The phone features a 13MP rear camera with an AF f/2.0 aperture lens (8MP front), a 5.2-inch HD+ display, MediaTek MT6750N chipset, a 2990mAh battery, up to 3GB RAM/32GB storage, a minimalist, plastic‑back design with decent build quality, and various color options.
Although nowhere near the top echelon of smartphones, the 8-year-old is still decent enough, albeit as a budget option with a camera app that can be slow to respond, unreliable focus, and no image stabilization. The camera does work well, though, for casual daylight photography, and as I have used it often, for golden hour shots.
As a norm, the 3.1 is the only device I carry on my weekend grocery trips, or my other early morning errands, and if you get them right, the images are of very decent quality, often with high saturation and warmer color tones, which adds to the warmth of golden hour shots like these.
As reviewed and experienced, the camera does struggle more often than not with its AF feature, and in low-light, performance can be poor with noisy and soft images.
Overall, though, as and when it was launched in 2018, the 3.1 was generally well-received for its high-quality construction, which features a metal frame and a polished and well-crafted design with a 5.2-inch 18:9 display that is of good quality, and for providing a clean software interface, minimal bloatware, and the promise of timely security and Android OS updates.
Much as I have enjoyed and relished the camera function of the 3.1 for quite a while now, hanging on to it for a while longer means that I will also be staying put with an non-updateable OS, a failing battery, and a couple of other woes, which makes it all sounds that a whole system upgrade is inevitably on the horizon.
