
In the retail box of the Nokia 3, you will get the instruction manual, a charger, USB cable and a SIM ejector tool.
Specifications and software of Nokia 3
The Nokia 3 features a 5-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 720×1280 pixels. It has the protection of 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass. It has 2 GB RAM with 1.3 GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6737 chipset. The inbuilt storage is 16 GB and it will be possible to use a microSD card up to 128 GB if needed. There are 8 megapixel sensors on its front and back panels. The rear camera comes with F/2.0 aperture, autofocus and LED flash. On the other hand, the front camera also has autofocus and comes with an 84-degree field of view. The phone has a 2630 mAh battery. There is support for 4G and Voice over LTE. Connectivity features include USB-OTG, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.
Nokia 3 is one of the few smartphones in the budget segment that comes with Android Nougat. You will get the stock Android experience. You will get all the notifications in one app. It will be possible to reply to any message only through the notification pop-up. Through notification management, users will be able to disable or mute notifications of a particular app. It will be possible to switch between apps by double tapping the overview button. Apart from this, the Settings app will also come in a new avatar. It will also be possible to do split screen multitasking. Nokia 3 supports Android Assistant out of the box. This feature is not currently available in many phones in this price segment.
Apart from monthly security updates, HMD Global has also promised to provide Android O update to Nokia 3 when it becomes available.
Nokia 3 performance and camera
Nokia 3 plays its role very well in daily use. The phone does not heat up too much even after using GPS navigation and playing games for a long time. This was probably due to the polycarbonate back.
However, we found that the phone did slow down a bit during multitasking. There was a slight lag in switching from one app to another. Let us tell you that 12 apps were already open in the background. The phone handled common games easily. But it definitely slowed down with games with more powerful graphics like Need for Speed. The phone played many types of video and audio files easily.
A loudspeaker is suitable for small rooms. The voice comes clearly. The same can be said about the earphones provided in the retail box. Interestingly, the Nokia 3 is one of the few handsets that comes with bundled earphones.
The color reproduction and brightness of the Nokia 3’s 5-inch display is excellent. We enjoyed watching videos on the Nokia 3’s screen. We found it to be one of the best screens in the budget segment, especially in terms of sunlight legibility and viewing angles. But it is also worth noting that in Yu Eureka Black, which is cheaper than Nokia 3, you get a full-HD screen.
The Nokia 3 didn’t impress us much with its benchmark results. Xiaomi Redmi 4 (Review) and Yu Yureka Black (review) had given much better results in these tests.
The 8-megapixel rear camera works well in good lighting. Autofocus also works fast. Sample shots taken in good lighting had detail and a little noise at the edges. However, we also noticed that the blurry parts of the sample lacked detail. And there were complaints of excessive exposure in large areas. Many times the white balance in the pictures was also wrong. Nokia 3 also has HDR mode but it sometimes doesn’t switch in when needed. We feel that this feature can prove useful many times. Sadly, the photos didn’t turn out very well in low light. Autofocus locks slowly. And the sample shots we took lacked detail. There was also a lot of noise.
In Nokia 3 you will get the facility to record 1080 pixel video. And the quality is also fine. The front camera of the phone also disappointed. Despite having autofocus feature, the pictures were blurred many times. If you want, you can use Nokia 3 for video calls or selfies, but don’t expect too much in quality.
However, we liked the camera app. Its user interface is very easy to understand. More functions can be activated with a single tap. In Beautify mode the phone tries to improve the photo by applying some filters, but it is not always effective.
Nokia 3 battery life
With heavy use, the Nokia 3’s battery lasted for 16-18 hours. There is nothing surprising in this, especially considering the capacity of 2630 mAh. We used the phone for about a week and we can say that the phone gave good battery life only when not used too much. The battery lasted 10 hours and 25 minutes in our HD video loop test, which is decent for a phone of this size. You will not get fast charging support. It took about 2 hours to charge the phone’s battery from zero to 100 percent.
our decision
Nokia 3 sells for Rs 9,499 in India. It is a good looking handset and you will get VoLTE support along with 4G. Another good thing is that the company has promised Android updates in the future. Its performance and camera do not go in its favor in every department. We also missed a fingerprint sensor, which should be a common feature now.
In our view, the Nokia 3 is made for first-time smartphone users, if you are able to purchase it from a nearby store. At this price you also have the option of Xiaomi Redmi 4 and Yu Eureka Black. Both the handsets are better in terms of performance. Asus ZenFone Live also presents a strong challenge in this price range.