Nokia 3

£TBC (€139) • nokia.com/uk

Nokia is back, and with it comes new Android phones that we expect could fly off the shelves when they’re launched later this year. HMD Global, a Finnish start-up, is using the Nokia brand to bring the three new phones to the market, as well as a reboot of the famous and much-loved Nokia 3310. Here, we take a closer look at the Nokia 3, the cheapest in the new smartphone range.

Price

The Nokia 3 is the cheapest phone available in the new Nokia Android range, with a price of €139 which we expect will work out at around £120.

That means we can place the Nokia 3 firmly in the budget smartphone category, so we’re looking forward to putting it through its paces when we get it back to the labs to find out whether it can take the top spot in our budget smartphone chart. That’s cheaper than the two most recent Moto G phones, the Moto G4 and G5, which used to dominate the budget smartphone charts (see page 124).

It’s set to become available to buy at some point in the second quarter of the year, which we think could mean some time in April, but we’ll be sure to update you when we find out more.

Design

The Nokia 3 has a 5in smoothly sculpted Gorilla Glass screen housed in a neat and compact polycarbonate body with a rounded aluminium frame that we think looks brilliantly premium considering its price tag.

We also actually prefer the 5in HD screen size to some of the bigger offerings in the flagship high-end category. It means you can fit the phone comfortably in the palm of your hand and most people will find they can use it onehanded without running into any problems when it comes to reaching the edges of the screen.

The Nokia 3 is available in Tempered Blue, Silver, Matte Black or Copper, and is 8.48mm thick. There is a slight camera bump, but we love how symmetrical the camera, flash and Nokia logo are on the rear of the device, continuing the deceivingly premium look and feel even in those smaller details.

Hardware

The 5in screen has a resolution of 1280x720 pixels like the Nokia 5. We found it to be bright and reasonably crisp, and wouldn’t expect more from a phone with a great price tag like this one.

Inside the Nokia 3 is the MediaTek MTK 6737 quad-core 1.3GHz processor paired with 2GB RAM, which is definitely a budget chipset so we wouldn’t expect anything particularly speedy from this handset. It’s going to run most apps without too much trouble so we expect this won’t be an issue for most anyone planning to use it for social media and casual games, but don’t expect to be able to play any power-hungry games or apps without running into some lag.

There’s 16GB built-in memory with support for up to 128GB more thanks to the microSD card slot.

Both of the Nokia 3’s cameras are 8Mp, which isn’t fantastic and was definitely noticeable

compared with the Nokia 5 and Nokia 6’s offerings (13Mp and 16Mp respectively). It’s good enough for the odd photo, but you won’t want to use this as your main camera on a holiday or for taking photos you intend to print and frame. The rear camera offers an LED flash, though, and both have autofocus.

The non-removable battery is 2650mAh, which should manage a day without charging but we’ll need to wait until we get it back to our labs to find out just how many hours you’ll get out of it.

Software

The Nokia 3 runs a delightfully simple ‘Pure’ Android 7.0 Nougat complete with Google Assistant and without any fancy trimmings to overcomplicate

things. There’s no bloatware and no overlay to worry about, and you’ll get software updates regularly. Fans of stock Android will certainly love the Nokia 3’s approach to software.

Verdict

We’re strangely excited about the Nokia 3 considering the fact that it’s budget and there’s nothing particularly innovative about it. It’s just a really good all-rounder with such a great price tag that it’s hard not to recommend to anyone not wanting to spend loads to get the best smartphone tech available. We think this is going to a hugely popular new handset and we wouldn’t be surprised if it knocks the Moto G out of the top spot in our budget smartphone chart. Ashleigh Macro

Specifications

• 7.5in (1280x720, 294ppi) touchscreen • Android 7.1 Nougat • 1.3GHz MediaTek MTK 6737 quad-core CPU • Mali-T720MP2 GPU • 2GB RAM • 16GB storage • MicroSD up to 256GB • 8Mp main camera, LED flash • 8Mp front camera • Bluetooth 4G LTE • GPS • NFC • Micro-USB • FM radio • 2650mAh non-removable battery • 143.4x71.4x8.48mm