As a concept, the Nokia X is something we’ve long been waiting for. It
was a crying shame that such an established brand like Nokia had their
hands tied when it came to choosing a winning OS for their smartphones.
It’s no secret that Windows Phone had been weighing the Finnish giant
down for quite sometime. While all those teething issues might be a
thing of the past soon with Windows Phone 8.1 and Universal Windows
apps, their budget segment has been completely chaotic.
For the longest time, Nokia has tried to keep their S40 OS alive with
constant refreshes in the sub-Rs 5,000 segment. After that, they tried
out Asha and when that didn’t work out, they launched their Asha touch
platform, which strangely had yet another store for apps. This severe
fragmentation in just one price segment was a little worrying. There was
a huge gap as well between the Asha series and Windows Phone devices
and the new X line-up aims to bridge that.
After a much needed price drop, does the Nokia X offer enough
substance to be recommended over better spec’d phones from XOLO and
Karbonn? Let’s find out.
Design and Build
The Nokia X resembles the Asha 501 a lot in terms of its design
language and aesthetics. The outer shell is more squared off rather than
rounded and to be honest, it feels a lot cheaper than its current
pricing. The build is solid though and you can toss the phone around
without any fear of damaging the screen.
The usual array of ports finds their way around the phone. The cover is
removable and can be swapped for other colours should you feel the need
to personalise it further. There’s only a single capacitive button on
the front for going back a step or the homescreen, if you long press it.
The 4-inch display upfront is generously big with a decent WVGA
resolution. The IPS panel however isn’t the most responsive when it
comes to touch and at times, behaves like a resistive screen. It’s also
prone to fingerprints which makes maintaining it a chore.
There’s no front facing camera but you do get a 3.1MP fixed-focus
rear camera sans LED flash. The battery is removable and under the hood,
you’ll find the two SIM slots and a miccroSD card slot.
The Nokia X is not going to blow you away with its design and would
probably be lost in the crowd were it not for the bright colours. It’s
built well like any other Nokia and the customisation options will sit
well with its target audience.
Features
The Nokia X is powered by the Nokia X Platform 1.0. This custom interface is designed on top of Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2,
similar to what Amazon did with the Kindle Fire HD. There aren’t any
Google Play services for obvious reasons but a quick search on the web
will teach you how to circumvent this. Yes, the Nokia X can be easily rooted and you can turn into a stock Android phone with most of the Google services working.
The Nokia X platform however is more of a mash up between the Asha
platform and Windows Phone (WP), at least cosmetically. There are just
two home screens like WP. The main screen lists out all the apps that
are currently installed in a tiled manner. You can even resize them,
move them around and change the colour. The tiles aren’t animated though
like WP and won’t show your unread messages. The second screen is
Nokia’s Fastlane, which we first saw in the Asha 501. This is similar to
the recent apps feature in Android except that it documents each and
every single action you perform, not just opened apps. Some of these are
actionable, in the sense you can jump into the messaging app directly
through Fastlane to reply to a message.
What about speed? Well, there’s a noticeable lag no matter what you
do with the phone but it’s tolerable to an extent. Simply browsing
through the store or Fastlane is manageable but the lag acts as constant
reminder that this is strictly a budget phone and you can only use that
many apps comfortably, even though most of them will install. The Nokia
X accepts APKs naturally and the Nokia Store has most of the popular
apps from the Play Store that are guaranteed to work on the X. In case
you don’t find it here, you can always refer to the One Mobile market
app (pre-installed) however, there’s no guarantee it will work the way
it’s supposed to.
The point is Android apps work out-of-the-box, which means there’s no
need wait for the developer to port the app over to Nokia’s platform
like before. Trouble is, the app experience leaves a lot to be desired.
The main culprit here is the specifications. Nokia could get away with
low specs on the Windows Phone platform but I’m afraid that doesn’t fly
well with Jelly Bean. The X is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon Play
SoC. The MSM8225 chipset packs in a dual-core Cortex-A5 CPU running at
1.2GHz and Adreno 203 graphics. You also get just 512MB of RAM to play
with so there’s little let for apps once the OS has its share.
The results speak for themselves. Certain games like Temple Run 2 do
run smoothly and basic apps like Facebook and Twitter work well. It’s
just that the loading times and interactions within the app tend to get
sluggish and laggy after a while. We’ve seen this issue with most
Android devices with low RAM and slow CPUs, which used to be pretty much
every droid under Rs 10,000. The low screen sensitivity only makes
things worse in case of the X.
Nokia has pre-loaded the X with a bunch of apps. You get BBM, WeChat,
Astro file manager, Opera and One Mobile Market. Being a hybrid of
Android and Microsoft, you also get to enjoy apps like HERE Maps and
MixRadio.
Media
The music and video player feature all the basic functions one would
typically expect. The music player features equaliser presets and
there’s a lock screen widget too. Weirdly, if you keep the music playing
in the background, there’s no way to get to it from Fastlane or the
notification bar. You get 4GB of onboard storage out of which 1.2GB is
available for apps while 1.17GB is available for other media. The loud
speaker is really loud for alerts, even at the minimum volume.
Video playback is limited to 480p due to system constraints.
Thankfully, videos look pretty good due to the IPS display. Colours are
warm and punchy and SD video playback is fairly smooth.
Connectivity
The Nokia X supports 3G along with quad-band GSM support. There’s
also Wi-Fi ‘n’, Bluetooth v3.0 and GPS. The Nokia keyboard seems to be
based on Swype. Gestures work very well thankfully as it’s a bit tricky
to type accurately due to the average screen sensitivity. The keyboard
works well with the stock messaging app but with apps like WhatsApp, it
gets very laggy. Call quality is good and we didn’t face any issues
here.
Camera
The 3.1MP fixed focus camera gives you options to tweak the contrast
and brightness. There’s even an option for noise reduction. Quality of
stills is below average due to the small sensor size and lack of
auto-focus. Besides still, you can have a video mode and panorama. The
camera is highly disappointing as we expected lot better.
Battery life
The 1500mAh battery manages to deliver healthy battery life. During
our weeks usage, we easily managed to get past a little more than a full
day’s worth of usage. In our battery tests, we clocked in 8-hours with
25 percent to spare.
Verdict and Price in India
With an updated price of Rs 7,729, the Nokia X is worth the extra
money if you’re coming from a Nokia Asha. It offers a lot more
functionality and the best part is there’s no need to wait in the hope
that your favourite app will ported over since Android APKs just work.
The Nokia’s X’s biggest competition right now is the Samsung Galaxy S
Duos 2 and the Sony Xperia E1 Dual. These two offer a similar feature
set and are also priced similarly.
While you can root the Nokia X and install Google Play services, we
don’t understand why one would go through all this trouble rather than
simply buying an Android phone. If you’re that dependant on Google apps
then the Nokia X is not for you. You’re better off with something from
Samsung and Sony or if you need a bit more power, you can also try out
the myriad of local brands.
We recommend the Nokia X if you’re adamant on the brand and were
considering the Asha series. Some of our biggest issues with the phone
is the almost unusable camera and the display, which has poor
sensitivity most of the time. If not, then we recommend you put in a bit
more money and buy the Lumia 525. The phone will be getting all the
goodies of Windows Phone 8.1 as well very soon. We wouldn’t recommend
the X if you’re looking for a good Android experience.