The Nokia X is the Finnish brand's big effort to make greater waves
into the low, low end of the smartphone market – and it's enlisted the
help of Android to make that happen.
The Nokia X is a phone that
comes with a fairly decent spec list for a phone that's coming in at €89
before tax (around £75, $120, AU$135) – we're talking a dual-core 1GHz
processor from Qualcomm, 512MB of RAM, a 4-inch WVGA screen and a
1500mAh battery. However, it's important not to compare to this to the likes of the Moto G,
as it's not meant for the more developed regions in terms of smartphone
use. This is for areas where Android devices are sold at a much lower
average price, but still can do the basic things that others can.
With that in mind, the Nokia X is probably a little better than
OK. The polycarbonate body is fairly chunky, but in the hand it
dovetails well with the smaller screen, as it would be hard to hold
something that small and thin. The
screen doesn't seem to suffer either – the contrast is strong, helped
by the smorgasbord of colour on offer from the live tiles.
There's
not a lot else on offer here in terms of ports or anything – the
mandatory headphone jack and camera (which is only a 3MP option with no
flash) are the only other items in a sea of matte plastic. But
this isn't meant to be a phone that's all about design – the Nokia X is
supposed to offer a differentiated user experience from the rest of the
identikit Android phones on the market. To
that end, I actually rather liked what Finland's top Microsoft
subsidiary is doing – there's a nice fusion of Android familiarity and
Windows Phone functionality.
The live tiles idea is really cool –
it's essentially just a clever way of doing Android widgets, but while
other launchers can make things look too complex, Nokia is doing things
its own way and making it all seem a lot cooler. For
instance, there's no 'Apps' key that shows all the little bits of
software you've downloaded – now it's all in one long list that just
endlessly scrolls. To that end, it can get a bit messy, so Nokia's
method of creating folders is needed and something that wasn't possible
on Windows Phone. It's
nothing special, and you can't just drag and drop to create a folder,
instead needing to tap an icon. But at least dragging the live tile
icons for each app will allow you to move the order around
automatically, and some, such as the gallery, will expand to show
pictures in your album. There's
even the chance to change the colour of some apps to match your theme –
although the fact you can't do this to all of them means this feature
is slightly negated.
You can also see more notifications on the
lock screen than you might on other Nokia phones - it's a little boring
in terms of design, but works well enough. The
other big change is Nokia's Fast Lane – it's an odd change from the
notifications bar, as it's essentially the same thing but one long
scrolling page that can be accessed by swiping right or left. It's
cool in some respects, as it allows you to dynamically control things
like the music player, and always keeps your most-used apps close at
hand. However, there is still the same pull-down bar as on other Android
handsets here, but it's only for changing settings. Come on Nokia, you don't have to change EVERYTHING.
Fast
Lane isn't the same as the multi-tasking menu you'll get on the likes
of most other Android phones - while long pressing the icon will shut it
down, the app apparently still runs.
However, Fone Arena
noted that the multi-tasking menu is still there, but you'll need to
install specific apps to get it to work - not hard, but its absence out
of the box may irk some.
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