Rumours usually come true but some actually surprise many as they are just not supposed to be true. The later fact actually happened when the Finnish phone manufacturer, Nokia announced its very first Nokia X family of devices powered by Google’s Android mobile OS during the Mobile World Congress – MWC 2014.
The reason behind not accepting such a rumour was none other than the relationship built up in recent years between the global software giant Microsoft and the world renowned Finnish phone makers Nokia. Most importantly the Nokia’s acquisition that was still in process of completion until now, can cause anyone to doubt. Why Microsoft would want Nokia to build an Android smartphone? Well there is no question anymore and you now have not only one but three Android devices, Nokia X, X+ and XL. However all are the entry-level and low-end devices.
Well in Pakistan, skipping the tablet Nokia Lumia 2520, Nokia Pakistan moved on to release the Nokia X to target the mass market which have ever been wanting Nokia to release Android phones. The Nokia X costs Rs. 13,800/- including taxes.
Why would Microsoft want Nokia to release devices with rival’s mobile OS onboard?
The question actually was valid until they answered it their selves as they wanted consumers who like Android phones to feel Windows Phone user interface/experience.
We are right here to see if they actually could achieve their goal with this statement. We’ve been playing with Nokia X for quite a few days and have enough to write down categorically taking from design, look and feel, the usability and most importantly the software inside.
Here we go with the first Android smartphone Nokia X from the Finnish phone makers.
We have already done the unboxing of the Nokia X in a separate blog post. Here we have a walk around with Nokia X taking you from the introduction and design elements of the device outfit through the inner performance and usability of the Nokia X platform.
Design, Display and The Look & Feel
If you ask about the handling, with the 4” display the Nokia X is very handy and comfortable in gripping, holding and moving around. It stays calm in your pockets and can be operated easily single handed. Borrowing mostly flat design from the later Nokia Asha range of devices with a single button down on the screen, Nokia X visually differs them with its bigger size that’s actually competitive within its class.
The IPS display on on the front is good with the touch performance but of course doesn’t seem to be as much responsive as you can find on some high-end Android devices. It’s not even comparable to the low-end Lumias (e.g. Lumia 520) out there. However with the competitors in its class of Android where the price factor matches with the most of of the hardware component, such as Samsung Galaxy Star Pro, Sony Xperia E1 Dual and Samsung Galaxy Fame, all serves with the TFT displays. With a little upped price the Nokia X is preferable from my side if you want some good display in your low budget smartphone, of course Nokia X will serve you better.
The 4” IPS LCD display on Nokia X serves only the WVGA resolution of 480 pixels horizontally and 800 pixels vertically. That ends up with a moderate pixels density of 233 PPI to support in web browsing and document reading.
Outdoor visibility is not that impressive as it’s much reflective but that’s not a surprising factor from a budget smartphone.
Taking a visual round around the Nokia X reveals only some standard control components and not more than what’s out of this world.
Physical Controls and components
Just on the edge upside the display screen the earpiece can be easily found and with a little force with your eyes you can see (but not easily) the proximity and ambient light sensors.
Just like the earpiece above, the microphone can be located below the screen right on the edge. Right there you can also see the big back arrow key that is capacitive and works for different functions on different places such as, back key, home key (when you tap it twice).
When seeing the top side of the Nokia X you can only spot a 3.5mm audio jack for headphones and on the bottom side of the device a micro USB port is provided.
Sidewise, there are power/lock/unlock key and the volume rocker keys for their very well known functions on most of the platforms. On the left side there is nothing to serve.
I can’t remember when last time Nokia didn’t place a dedicated camera shutter button physically on a phone, but on Nokia X you won’t be served with a dedicated camera key.
Coming to rear part of the device, you can see loudspeaker grille and very basic camera module with no flash to support low-light still photos or video.
And yes! the back cover is removable and the battery can be removed/replaced easily but a little push is needed and you need to grip the phone carefully to avoid any unexpected damage or drop away.
Dual micro SIM cards can be installed before putting the battery in. A micro SD card is also placed in between the SIM cards. You will need to remove the battery first and then you can remove/replace the SIM cards and memory card.
Nokia X Platform: The Software User Interface
Nokia X platform
is built on
Android 4.1
Jelly Bean
Nokia X platform is the name what Finish manufacturers have given to the user interface and services on the Nokia X series of devices including Nokia X, X+ and XL.
It’s, actually what you already have known is that, a forked version of Android OS built up on AOSP (Android Open Source Project) version 4.1 Jelly Bean. Simply, for being a fully forked version of Android, Nokia X platform will not give you access to the Google Services but instead will give you its own services from Nokia and from Microsoft such as Nokia HERE maps, Nokia Store, Bing services.
A short video was made to show up the usability of Nokia X user interface with its stock services. You may want to see as well a few bits of Google services icons in the video (that was possible after getting root access to the device which is not covered in this review)
YouTube
Vimeo
Visually there are quite good changes than you would have seen on any user interface running on Android OS which on Nokia X is mostly similar to what you have seen on Windows Phone with its tiles based icons.
Stand by and Lock Screen
On the sleep/standby screen, there is the glance screen feature, first added into MeeGO Nokia N9 and Symbian devices and later came to Windows Phone as Glance Screen, now added to Nokia’s Android devices. In addition to the power/unlock key to wake it up, “double tap” feature is also available on Nokia X (Settings > Display).
Lock screen serves with pretty much regular items including full screen wallpaper, date/time and notifications about calls and messages as well as notifications from the apps. Phone can be unlocked by sliding the screen either left or right side. Individual notifications can be destroyed by swiping to the left. To destroy them all at once you can swipe them upwards. However swiping a notification to the right side will unlock the phone as well as take you to the relevant app.
—–Lock Screen——–Notification to App——Unlock Screen—–
Home Screens – The App Launcher & FastLane
Unlocking the the screen brings the Windows Phone styled tile icons on front that is the first home screen (aka the app launcher). The other one is the Fastlane.
Swiping the lock screen on either left side or right side will take you to the app launcher (one of the two home screens) or the screen you locked the phone on.
The two home screens can be swiped on either side e.g. swiping left or right from App Launcher home screen will bring the Fastlane home screen and vice versa. Another way to go to home screens is very similar to what we have seen on Nokia N9’s MeeGo UI, that is “Swipe to Home” in Nokia X (Settings > Apps) that lets you to get away from any app running in front by swiping from the edge of the screen from right or left.
Customizing App Launcher
The App Launcher home screen is where you launch apps usually. The icons (kind of tiles) can be rearranged in groups apart by spacing or in folders. Long tapping on the icon will trigger the edit mode on the app launcher will be dimmed leaving the icon you tapped on with options to enlarge/reduce in size, change the background color of the icon on tile and an option to uninstall the app right away.
You can create a folder by tapping on the left folder icon enabled on the context options after once you are in edit mode. Second screen above is showing the “Stores” folder open with Nokia’s stock and third party app store apps placed in. There is to point something in Nokia X that these icons are not the live tiles as you have seen in Windows Phone but you can still resize them in small or large tiles.
The other context option in edit mode is to choose widgets and place them on the main App Launcher home screen. There is wide variety of stock widgets as well as apps you install may also bring their relevant widgets to use.
Note: Adding widgets to your App Launcher home screen may effect the performance due to hardware limitations.
Fastlane & Pull Down Status Bar
Fastlane is actually borrowed from the Nokia Asha platform that adds something different in Android UI than we have seen on others. The Fastlane gives you the backtrack of your activities while giving you access to that activity to review or open right from there. What’s included in the activities covers most of the things you do on the phone. It includes lastly opened apps, web pages you have visited, the calls activity with contacts, messages and emails, calendar events, recently installed apps, shared content, pictures you have taken recently , social network activities. In simple, anything you do on your phone will be added as a log into the Fastlane. Specifically opening an app from Fastlane will open the app right from the same state you left that app, even the text you had entered will be there.
Fastlane’s settings can be changed from the (Settings > Fastlane) where you turn on notifications, manage notifications, turn on/off the apps activities and social network notifications.
What’s left on the home screens is the pull-down status bar, which of course can be pulled down not only from the home screens but just like on other platforms or Android itself, it works anytime you perform the gesture. After everything about notifications has been put inside the Fastlane, the pull-down status bar doesn’t provide notifications but only a few shortcuts to the features like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,Mobile data and a silent switch. Else is the list of features that are currently turned on.
Calls, Messages and Contacts/People
Making calls and message conversations are the two major tasks a phone will do. But with how much feasibility and easiness? depends on the user interface of that phone. Nokia X allows to sync contacts with your email accounts e.g. on your Windows Live account.
In Nokia X, “People” is the phonebook where you can arrange your contacts in groups and make them favorite. A standard way of Android to scrub contacts with starting alphabet reference on the right scroll bar. Pictures of the contacts are also available from your accounts and can be set manually. Quick view of the contact information pops up by tapping on the image area while tapping on the contact entry takes you to the full information detail screen of the contact. Contacts can be searched by typing as well.
Contacts can be synced with your accounts on the phone from (Settings > Accounts)
Making calls on Nokia X is pretty straight forward. You can switch to the calls log and dialer from the interface as well as quick list of contacts is also present on the same interface from where you can select a contact call instantly. Unfortunately the smart dialing is not available on Nokia X just like even the Windows Phone still doesn’t have that feature on its 8.1 developer preview version.
The source SIM card can be chosen right from the top pull-down status bar before making a call or sending text messages. That chosen option remains your default source SIM for future calls or text messages however you can choose “Always ask” option in (Settings > Dual SIM) to make Nokia X ask you every time which SIM you want to use before making a call or sending an SMS – that option is not friendly for me at least. Setting a default active SIM for outgoing calls/messages is more than feasible as it appears all the time on your top status bar with high lighted SIM number as well as calls and text messages always indicate the SIM reference which was used for the call/text.
SIM card reference is always indicated with each call log entry (incoming/outgoing) and each message you send or receive.
Thread based conversations in text messages are just mostly same as in other platforms or user interfaces of Android. Tap and holding on the thread triggers the edit mode on the list where you can just delete a single thread or multiple threads. A conversions in the thread shows simple bubble interface with text message. You can add pictures and videos to the conversation to send in a multimedia message. Messages from/to both SIMs are shown in the same thread view with a SIM number indication to tell which SIM was used for the message.
The QWERTY keyboard performs well in accuracy but sometimes I felt lags between typing letters. I struggled a lot to switch it to landscape mode but while in Text Messages, I couldn’t. There is the option in “(Settings > Accessibility) or (Settings > Display) to rotate screen automatically which you can turn on. But apparently it works on only a select applications including web browsers. Messages app won’t rotate the screen and will work only in portrait mode as with the current software version of Nokia X platform v 11. 1.1
What else features on the keyboard is the Swype input, that you can slide your finger on the keyboard covering the letters your desired word contains.
Note: Third party apps (e.g. Ultimate Rotation Control) to rotate screen may work well on Nokia X too to forcibly rotate screens such as on the apps like “Messages” where you may want to type in landscape mode.
No Google Play Store, but Nokia’s own Store App
Nokia Store comes prebuilt into Nokia X devices rather than the Google Play Store as mentioned already that no Google services come with the Nokia X. While there are workarounds for bringing the Google services in, there are out-of-the-box options as you can install other third party app stores from within the Nokia Store or even from their respective websites namely Yandex, Mobango, SlideME, 1Mobile and Aptoide etc (we’ll review all of those stores in later post). But if you talk about the one comes with the Nokia X, the Nokia Store, then yes! it won’t give you as much variety of apps as available on Google Play Store. At last, you are not restricted to the only Nokia Store, you can move on with your own choice of a store app or multiples.
Other In App User Interfaces
Context Menus:
Context menus which are relevant to the app you have opened in front can be pulled up from the bottom. A handler becomes visible on the bottom if there is an option in the menu.
Back button is always provided on the top reference bar of the App interface but I did mostly use the hardware capacitive touch key on the screen bottom.
Remarks: Sliding, swiping, scrolling and animations etc. were smooth to be said as much better on this low-budget Android phone. But a slight delay in opening and getting back from apps was a little bad to impress.
GPS and Navigations
Although Nokia X comes prebuilt with Nokia’s HERE maps which are acclaimed worldwide for being free for life navigation with depth detail, in Pakistan it’s absolutely of no use. Since the days of Symbian, taking Nokia to Windows Phone and now into Android, the maps from Nokia has changed various names such as Ovi Maps, Nokia Maps and most recent is the HERE maps. Here they are in Pakistan as below.
Anyway, with Nokia there have never been possibility of availing GPS navigation in Pakistan. Google Maps is the good option as well as Waze provides Pakistani maps in good detail, so you can use that.
The Camera, Still Pictures
Camera in the Nokia X is not appreciable for what it does but in the price range you will get the minimum sized pictures out of Nokia X while the same class Android phones from other manufacturers mostly come with 5 MP autofocus. In Nokia X the camera is not even autofocus capable but a fixed focus. That is, you just point and shoot what you see with the camera. You just cant focus different subjects in the view field.
We have not tried side by side comparison of Nokia X’s camera samples with the others. Not even they are worth writing extensively about but following are some outdoor shots which are good enough to share on the web. Well now a days that’s most important thing for a smartphone to do rather than capturing excellent quality photos which are printable paper. In that sense, you will not feel bad about its camera when you take pictures outside with enough light. But technically there isn’t much fine detail; dynamic range is very limited. On positive side the colors are good and contrast is much better. Digital zoom is just that same as old and other phone cameras serve with cropping and enlarging pixels while loosing detail as worthless.
What it lacks with the camera is the flash. There is no flash with the camera which you would mostly want to use when taking pictures indoor specially the portraits. One the camera is not that much capable in lowlight, second there is no flash to support it in low light. Following is just what you will get in normally lit room with fluorescent tube lights.
Thanks to an other feature being existent in Nokia X that you can take 180 degree panorama shots of 2500×500 resolution.
In video recording, Nokia X can only record FWVGA videos (resolution of 864 x 480) at frame rate of 30fps. That’s it.
Power, Connectivity and Battery Performance
Officially, Nokia X relies on the 1500mAh battery which can keep the standby phone alive for 28 days with single SIM and for 17 days with dual SIM. With 2G, it can live for half a day and with 3G for even lesser than than half a day.
Well practically the regular use of the phone can not let us test it for 17 days putting it on standby mode. However during the normal use with calls, text, facebook, little bit camera and gallery and a little bit browsing (not extensive use), Nokia X could stand with my for up to a day but not more as I put it on charge every night before the battery drained fully. So for normal use I would say that it will be friend of yours all day.
Conclusion and Final Words
Deciding for Nokia X is actually difficult if you have used some high-end Android devices from other manufacturers but you can’t compare an entry level device to some high-end devices. Android fans had expected some good devices from the Finnish manufacturer but Nokia released only the entry level devices for their own purpose of serving their Windows Phone ideas. They served it well with Windows Phone tiles as icons on the Nokia X.
Nokia X seriously has no some extraordinary features in software interface or hardware. A dedicated multitasking option is not available on the Nokia X platform but the Fastlane is rather different than other Android devices which at some extent can serve as multitasking switcher but not fully. Where Google services aren’t available, Nokia is giving their own in replacement of course. But in Pakistan you will again feel missing GPS navigation with Nokia X out of the box as Nokia’s HERE Maps won’t work for the country. Google Maps and navigation services would have worked lot better in Pakistan – which is possible to get them all on Nokia X after some modifications and getting root access to the Nokia X’s system.
Making up with Dual Core processor, 512 MB of RAM can still limit access to the apps and games which require more memory on the board but it serves for its level and somewhat better with IPS display as the other line up of Android devices in this range of price comes with only TFT displays.
Nokia X gives good smoothness in animations and scrolling but it’s true that applications takes notably good amount of time to open up which is not impressive and of course not desirable from a device with its low RAM. Of course it can be managed with the relying base software but it’s also true that Android is good for high-end hardware. With 512MB of RAM Windows Phone 8 works absolutely differently we have seen.
Camera is also another factor you would want to consider. If you want some really appreciable photos out of your phone, then a fixed-focus 3 MP camera and that’s also without flash on Nokia X won’t give you your desired results.
Comparatively in the same price range, Nokia X should be preferable but if the price was around 10K, I would definitely not have any objections. But Rs. 13,800/- is even good if you compare it with other entry level Android devices.
We’ll appreciate your feedback, please let us know how did you find this review. You can ask about the features or anything related to the Nokia X, we may have missed to add above.
