Speeding Up Nokia 3

Photo from gizchina.com

The Nokia 3 is powered by a Mediatek MT6737. It is certainly not a fast CPU but that's to be expected on a budget device.

Out of the box, the Nokia 3 handles itself well until you start installing and running more apps in its 2GB of RAM. However, based on my observations, the CPU also contributes to the bottleneck.

I installed TinyCore to check CPU usage during slowdowns. Indeed, the CPU hits full utilization during slowdowns. The RAM maintains its comfortable average of 1.7GB usage.

Here are some tips I tried that made my Nokia 3 snappier without rooting.

Microsoft Launcher

1.) Use lighter apps
I tried both Evie and Microsoft Launcher as replacement for the default Android launcher. These launchers were noticeably more responsive than the default launcher. I personally picked Microsoft Launcher because it displays more information without using widgets (see tip #2).

For internet browsing, I used Puffin browser. This browser offloads website rendering to its servers instead of rendering using the slow CPU of this phone.

2.) Disable widgets.
I also found that widgets causes significant lag when trying to show the homescreen regardless of what launcher you use. Consider disabling widgets to speed up your phone.

Puffin Browser