Nokia 3.4 Long Term Review – 3 Months Later
Okay… so it’s been about three months since I’ve had the Nokia 3.4. Yeah I held on to it and I’ve used it as a secondary device since my initial review, and… I have a few things to say about this device. Before starting this review. I tell you that, if you want to buy the one of the back laptop for gaming or any other work. Please check out this laptop. Let’s get started.
Hello guys, and welcome to another review. A long term review of the Nokia 3.4. It has been about three months using this device and the ride has been okay for the most part, but there have been a few bumps which I’m going to address as we proceed. Let’s start with the pros, that is the things I like about the Nokia 3.4 and why I can recommend it.
The first has to be its price. For about $150, that is 64,500 Nigerian Naira, you get so much value. A modern design with a textured finish that makes for really easy grip. Though I’ve mostly used it with the casing because I wanted to keep it as neat as possible. It packs 4 gigabytes of ram and 64 gigs in storage which is pretty standard at this price point. You can always use an sd card for more storage if you wish. Also having the Snapdragon 460 processor which I’d say has lived up to expectations. Compared to other devices at similar price point, I would say this has done well.
I recently compared the Nokia 3.4 to the just released Samsung Galaxy a12 which is priced a little higher and the Nokia 3.4 had the better processor and fared well in most areas. I’m going to have a link to that video in the description you can check that out. Still on its processing power, for the GPU it has the Adreno 610. In my period of use I have not done much gaming as I am not much of a mobile gamer, but occasionally when I have, it has fared quite well with no heating concerns or lags. However I’ll still say this is not a gaming device.
Another thing to like about the Nokia 3.4 has to be its design and form factor. In a period where smartphone sizes are going as high as 7 inches the Nokia 3.4 has what I would call a proper size, with about 6.4 inches display, though still not perfect for one-handed use but there are no concerns if you have small hands. Smartphone manufacturers recently started adopting TFT displays but the Nokia 3.4 maintains an IPS LCD display which is very good looking.
Media content is enjoyable with its left hole punch camera style. It is a 720p display with up to 400 nits of brightness which is bright enough. The software on the Nokia 3.4 is stock Android 10 and is upgradeable to Android 11 supposedly within the first quarter of this year. Nokia prides itself in providing software support up to two years which is good, but I have to mention, not as fast as I would’ve expected.
The Nokia 3.4 did not get November and December security updates until much later in January. In late December of 2020 there was a bug with the camera software which I believe also affected the Nokia 8.3. The app was always crashing when you try to take a picture or switch camera modes. This problem persisted for up to three weeks with no software update or permanent fix from Nokia. Yes, for about two to three weeks I could not use the device camera. Other users had this problem as well. For a brand that prides itself in its software prowess, one would’ve expected such a problem to be fixed swiftly, but that was not the case. It was eventually fixed with a software update thankfully. As of now we’re still on the December security update.
Fingers crossed if we’re actually going to see Android 11 in this first quarter. But with that said, how has been the software experience so far? Pretty good as you would expect from stock Android. Swift, no lags, no bloatware, no ads, smooth user experience. Stock Android is pretty naked so you might need to install a few applications for customization and other features. I use the Microsoft Launcher. I should also mention that with custom launchers there is no full gesture support so keep that in mind if you prefer gesture navigation.
On overall usability, that is hardware and software combined I’d say it has been pretty good. I had to disable the Google Assistant button because I was always mistaking it for the power button and I always triggered it accidentally. There are easier ways to summon the Google Assistant without a dedicated button. Another thing I had to disable was the fingerprint swipe gesture which brings down the notification panel. I found myself triggering it so often even at times where I was sure I didn’t touch it. Also, when playing a game and holding the device in landscape mode you might trigger it and cause obstructions, so I had to disable that. Nonetheless the fingerprint scanner is very responsive and is going to unlock the device swiftly 99 percent of the time.
One thing I could never get used to with Nokia 3.4 was its charging speed. It comes with a 10 watts charger which I must say takes too long to charge the device, at least three to four hours to charge from 0 to 100 even while powered off. Not one you can rely on if you want a quick boost as a 30 minutes charge would only get you about 12 percent of battery, but its 4000 mah battery does a good job of getting you through a full day of use so you may only need to charge at night. Still talking about charging speeds, I observed that it supports fast charging, it detects a fast charger when plugged in.
I tried this with a 15 watts fast charger and it charged significantly faster. I actually got it from 0 to 100 in just about two hours, but I’ll still recommend using the 10 watts charger that comes in the box because there is no telling the long-term effect of using a fast charger on the battery life or the charging port. The Nokia 3.4 has really good build quality and it’s a really compact device. I love how subtle the camera module is and how it sits nicely with the design with a very minimal bump.
Speaking of its cameras, its 13 megapixel triple rear cameras which includes a 5 megapixel ultra-wide camera does really decent job at taking pictures with good color reproduction and fairly good with dynamic range. Aside the period where I had to be without the cameras due to the bug I’d say it has fared pretty well. You be the judge, what do you think about these photos? Selfies are also good both portrait and regular selfies. It has a dedicated night mode but I’d say it’s just there and nothing really special. For video it can shoot 1080p full hd videos at 30 frames per second from both selfie and rear cameras.
I think it gets the job done pretty well. In summary, the Nokia 3.4 is a good device I can recommend, having used it for about 3 months. Reasonably priced, decent cameras, good design, good battery life, good overall user experience, aside its 10 watts charging speed of course, and two years Android upgrades guaranteed. Do you have the Nokia 3.4? How is your experience so far? Let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading this article. if you want to read more articles like this, please visit this website. And if you want to learn about Samsung Galaxy A12, check out this article.
