Nokia will soon become Microsoft's, but that hasn't stopped the Finnish phone maker from taking a dip in the Android pool. Nokia first showed off its Android phones late last month at the Mobile World Congress and the first of the phones have arrived in India in a matter of weeks. While the cheapest of all - Nokia X - is available in India starting today at Rs 8,599, the other two phones - Nokia X+ and XL, will hit the store sheleves in India in the next 60 days.
I experienced the Nokia X at its India launch event in Delhi and here's what I thought of Nokia's maiden venture into Android.
Before the device made its way to my hands, it had already faced a drop test. A Nokia executive, during the presentation, not only dropped it on the dais but also, banged it thrice against the podium to demonstrate its build quality. The 4-inch smartphone with a matte polycarbonate removable back cover survived the tests - with no dents or breakage.
The phone is not thin but that does not add to its weight. It weighs quite like other 4-inch phones available in the market. There are three slots hidden underneath its back cover - two dual SIM slots and one microSD card slot that supports up to 32GB of card. It comes with an internal memory of 4GB.
The Nokia X runs a forked variant of Android. Unlike other Android phones from OEMs including Samsung, Sony, Micromax and LG, the Nokia X does not let you access Google's suite of services, including its Play Store and apps such as Gmail and Maps. Nokia has taken the open-source elements of Android and has merged them with elements of Windows Phone and Asha to offer users a new experience.
The unavailability of the Google Play Store on the Nokia X doesn't mean that Nokia X users can't install Android apps. There are three ways to access apps on the Nokia X. First is to have access to the key apps that come pre-loaded on the phone, including BBM, Vine, Twitter and Facebook. The second way to download apps is to go to the Nokia Store. And the third way is to access third-party app stores including 1Mobile Market, SlideME Market, Aptoide Appstore, which have a wide variety of apps that are available for Android phones. If an app is not available on the Nokia Store, users will be routed to third-party app stores.
Unlike the three capacitive buttons on a Windows Phone smartphone, the Nokia X has a single capacitive button for navigation - whether you want to go to the homescreen or go back to the previous screen. My assumption was that the single-button approach could confuse, but that isn't the case. There is only one screen - which is actually a home for all the apps intalled on the phone. Swiping to the left or right from the homescreen will take you to Fastlane, a feature that Nokia had first showcased on the Asha 501 last year. Simply put, Fastlane is a stream of notifications and recent activity. It shows notifications from all the apps installed on the phone, however, you can personalise and uncheck the apps you don't want notifications from in Fastlane. This is a feature that I think Nokia should also bring to its Lumia range of devices.
The phone has a Windows Phone-like tiled homescreen, wherein you can change the size of the tiles - large or small. You can also create your folders on the homescreen and keep related apps in one folder by simply dragging them to the relevant folder.
The Nokia X comes with a 3 megapixel fixed focus camera which captures impressive images even in soft and low-light conditions. The pictures captured may not be detailed but are worth sharing on social networks. The phone has a quality display which produces decent colours and offers good viewing angles. The touch responsiveness is also great.
Powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor along with 512MB RAM, the phone stuttered twice during the 15 minutes I used it. While more on its performance can be said once I get to use it for a longer duration.
Available in green, red, cyan, black and white, the phone has a quality speaker that produces loud and clear sound.
