Update season is upon us Nokia fans with the Nokia 8.3 5G leading the way for Android 11 (finally!). In this video, I wanted to talk about the new and improved features compared to Android 10 (on the Nokia 5.4), as well as my experience after almost a month of use. You can check out the video showing the differences below:
Improvements
- New animations for the notification bar and the app drawer
- Notifications are more clearly separated (conversations, silent, etc.) with better answering functions
- Notification history in case you slipped an important one (must be enabled from settings)
- Chat bubbles
- Quick access buttons now 2 lines vs 3
- Music player controls stay on top
- New icons for settings menu + darker night mode for settings
- Bigger windows in multitasking view + new animation (boring)
- Screen capture option in multitasking view
- Screenshots prompt action to share immediately
- New screen for long press on lock screen to turn off phone, restart and emergency. Also includes Google Pay and Smart Home functions
- Native screen recorder
- Privacy permissions have been reset automatically and you can now only grant one-time access
Questions
- More stability issues than before
- The phone app takes a few seconds to recognize the contact’s name when receiving a call
- Apps crash when phone is in power saving mode
- The call screen sometimes gets stuck on a blank page
Conclusion
While the new features are useful and add missing features that are much needed to the original Android experience, they are minimal in the grand scheme of things, as has been the case with the many past… Uh… some new updates Android. On the Nokia 8.3, the update introduced a number of new bugs which I expect to be fixed soon, so the overall impression is a bit mixed. Each new update usually takes a few weeks to fix, and once that’s fixed, it’s a decent update. It won’t turn your Android into a MeeGo device, but it does make things a little better as part of the Evolution Wheel.