Nokia 3 Detailed Review – Everything you want to know before buying

Software and User Interface

Nokia 3 – Software and User Interface

With new entry into Android smartphone manufacturing HMD decided to go for plain stock software experience which they believe the user will like the most. Well, we believe too.

Nokia 3 runs stock Android 7.0 Nougat software straight out of the box with no alteration in user interface. However the very first look at the home screen tells that there is no icon for app launcher in the sticky row of apps on the bottom. Instead, a little caret provided right above that row of app icons that you can simply tap once or more pleasantly pull it up to open the app drawer. Similarly you can swipe the app drawer down to close it.

Lock screen, on the other hand, is also simple with the options to unlock with swipe or a short cut to swipe from a camera icon on the right-bottom corner which takes directly to the camera app. That camera shortcut on the lock screen actually by-passes any security and takes you to the camera app. However that only allows to take photos or record videos, as you can not go beyond the camera app in case if the security is in place.

Everything is pretty much same in experience like choosing app icons from the app drawer and placing them onto home screen or organizing them into folders. Adding, removing home screens and placing widgets in those home screens, etc. The recent apps view appears in vertical carousel of app snapshots which you can swipe away to close it. All apps can be closed with a single tap on “Clear All” which appears only if you swipe down the carousal.

To navigating from one home screen to other, just swiping right or left. At the most left, there stays the Google Home view (the native Google app) with the web search form. You can initiate Google Assistant anytime by tap and holding the home button on Nokia 3. When Google Assistant is enabled, the Google App brings much more information along on the home screen.

Again on the top, the stock task bar that you can pull out by swiping down. It’s the two way pull-down panel with a quick set of toggles and the notification below them. The second swipe-down on the panel will expand the quick toggles section to provide more options with more glance. The quick actions or toggles can be customized right from there by editing them and adding or removing them.

Interestingly this budget smartphone also features NFC and supports P2P sharing, Android Beam, NFC tag reading/writing, card emulation, and Android Pay.