Nokia 3.1 Plus

Nokia revises their philosophy on build quality and aesthetics with the new Nokia 3.1 Plus. Priced at Rs. 10,175, it comes as an update and feels takes up the fight to get the affordable all-rounder label for itself.

However, Nokia 3.1 Plus falls short on many fronts. It has a great appearance and an excellent battery, but that’s about it. It fails to keep up with the far better performance and camera quality of flagship rivals, turning out to be a below average phone with a solid build.

Nokia 3.1 Plus is on the bulkier side, coming at a weight of 180g and a thickness of 8.2mm. But its rounded corners make it comfortable to hold. The rear shell is made of aluminium which feels solid. It is grippy and does not attract fingerprint smudges. While Nokia 3.1 had contrasting metal accents, the Plus model has silver trims around the fingerprint sensor and the camera bump on the back, which make it stand out as a flagship design. The only flaw is that the metal and plastic used for the build do not meet seamlessly and feels rough, almost as if they have been kept unfinished. These areas attract dust quite easily.

One of the main attractions of Nokia 3.1 Plus is the 6-inch screen with an HD+ resolution of 720×1440 which, though seems less, provides excellent quality. It is bright but has average sunlight legibility for outdoor use. While the resolution can seem a bit low, it is adequate and the 18:9 screen gives enough screen space to delve into the phone. The colour accuracy is not very strong, since it has a Cyan tint to it, but it can be dealt with. As an affordable phone, watching videos and playing games on this screen is a marvellous experience.

Nokia 3.1 Plus is powered by the MediaTek Helio P22 octa-core processor which has an underwhelming performance. While it did get a benchmark score of 77,999 points in AnTuTu which is better than many phones coming at a similar price range, the real-time performance is not up to the mark. While it did run moderate-graphics games smoothly, loading times were slow, and heavy games stuttered and did not run properly. Opening a lot of tabs on Google Chrome can result in a slowdown as well.

The Nokia 3.1 Plus has a dual rear camera setup coming with a 13MP primary lens with f/2.0 aperture and a 5.0MP secondary lens with f/2.4 aperture. The camera app supports Live Bokeh and allows you to adjust the intensity of depth effect. There is also a manual mode for focus, exposure, and white balance. The details of the photos are decent but not very impressive. It suffers during landscape shots though macro shots appear fine. However, there can be a loss of natural textures. There is also a frustrating shutter lag, due to automatic HDR. While Bokeh effect is okay, it does not have accurate edge detection. Low-light photography suffers a lot, producing grainy images and having a poor definition.

The front-facing 8MP selfie camera has an f/2.2 aperture which is suitable for casual use, but nothing more. A neat feature is an amber flash which does not blow out facial features when selfies are clicked.

Video can be recorded at 1080p with both cameras but it is shaky, and there is a loss of focus.

Nokia 3.1 Plus offers a sizable battery of 3,500 mAh. As per the company, it can provide two-days worth of charge, and it delivers as much, making it one of the most robust internals of the phone. Casual use found that it only dropped to 60% by the end of the day. An HD video loop test found that it lasted for an immense 17 hours, 13 minutes. There’s also a Battery Saver mode which kicks in once the battery drops to 15%.

Nokia 3.1 Plus does not impress as a very competitive phone. While it looks great, it does not perform that well and comes with only one effective internal – its sizable battery. The performance of this phone is nowhere near the benchmarks registered by similar-priced models, and the camera is not the best either for the price. It is only recommended for those who are fans of Nokia phones. Otherwise, a much better all-rounder is the Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 which looks similar, has a higher resolution, but not as sizable a battery as Nokia 3.1 Plus’.