I have been a fan of Nokia’s hardware, be it their sturdy design or camera quality and since the time I heard about Symbian OS being the ‘sinking ship’, I wanted Nokia to flex their muscles with Android rather than Windows Phone. Years later, Nokia has finally delivered a ‘relatively’ Android based handset, the Nokia X.
Let’s take a look at how Nokia has taken aboard Android and what it means for the users in this Nokia X review, their first android powered smartphone.
Design Language
Rather than playing around much with the design aspect of Nokia X, they have gone with tried and test looks matching that of Nokia Asha 5xx series. The same block design with matte finish on sidelines and at the back with a single touch (navigation) button at the front bottom. The volume rockers and power (screen on/off) button are located on the right side whereas down below you’ll find a micro USB port (syncing port) and a 3.5 mm audio jack at the top.
Weighing at 131 grams (including battery) and dimensions of 63.13 x 115.65 x 10.90 mm, the phone in no way is sleek, however it does feel sturdy and has great overall build quality.
Performance
The alphabet ‘X’ in the name doesn’t meant Nokia X has any X-factor attached to it. And therefore, I will come straight to the point. The device houses a 4″ inch IPS display with 800 x 480 pixels resolution. It runs on MSM8625 Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core processor clocked at 1 GHz with Adreno 203 GPU chipset along-with 512 MB RAM. In terms of specifications, considering the steaming competition all around especially from local players (Karbonn, Micromax, et al), Nokia should have gone with at-least 768 MB RAM if not 1 GB. An android device with meager 512 MB RAM really limits as to what you can do with your phone. This being said, an average user who is looking for a sturdy device rather than one that runs all types of application, Nokia X can be a good deal.
Being always-on-online sort of person, I had difficulties running my regular suite of applications including WhatsApp, Viber, YahooMessenger, Chrome, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, PowerAmp. Since most of these applications run in background, the device did struggle to switch between them most of the time. Also, I did miss the other google apps like Gmail, etc which were either dependent on Google Play Services or required Play Store to be available on device. Of course I was able to install the apk but not everyone is willing to take that route to make his/her apps to work.
Regarding the gaming and entertainment aspect, music playback was not a problem, the default player as well as PowerAmp (couldn’t verify its license though) worked without any problem; Video play too wasn’t an issue apart from jitters in playing a full HD video. Gaming too was relatively good considering what your taste is, I prefer less complex games like Flappy Birds, Angry Birds, etc and those behaved well.
Storage
Nokia X offers a very limited internal storage of just 4 GB out of which roughly 1.30 GB is allocated for apps and 1.20 GB as the phone storage (available to user). The good part is that there’s a slot for adding external storage. This essentially means that you will not be constrained by limited internal storage, you will have external storage at your disposal for installing applications, storing media. Plus there’s always this option of using cloud storage 😉
Camera
Nokia X comes with a primary camera capable of capturing images of 3 MP quality. There’s no accompanying LED flash so you might as well should forget about using it in low light conditions. It is also capable of recording videos with maximum resolution of 864 x 480 pixels. Under normal lightning conditions, Nokia X does manage to capture average quality photographs.
Battery
Nokia X comes with a 1500 mAh battery. This is another part of Nokia X, I truly appreciate. A fully charged phone with pre-installed applications and couple of my own apps delivers approximately 12 hours of usage. A more judicious use of battery will render some additional battery time to user.
Nokia + Android = Awesomeness?!
In one word. No. Why, you may ask. The first point being it doesn’t feel like a android device. I am not sure what Nokia is trying to accomplish with Nokia X. They are trying to capture android users with a device that barely resembles an android device !?! Nokia X runs on the Nokia X platform version 10.0.3 which is based on Android 4.1.2. The user interface look almost like the front end of Windows Phone.
Second point, absence of Google Play Services. No Gmail, Google Keep, Hangouts, Chrome, Drive, Play Store. Any android user is most probably using majority of these services if not all. With Nokia X you are asking them to ditch these services and instead go for an alternative (Microsoft that is). Yes there is a app store called Nokia store but it’s not Google Play Store. Period.
Regardless of what has been said and done. What Nokia has indeed accomplished with Nokia X is that it has given Nokia fanatics who have been longing for Android, a taste of what Nokia can do with Android. Nokia X has respectable specifications for the price it comes at and offers hardware sturdiness Nokia is known for. A more lenient approach towards integration of Google Play Services would done wonders!
Nokia X is available online for price tag of Rs. 8,500 approximately. For those who are looking for better deals can skim through websites like OLX Free Classifieds or eBay. You might as well get a stellar deal 🙂
Nokia X In Pictures
