The Nokia X has an interesting platform on which it is being run. The base of the OS is the Android Open Source project, sans the Google Apps and Services. Nokia has labeled this mix the Nokia X, and has marked this release as release 1.0. Nokia has used the AOSP of Jelly Bean 4.1.2, and this can be seen as a tactical error, since the latest release of the 4.4 Kit Kat makes this OS seem a lifetime old. Nokia has got the basic and most common apps preloaded on the device, which include BBM, Opera Browser, Fruit Ninja, and Real Football 2014 among others. The same app set is also present in the device reset package, so in case you have to reset the device, do not distress if you will get the apps back or not.
A point of concern for many users will be that, since the Google services and applications are not present on the device, there is no Google Play store, nor the Google data, calendar or contacts sync available. This means that while the device may be nice for first time users, it may cause headaches instead for the more advanced users. There are multiple options for the store as well, like the Nokia store which is built-in, as well as the 1mobile market or the Yandex app store, and the interesting part in the app store implementation done by Nokia is that there is no requirement of logging into any account before being able to use the app stores. As per Nokia, it is very simple for developers to make an Android app workable for Nokia OS X – in fact, as per Nokia, there is only a few lines of code to be added – interesting and positive for app developers. There is the added attraction that Nokia Store supports in-app purchases and carrier billing.
The device also seems to be lacking a bit in terms of smooth flow, however, the OS is never slow, and able to juggle multiple apps simultaneously. However, the absence of a Home button hampers the usage of many, since there are apps that do not detect the swipe-to-close feature of Nokia, and thus require the Back button being hit multiple times to return to the Home screen. The long press of the Back button though, takes the users to the Home screen. The Nokia X OS display has been redesigned by Nokia into a tile based display, so that the similarity with the Asha and Lumia displays. For many Android users, this can be a bit irritating, and the usage of an Android launcher makes the device seem more accustomed to, as well as adding up a bit of speed too we hope if Nokia is following this path, the least they could do is improve their launcher.
Nokia has also tried to bring the Live Tile styled display to the Nokia X OS, though only the Gallery app tile seems to be updated on a regular basis. The phone, email and sms apps simply display the missed calls, emails and messages that are unread. Any apps that are installed appear at the bottom, and can be reorganized similar to the organizing done in Windows phones. One thing that we noted was that the first time the device loaded, it took a while for the tile display – the load time eventually improved to a very smooth operation – a bit of patience is required initially. Still, we feel the Nokia Lumia 520, featuring similar hardware specs with Windows Phone, is the faster of the two. There are widget addition options too, to add widgets to the home screen – however, rather than increase the functionality and view, they end up messing the display, so we ended up removing all widgets.
The swipe based gestures are also in place, including the “Fastlane”, which can be viewed by swiping the screen to the left or right. The Fastlane displays notifications arranged in a timely manner, something similar to the notification area. Customization can be done as to notification from which apps are to be displayed in the Fastlane. Inside the Fastlane, in case additional options are required, a swipe up can be done from the bottom to bring them out. Also, clicking on notifications does not open the app directly – the users have to navigate to the app themselves. The pull down menu on the normal screens, which has the options to toggle Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and others is still present, but the notifications are not present on this screen. We would have thought Nokia could have merged the Fastlane and this menu to produce a more consistent usability.
On the lockscreen, the generic notifications are present, and pressing any notification and swiping to the right opens the app, while the left swipe dismisses the notifications. The standard Windows Phone ability with some apps to manage the lockscreen background is present here too, like the MixRadio. The Glance screen and Tap to Wake features are also present in the device.
Nokia has been busy with the new OS, making sure to tweak almost every app that comes with the AOSP to make its own mark on the apps. Even the font and color scheme is standard Nokia throughout, with the Symbian and S40 series shining through. The dialer is the same as on the Asha series devices, and unfortunately, has the same glitches as that on the Asha devices as well, like no smart dial, or searching ability from the same screen. The contact app does not display the numbers on the list view. However, the email, calendar and the messaging apps are pretty nice and a positive change from the standard Android apps.
Microsoft has even added in its Nokia Here and Nokia Maps apps for navigation and location. The standard features are all there, like the turn-by-turn navigation with offline availability, and the requirement for the user to download the map first. Like most other Lumia devices, the GPS is very quick, and this helps in navigation assistance.
The Nokia X has decent processing power built in, thanks to the 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Play dual-core CPU with Adreno 203, though the 512 MB RAM maybe a bit unjust. The device has 4 GB of internal memory, and a microSD card slot for expansion, which seems fair enough. The Nokia X does work ok on the hardware, though it does lags a bit sometimes. The lagging, though, can be ignored to some extent. There is also a set of apps that do not work on 512MB RAM devices, so those apps are already out of contention to be run on the device.
Nokia X also has email integration, with the ability to view attachments as well, and supporting multiple protocols. The Google email app is also present, as is the ActiveSync from Microsoft. The device also has the generic Nokia browser, as well as Opera present, which supports quick browsing using its standard compressed pages downloading.
The standard image gallery is also present, which is a slightly better version than the standard Android gallery, and shows images both as timelines or as albums, as well as thumbnails grid. Images can be set as wallpapers, rotated, viewed as a slideshow, and even edited to add filters or crop images. Videos playback, though, can only be done for a max of 480p videos. The MixRadio is present here, the standard features are all included. The device also has a standard FM radio. The default search engine, of course, is Bing, while Google can be set as default.
The sound is quite loud, so we doubt anyone will be using it at max, and the impressive thing was that there was no trade-off between loudness and quality. There are no distortions or background sounds.
An FM is also present on board. The device has very loud audio, and though that may mean the quality may not be good, which is actually close to the case with this device, we were pleasantly surprised that Nokia did manage to put in speakers that are loud enough to be heard in a gathering, or on the road.
