By Akshay Arora
“An Android phone from Nokia may well have been the best smart phone the world never got to see”. In an article in October’s edition of a weekly magazine, Rajiv Makhani, The Tech Guru, wrote this while explaining ‘The Trojan horse theory’ that was doing heated rounds when a shocker came from Nokia’s bulletin that it has sold Its mobile phone business to Microsoft for $7 billion. That was a dirt price for a brand which was once a household name in mobile phones across the globe.
What ‘Trojan horse theory’ was is the matter of the past. Now that Nokia has finally listened to brand loyal like me and released these armoured Guinea pigs In the smartphones market, its relevance and impact remains the hot talk of the tech town these days, even silencing the noise of the launch most premium offering of its sworn rival – Samsung’s Galaxy S5, which fails to give the needed escape velocity to Galaxy users to move onto next ring of galaxy’s ladder.
Nokia X is a small family as of now, the result of experiments with the most popular mobile OS Android comprising of X, X+ and XL smartphones. But these products are nothing like regular Android devices which most of us are accustomed to. It is based on highly tweaked version of Android Jelly Bean, which Nokia names as Nokia X software platform. Nokia claims that around 80 percent of all Android apps will work well on the devices running on Nokia X software platform for the rest, developers are slogging their asses hard. It’s a bit perplexing amalgamation of Android, Windows 8 OS for mobile devices and Nokia’s own Asha mobile OS. Looks of the software are highly inspired by Asha, resizing of tiles is sweet feature of Windows 8 adapted here and the heart of the Nokia X software is Android. Since only Nokia’s first instalment of X is available here in India, let’s keep ourselves going with the discussion of Nokia X as of now.
Nokia X is a dual SIM phone with 4 inch LCD display sporting half a GB of ram running on a dual core 1 gigahertz cortex A5 processor which delivers almost same processing capabilities as of Lumia 520 -a huge hit by Nokia that came last year around same time under budget smartphones and give a run-for-their-money to the competitors like Samsung. The other features are just standard like 3G, Wi-Fi 1500 MAh battery which promises a full day of use in a single charge.
On the upper side, this phone, in a brick form factor, feels sturdy and edgy while in hand and also gives a soft grip for easy hold. This 4” device also ensures that you’re able to use it with just a single hand. Even though it runs on Android, a notorious OS that is famous among its users for hanging the phones more often than its rivals, this device shows the mettle of the brand by rarely hanging up even after throwing multiple processes on its processor and if ever it does, it recovers smoothly and quickly. With 233 ppi, the display is simply lovable –deep, rich and crisp. And colour offerings – green, blue and stark red apart from old school black and white are vibrant and impressive. And above all, the trust of Nokia and quality of its product has no questions about it.
Among all the features which are fairly decent considering its price point and the brand offering this product, only 2 features are there which can make you revise your decision to own it – camera and multitasking. At 3.15 MP (without flash) this phone disappoints you beyond measures as in this price range, you can get a 5 MP or more shooter which can click stunning images. This device is a big no no especially if you are a Gen Y person preferring clicking images of notes or like rather than writing them. It lacks clarity when zoomed and is way behind other devices that you can get today at this price range. In terms of multitasking, Nokia has put real efforts to come up with an out-the-box feature but it’s yet a half a mile away from giving same productivity as conventional task manager in Android phones deliver.
All-in-all, it is a safe bet if you’ve got a budget of around Rs.8000 (or $150 if you’re in US) and want a smartphone with durability and reliability and also you’re cool with giving a shot to ‘The new guy in town’. But if you’re not in a hurry, wait for the next instalment of X family – XL as they’ll surely cover the drawbacks of this new entrant. Or not? Comment below and share what’s your X-view!!!
