Good day to all Nokia fans and users, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you the Finn’s first ever Android Smartphone – the Nokia X. Did I mentioned its Android Smartphone, maybe I got it wrong or maybe not, but I guess I need to stretch a little bit and enlighten you as well.

INSIDE NOKIA X | NOKIA X CAMERA DETAILS | NOKIA X SPECS | NOKIA X ANTUTU | PERFORMANCE | NOKIA X WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY | NOKIA X HERE MAPS AND NAVIGATION | NOKIA X BATTERY LIFE | ASPHALT 8 VIA NOKIA X | SAMPLE VIDEO RECODRING VIA NOKIA X | NOKIA X PRICE

AN INTRODUCTION TO NOKIA X

Nokia X is obviously not an Android phone that you’ve been seen before. As a matter of fact, it is not made to compete with best Android Smartphones in the market. Nokia X comes with low hardware specs, but with enough entry-level performance in reasonable and budgeted price.

The Nokia X is built in an operating system called AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and based on Android version 4.1 (Jelly Bean), but if you try to compare it to Google Android devices, it’s totally different from inside and out. Actually from the first glance, it looks like an Asha 500 series, but once you opened it up, it does show its true color, the solid and simplicity of Windows Phone UI, inside the Android box.

So the question is, does the Nokia is now a Google Android Smartphone? The answer is No, because like any other Google Android Devices, it should have Google Services but instead Nokia’s and Microsoft’s services via Nokia X production. For those hoping to get a Google Services out of the Nokia X can be a faint-to-deal with, but never lose hope, because there is an open alternative for the needs: Nokia Store (instead of Google Play Store), Nokia Mail (instead of Gmail), Microsoft OneDrive (instead of Google Drive), Maps and Navigation (instead of Google Maps), and other Google services, that might have Nokia and Microsoft alternative services. Can I sync my Google contacts and calendars? Sadly to say but No, but there are other ways you can import and export contacts/calendars via 3^rd party software/apps, but that’s out of the discussion. Can I install Android apps just like a regular Google Android devices? You can download apps via Nokia Store or alternatively, there are tons of 3^rd party applications you can download and install Android apps, but do your own research and the risk is up to you.

NOKIA X – KEY FEATURES/SPECS BACK ON TOP

OS: Nokia X Software Platform 1.0 (based on AOSP – Android 4.1 Jelly Bean under the hood)
NETWORK: Quad-band GSM | EDGE | GPRS | Dual-SIM | Dual Standby | Duad-band 3G with HSPA
DISPLAY: 4.0 inches, WVGA, IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors CPU | CHIPSET | GPU: Dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A5 | Qualcomm MSM8225 Snapdragon S4 | Adreno 203
MEMORY: 4GB internal storage (1.29GB user accessible | 1.17GB phone storage) | Expandable via microSD card slot up to 32GB | 512MB of RAM
CAMERA: 3.1MP rear fixed focus camera, 2048 x 1536 pixels | Camera digital zoom: 4 x | Video Recording: 480p@30fps
CONNECTIVITY | MULTIMEDIA: 3.5mm audio jack headset, FM Radio, Bluetooth 3.0+HS, microUSB v2.0 port, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Loudspeakers, Music and Video Player, Gallery
SENSORS: Ambient light sensor, Accelerometer, Proximity sensor, Auto-rotation display
OTHER FEATURES: Nokia Glance Screen, Lockscreen, Nokia Maps and Navigation (can download maps for offline maps support), Fastlane, Solid build body, Double-tap to unlock
BATTERY: Model: BN-01 / Capacity: 1,500 Li-Ion mAh Removable Battery DIMENSIONS: 115.5 x 63 x 10.4 mm / WEIGHT: 128.7 g

NOKIA X – WYSIWYG

Nokia X Unit Box!

Manual, Information and Nokia Care

micro-USB Charger, 3.5mm Headset earphone with mic, and the 1,500 mAh Battery (No micro-USB data cable).

STRUCTURE BUILT

The form factor of Nokia X is a rectangular bar style with bezel just like the Nokia Asha 500 series. The body is all wrap-up with sturdy plastic with matte finish that keeps everything compact and say no more to visible fingerprints. With its simple and efficient form factor (from the height, width and thickness) making it easy to operate and nice to grip at the phone.

To remove or replace the battery, the body can be break into two in which the green plastic plate, covers the entire back of the inner body. The phone never felt bulky or heavy, in fact, the phone curvy structure helps you to hold the phone naturally. The unit comes with variety of colors: green, red, cyan, yellow, white and black. Structure Built Rating: 9/10

FRONT PART OF NOKIA X

Unveiling the 4-inch IPS LCD (WVGA – 800 x 480 display resolution) capacitive touch screen, with no glass protection, with low pixel-per-inch ratio (~233ppi), and can support Multitouch up to 2 fingers. The Nokia X is an entry-level and budgeted smartphone, so be wary of its compromises. The responsiveness while swiping it (from left to right | from up to down) is in well-efficient. It is also good enough for daily interactions such as web browsing, video viewing, and as well as reading document files.

From the upper part, you will have the earpiece and the ambient-light sensor that automatically adjust brightness and also the proximity sensor that turns the screen off during calls. Both sensors are almost impossible to see.

From bottom part, you will get the single navigation – back key below the screen, and the microphone were barely visible between the glass and plastic part.

SCREEN BRIGHTNESS TEST I tried to use the phone outside with mid-sunny day to test the screen brightness.

Low

Mid-High

High

Automatic

From here, you can actually have an idea whether you can use it or text while walking under the sun. Colors is suffice but not top notch, brightness could have been even better, but that’s good enough for a budgeted smartphone. Display Rating: 6/10

FROM THE SIDES

The top side: 3.5 mm audio jack connector Audio Rating via 3.5mm Headset connector: 7/10

The bottom side: Micro USB v2.0 port (data/charging)

The left side (nothing to see here)

The right side (Volume Keys up and down, Power button On/Off/Sleep/Wake) – all are solid build and comfortably to be press on.

THE BACK PART OF NOKIA X

Covered with sturdy plastic matte finish, it has 3.0-megapixel Fixed-focus rear camera with No LED Flash. You can pop-up the back plate then you will see the 1,500 mAh Li-Ion Battery, Dual-SIM (Micro SIM) slots and the Micro SD slot. For you to insert/remove the Micro SIM cards and SD card, you need to remove the battery from its compartment.

From below part of it, is the External Audio Speaker were the sound is perfectly loud and clear. Audio Rating via External Audio Speaker (Loudspeaker): 8/10

WHAT’S INSIDE THE NOKIA X (click the pics to enlarge)

USER INTERFACE BACK ON TOP

Just like I said, everything just looks like a Nokia Asha 500 series from inside and out of it. Windows Phone UI is the mainstream of the unit, although the OS is in AOSP, they call it Nokia X Software Platform v1.0, which is forked version of Android v4.1 – Jelly Bean. Anyways, having both latest Asha software platform and Windows Phone UI mixed up is a best gear to this smartphone.

Pull down the status bar to show notifications for missed events, toggles sound profiles, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and mobile data.

Messaging, Telephony and Phonebook of Nokia X are all well-efficient and neat in perspective. Nokia’s Keyboard works fair enough to type each keys at very last characters/symbols. To launch the keyboard settings, you must press and hold it down. Swype style is working great in the Nokia’s Keyboard, as you swipe within the keys. Gesture shortcuts and Handwriting are also implemented in Nokia’s Keyboard. No dictation feature present in Nokia’s Keyboard.

Phonebook/Contacts: Import and Export your contacts via vCards (.vfc files).

From the Lockscreen: it shows Notifications (from apps, messaging, calls, and calendar events). While at the Lockscreen, you can swipe it to the left to dismissed it or to the right to launch the relevant app/notification. You can also swipe it up to clear all the notifications.

From the Homescreen: Swiping it from left or right reveals the two homescreens: the Fastlane (recent activity, recent installed apps, recent taken pictures, opened apps, recent contact/calls, messages, emails, calendar events, music player, fm radio, and even social network apps shown here.) and App Drawer.

MANAGE FASTLANE: You can manage Fastlane (Settings – Fastlane – from there you can manage notifications/apps)

Your app drawer looks like a Windows Phone homescreen – all apps and settings shortcuts in just one swipe and tap away. You can even resize the tiles from smaller to bigger tiles, change the color of it and uninstall the certain app.

NOTE: Be sure to organize your apps or expect to have a long list of apps in your homescreen.

From the Glance Screen: it shows the time when you don’t use your phone for a while. You can change Glance Screen timeout at the Settings – Display. You can also double tap your screen wake it up.

ADD WIDGET: You can also add a widget which supported by the system, just take note that too many widgets can cause noticeably impact to the overall performance of the system.

ORGANIZERS, APPS, NOKIA STORE:

Calendar can access via month, day or week view. You can add events which quite easy but must have an exchange account in order to continue. Alarms are easy set and can do multiple alarms schedules. Calculator is available and working as it should be.

Astro File Manager is the pre-installed file organizer of Nokia and it works great. No document viewer pre-installed in the system, but you can install one and its free in Nokia Store such as the Kingsoft Office.

Nokia Store (instead of Google Play Store) is the system default for downloading apps for your Nokia X Platform. Almost all apps on Android can be found in Nokia Store which is fully compatible in the system. Except if you are hoarding for more, then alternatively, you can used 3^rd party apps (like Aptoide) which is present in Nokia Store.

Pre-installed social apps like Facebook and Twitter works fine and smooth. Gallery is the default album/picture viewer of Nokia X. Images can be zoom in/out, scrollable, share it via Bluetooth, slideshow, set as a wallpaper and can even edit the images. Gallery is also the default video player, which is capable to play videos in 3GP or MP4 file formats. You might as well adjust video quality that should produce decent video playback, otherwise you will end like crazy frame rates which is unbearable to watch.

The default music player of Nokia X is similar to Asha series, there are four categories that you can choose: songs, albums, playlists or artists. Choosing one of them will change the interface. Advanced settings such as equalizers can come in handy, to blend and mix your music tune. Controls are present such as play, pause, shuffle, repeat, next and previous track. Album Art is available and it will show on lockscreen when you’re about to unlock the smartphone. Even you close or exit the music player, it will continue to play until you pause it to stop. You can also directly access via Fastlane shortcut, or in the lockscreen with previous, play/pause and next controls. You can also set the music as your SIM1/SIM2 ringtone.

Stereo FM Radio with RDS comes with simplified interface plus a neat and decent controls. You can save your favorite stations (up to 4 stations), and scrollable stations too. FM radio will never close and it will keep playing even you exit the app, not unless you turn it off. A shortcut to the Fastlane or lockscreen will be present and able to access it.

DEFAULT LAUNCHER MAKEOVER!

Nokia X platform, just like any Google Android Devices, you can change your default launcher into 3^rd party home launcher. Launcher apps like Ape Launcher, Nova Launcher, Atom Launcher, etc… You can switch back to the default, just hold tap the back key then choose to complete the action. User Interface, Software, and Nokia Store Rating: 7/10

CAMERA IN DETAILS (click the pics to enlarge): BACK ON TOP

Don’t expect too much from its camera perfection, as it carries 3MP (or 3.1MP) rear camera with no LED flash. Having said that there is no LED flash, means it is only good for daylight photos and not entirely made for night shots. Unfortunately, there is no front camera on this unit, so you’ll be stuck at 3MP rear camera for your selfies or groupies.

The camera is able to capture images up to 2048 x 1536 resolutions, no autofocus, instead using Nokia’s focus lens or fixed focus camera with wider range to capture. The good thing about camera has advanced features/settings that you wouldn’t though on a 3MP rear camera, such as: White balance, exposure, ISO, noise reduction, face detection, saturation, anti-banding, contrast, sharpness, automatic exposure, save location, picture size, picture quality, colour effect, shutter sound, and panorama mode which a killer feature in the camera settings.

SAMPLE PHOTOS:

NOKIA X SAMPLE PHOTO VIA NIGHT SHOT

NOKIA X SAMPLE PHOTO VIA NIGHT WITH ZOOM SHOT

NOKIA X SAMPLE PHOTO VIA DAYLIGHT IN THE ROOM

NOKIA X SAMPLE PHOTO VIA DAYLIGHT – OUTSIDE SHOT

PANORAMA (2480 x 416 pixels)

As you can see in the sample photos, light condition can change the overall output of the picture. As you look closely how detailed the color in the outside shot compared in the indoor and night shot.

As for the photos produced by Nokia X, I can’t demand for more, due to limitation of the camera specs. For those sophisticated in camera details, having no autofocus, limited dynamic range, and not too much fine detail can be quite mediocre in their end. But nevertheless, having said this is an entry-level smartphone: fine colors, saturation, sharpness and contrast works well and in norm. Photo/Image Capture Rating: 8/10 as for entry-level smartphone (what I love is the jam-packed camera features/settings which you cannot even find in some entry-level smartphone).

VIDEO IN DETAILS: BACK ON TOP

The maximum video capture I can get out of the camera is FWVGA (864X480) (16:9) (1993 Kbps) @ 30.17 fps, which turns out to be good but again not in top notch. The colors, contrast, sharpness are good but low in details. Video Recording/Capture Rating: 7/10

NOKIA X SAMPLE VIDEO SHOT via Youtube

NOKIA X (ANTUTU BENCHMARK & PERFORMANCE IN DETAILS)
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Nokia X is powered by 1GHz Dual-core Cortex-A5 (Qualcomm MSM8225 Snapdragon S4), with a bundled of Adreno 203 GPU and a 512MB of RAM, that gearing and steering enough the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean via Windows Phone UI. Great work on Nokia as the system runs at its well-optimized condition and surprisingly smooth, but there were times little bitsy lag which happens when multiple applications is on.

Nokia X has 4GB internal storage (1.29GB user accessible | 1.17GB phone storage), suffice for apps/data storages. However, if you install apps like Asphalt 8 (which is more than 1.6GB of data), you need to have microSD card installed in the phone.

As I mentioned the Adreno 203 GPU, is the oldest or slowest GPU in the production of today’s smartphone industry. But this should be enough to handle the demands on some games offer in the Nokia Store. Unfortunately, it is hard to manage some benchmark tools in the Nokia Store, but luckily, I was able to load the Antutu Benchmark via 3^rd party app. This will be a good to feature to show you how good is the Nokia X via overall performances.

After I fired up the Antutu Benchmark, I got the final score about 7,698 in rating. As Nokia X comes last in the list, when cannot judge it by comparing it to mid-range to high-end smartphone. Nokia X is a better competitor for an entry-level smartphone and with an affordable price that you can get. Sure there are some bottlenecks in the way, but for the overall experience within the UI and performances, Nokia X is as solid, responsive and well-optimized entry-level smartphone in the market. Specs and performance: 7/10

If you’re still in doubt, perhaps this Nokia X Sample Gameplay Review – Asphalt 8 Airborne might give you an idea on how good the Nokia X is.

NOKIA X ASPHALT 8 AIRBORNE GAME REVIEW via Youtube
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NOKIA X – VIA WIRELESS CONNECTIVITY (Web, Data, and Stuff)
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The Nokia has Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Bluetooth and 3G connectivity to connect wirelessly from other devices and in the web. Nokia X supports GSM/EDGE Quad-band for Dual-SIM card slots, while Dual-band 3G network works on Primary SIM card slot. HSPA (HSDPA speeds up to 7.2 Mbps | HSUPA speeds up to 5.76 Mbps) supported.

Nokia X Browser is already installed by default, it’s quite fluid and fast to load the web pages that you ever wanted. That’s a best thing I’ve experience in an entry-level smartphone. Bluetooth version is 3.0, which can connect other devices for file transfer or even wireless handset. Connecting via Wi-Fi is easy as getting a candy in a baby, I haven’t experience anything that might pull out the plug thing. Well, except from blackouts or out of the Wi-Fi hotspot range. Speaking of Wi-Fi hotspot, you can turn Nokia X into Wi-FI hotspot that can connect up to 8 devices. 3G connectivity works great, and nothing to complain about it.

ABOUT HERE MAPS AND NAVIGATION: BACK ON TOP

Good thing to have Nokia HERE Maps, actually this a great app that you can use via Nokia X. By using GPS enabled, you can drive and received the navigation towards your destination. HERE Maps are downloadable and can be used offline, which is a best thing to owned Nokia X. Voice guided navigation languages is downloadable and must be available in your country/location.

The Drive Settings has 2D and 3D mode: Day/night view, Route settings, Speed limit warning, Navigation voice (downloadable), and Navigation country. The navigation voice and other settings can be used while GPS enabled. HERE Maps and Navigation Rating: 9/10 (Downloadable Here Maps ROCKS!!!)

NOKIA X BATTERY LIFE BACK ON TOP

Nokia X has a removable Li-Ion 1,500 mAh battery in which, Nokia claims that it will last up to 17 days with Dual SIM at bay. So I put it into a battery test and to find out the information. I test it to 99% battery juice, for the Standby time: 123 hours and 45 mins | Video Playback: 7 hours and 52 mins | Music Playback: 16 hours 16 mins | Internet Browsing via Wi-Fi: 6 hours and 54 mins and via Mobile: 3 hours and 30 mins | Talk Time: 2G – 8 hours and 54 mins / 3G – 5 hours and 5 mins.

Manual Battery Test:

Music Player (audio output via 3.5mm Ear Headset) – Screen is Off – Audio Volume at 70%: Battery capacity decrease by 31 percent within 3 hrs. and 30 mins. of music playback.

Wi-Fi internet connection (video streaming via Mobile YouTube, audio output via 3.5mm Ear Headset) – Screen is ON with 50 percent of brightness – Audio Volume at 80%: Battery capacity decrease by 17 percent within 30 mins. of Wi-Fi internet video streaming.

Take note that this is just a calculated / assumption battery test, it may differ in several situations and usages. The test revealed that the battery is enough for a half a day operation which is good considering that the battery life capacity is smaller. In the end, still depends on how you use your phone, if you’re a heavy phone user, that’s another story to tell. Battery Rating: 6/10

Wondering Nokia X Price?

The Nokia X SRP is Php 5,990 in the Nokia Kiosks and concept stores nationwide.

TO SUM UP:

Overall rate: 7/10 (Entry-level Smartphone)

(Disclosure: Nokia X, Microsoft, Android, Apps Info / Logo / Images / Pictures have a respective copyright. We used it for demonstration purpose only.)

If something in your mind to comment or suggest, please let us know. In our efforts to provide detailed information, there is possibility of inaccurate contents. If you see any mistake or incomplete in our information, please don’t hesitate to tell us. We will fix it immediately as soon as possible.

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Related Links / Articles / Entries / References / Sources:

Nokia’s first and affordable Android Smartphone – Nokia X
Nokia – Official Site