Hands-on with Nuu’s £199 flagship smartphone

Hands-on with Nuu’s £199 G3 flagship smartphone

Not willing to part with the best part of a grand for another slab of glass and metal? There’s an army of budget smartphones out there – and the Nuu G3 is its newest recruit. Equipped with dual cameras and a build befitting a phone twice its price, at just £199/$199 it could be quite the steal. We went hands on with the G3 to find out how it holds up.

NUU G3 DESIGN: CLEAN & SIMPLE

The G3 has a clean and simple look, with curved edges that make it a snug fit in the hand. The 2.5D glass gives it a flashy glossiness that has more in common with the Samsung Galaxy S9, not the plasticky feel we’ve come to find with a lot of budget phones.

NUU G3 DESIGN: BOLD AT THE BACK

The real party is around the back, though: there’s a super shiny panel which catches the light – adding a touch of glamour, just like the Honor 9. You’ll also find the easy-to-reach fingerprint sensor there, right underneath the dual camera – but not so close you’ll be smudging the lens every time you unlock the phone. There’s a micro SD slot up top, in case the 64GB on-board storage won’t satisfy your media hoarding.

NUU G3 DESIGN: BIG SCREEN BEAUTY

The 5.7in LCD screen has one of those all-the-rage 18:9 aspect ratio panels, which makes for a fuller screen experience – even if the pixel count isn’t exactly huge. Playing a quick round of Temple Run 2, it was pretty impressive for a mere 720p resolution.

NUU G3 CAMERAS: TWO FOR YOU

A few years ago, we’d feel truly spoilt to get dual cameras on a sub-£200 phone. It’s hardly uncommon on mid-range handsets now, but even in 2018 it’s still a pleasant surprise. You get a 13MP and 5MP setup on the back of the G3, which adds a bokeh-blurring portrait mode. Dreamy out-of-focus backgrounds are assured, even if it’s a bit fiddly to use the on-screen slider, as you have to be really precise to get convincing results.

NUU G3 CAMERAS: GOOD FOR ‘GRAMMING

Are you going to get Google Pixel 2 or iPhone X quality photography out of it? Nah, not really – the pixel count might be decent, but this is still a budget phone. But do you really need print-quality snaps for your Instagram posts of your dog rolling around in the snow?

NUU G3 CAMERAS: SELFIE KING

Since the world’s experiencing a selfie epidemic, as if all mirrors have been banished, the G3 has another 13MP camera ready for your close-ups and closer-ups. There’s a beauty mode too – which actually makes your eyes sparkle a bit. No thank you. That front-facing camera has a more important job to do anyway – face recognition. Although we didn’t get to see that in action, so can’t say how responsive it is.

NUU G3 PERFORMANCE: MIDDLING

Underneath all the blue glass bling is a MediaTek octa-core CPU, which is fine for a sub-£200 handset but hardly likely to set any benchmark records – even if it is paired with 4GB of RAM to help out with multitasking.

NUU G3 PERFORMANCE: OLD ANDROID

It runs Android smoothly enough, but the G3 is still stuck on 7.1. There are plans for Nuu to upgrade to Android Oreo later this year, but there’s no set date so you could be waiting a while. On the plus side, you get NFC for Android Pay – something that’s still not guaranteed in a budget phone.

NUU G3 BATTERY: PROMISING

An ample 3,000mAh battery offers quick charge, allowing you to easily top up the phone before the day is out. With such a low screen resolution, we’d hope it could eke out enough juice to last until the next morning – but we’ll have to wait until a full review to find out.

NUU G3 INITIAL VERDICT: WORTH CONSIDERING

The Nuu G3 is a capable, decent phone for a fifth of the price of an iPhone X. It proves that face-recognition and dual cameras needn’t be reserved for only the kings and queens of the smartphone dynasty. Even with that attractive price, though, there are plenty more well-established names with equally bargain-priced handsets. Whether the G3 will stand out when it arrives remains to be seen – but if you like a bit of shiny, shiny.