Nokia 3 hands-on impressions

While all eyes are on the Nokia 3310, the Nokia 3 sits beside it waiting for the press to notice it. There’s not much the Nokia 3 can offer but with its 139-euro price tag (roughly Php7,400USD 126INR 10,690EUR 120CNY 918 at current forex rates), it’s actually the most affordable smartphone of the group that was announced here in MWC.

There’s not much to brag about — a mere quad-core Mediatek processor and 2GB of RAM powers the Nokia 3 but what it lacks in processing power it makes it up with a simple yet solid design.

The Nokia 3 has some striking similarities with a few Lumia phones back when Microsoft was making them. They look nice, feels good on the hands and has that very solid build.

The device has a polycarbonate body with a metallic frame and a full glass front panel protected by Gorilla Glass. It’s got 3 capacitive buttons at the bottom corner for the menu.

The back panel has that polycarbonate material in a matte finish. The 8-megapixel rear camera sits on top of the single LED flash.

There’s also another 8-megapixel front facing camera with f2.0 aperture and wide angle field of view that makes it good for taking selfies.

What’s nice about the Nokia 3 is that it’s already running Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box with the pure vanilla UI of Android. This means it’s going to be easier and faster to update the device to the latest version, something that the company promises to do.

The device seems snappy enough and responsive but we don’t think it can multi task much considering the amount of memory. Also don’t expect to be able to play heavy games on this device.

Nokia 3 specs:
5.0-inch HD IPS LCD display
2.5D sculpted Corning Gorilla Glass
Mediatek MT6737 1.3GHz quad-core
2GB RAM
16GB internal storage
expandable via microSD up to 128GB
single SIM and dual SIM variants
LTE Cat. 4
USB OTG
Bluetooth
WiFi 802.11 b/g/c
Gyroscope
NFC
8MP AF, 1.12um, f/2 rear camera with LED flash
8MP AF, 1.12um, f/2, 84 degrees wide-angle front camera
Android 7.0 Nougat
2,650mAh Li-Ion battery
143.4 x 71.4 x 8.4mm (dimensions)

HMD promises to release the entire Nokia line-up by 2nd quarter of 2017 with the Nokia 3 selling for around the Php8k price point. Available colors are Silver White, Matte Black, Tempered Blue, and Copper White.