Nokia XL Review

Nokia XL Dual SIM phone is the Nokia’s third Android phone from WMC 2014. It is a 5 inch phone with 768MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a 5MP rear camera with LED flash. However, Google services or Play store is missing like in many other Nokia Android handsets. The new Nokia XL is among those three mobile phones that makes up the manufacturer’s new X range of Android powered smartphones. The XL denotes for the larger handsets. It runs on the Nokia's new heavily skinned version of Android that looks similar to tile based Windows Phone 8 interface.

The software on the Nokia XL is based on the Android open Source Project. The more advanced software opened the doors to bigger, higher resolution screens as well as up to date apps plus more powerful hardware. Furthermore, there are many easy customization options that help creating a unique Nokia experience by blending Nokia and Microsoft services. This somehow fills in for the missing Google goodies that we all are accustomed to seeing on Android phones.

With Nokia XL, the company prioritizes price over features. Without a doubt, the XL and its group members are cheaper than the revered Moto G. However, the XL is more expensive than the Lumia 525 and is just about the same price as the brand new Lumia 630 Dual SIM. The phone design looks great with attractive color variants. It actually looks good from any angle you look at it.

It's a race to the bottom that in the long term will only get fiercer as cheap smartphones become "good enough". Is the Nokia XL "good enough" or perhaps even "better"? It is a tough race that in the long term will only get fiercer as cheap smartphones are becoming good enough. Let’s see how much Nokia XL is good enough to compete in this head-to-head competitive environment.

The new Nokia XL measures 141.4 x 77.7 x 10.9mm which is larger than a typical 5” phone. It has thicker bezels. Furthermore, it is much heavier as well. It weighs 190g which is going to be a serious issues as a 5.7” Samsung Galaxy Note 3 only weighs 168g. But then again, Nokia characteristically makes heavier than average phones, and it has developed itself a repute for making phones of rock solid durability. The Nokia XL has a similar tough feel to it. Design wise, the Nokia XL not a bad looking phone. It looks and feels good.

However, its build quality is a clear indication of its target audience. You may argue that it borrows heavily from its Lumia line but you may notice that the Lumia line is something very daring, whereas the Nokia XL design is more subdued. This is pretty much clear from its hard lines and overall box like look.

Talking about the build quality, we can make out a subtle taper to its design from a profile view, but when holding the device, we can feel that the sides and edges of the phone are digging in into our hands. The plastic used here is not the same sturdy variety in nature rather it is much flimsy type imparting the middle portion of the rear casing some concavity. The good thing is that rear casing is interchangeable and it is available in a range of colors to choose from.

A bit of character is added to the front of the Nokia XL by a flat, black glass with the colorful polycarbonate of the back that forms a thin border around the glass. The only button on the front is capacitive back button which is still not backlit. The high level of customization suggests that you do not need the Home and App switcher buttons, but this does not make them necessarily redundant. Anyways, the front-facing camera sits next to the Nokia logo, leaving the rest of the front pretty bare.

The earpiece, proximity and ambient light sensors are also above the screen. Underneath the rear casing, we gain access to its dual-SIM and microSD slots. A 5 mega pixels autofocus camera with an LED is present on the back. Furthermore, the addition of the Glance Screen feature lets you see the time and notification alerts even when the phone is in standby.

At this amazing low price point, we should not expect the display of the Nokia XL to be specs conscious. It features a 5" IPS LCD touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800) and a low pixel density of 187ppi. Though, we would not have complained about the resolution too much but the Moto G and its 720p display (over twice as many pixels as WVGA) changed that.

There seems to be no scratch-proof glass of any kind, and it is not the sharpest thing in its class either but this does not need to be. Anyways, details may appear somewhat spotty with small text. However, for rest of the thing it does not pose any problem rather the large screen lends itself to comfortably browsing desktop pages, which don't require zooming in too closely.

Viewing angles are unexpectedly good for a display in this price bracket, on the other hand contrast and colors are not great. Colors appears a bit subdued. Brightness is good enough even setting it at about 50% will work well. The Nokia XL has one of the most reflective screens we've seen so far. Furthermore, the display attracts fingerprints and smudges that require a fair amount of scrubbing to remove.

The Nokia XL features an impressive battery life considering that it does not have a tack sharp screen neither does it have a blazing fast chipset. The 2,000mAh battery gave us a 62 hour endurance rating. This is excellent standby performance for a dual SIM device, and we are pretty much impressed with it.

The battery gives approximately 11 hours of talk time which is again pretty good, and it lasts about 12 hours when we browse web on it. Video playback time is limited to 6 and half hours.

The Nokia XL is running Android underneath it all and this is where things become juicy. The Nokia XL gives you a playful experience that is a combination of good ideas from Asha UI (Fastlane), Windows Phone (Live tiles) and Android (almost everything else).

The homescreen in the Nokia XL gives the feel of Windows Phone as it consists of static tiles that you can rearrange and resize according to your own likings. Connectivity and notification tray can be accessed at any time by swiping down from the top bezel – something that we all are familiar with. Moreover, swiping either left or right will take you to the ‘Fast Lane’ that is the aggregation of the mostly used apps. Integration of the Glance Screen is also a good idea that keeps the display on, but in a low power mode so that it can display the time and notifications.

Visually, the user interface is an interesting take as it is Android underneath it all, but at the same time the experience is not very much Android like. To be more exact, Nokia has replaced many popular services that we get with Android with Microsoft’s portfolio. This gives Nokia XL users a pretty much unique experience. Another worth mentioning thing is the way Android apps can be downloaded via its microSD card slot and file managing app. Of course, Nokia has its own store as well where users can download and install some popular apps.

Overall, the interface is easy to use and offers plenty of customization options that contribute to a wonderful user experience. Swiping horizontally from the app drawer will take you to the ‘Fast Lane’ that keeps track of all your recent activity, opened apps go there, recent web pages, along with contacts you've called, messages and emails, calendar events (birthdays, to-dos), recently installed apps, recently shared content, recently taken notes and pictures, radio stations, and even social network posts, replies, likes and goings-on.

The Nokia XL comes with dual core 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 768MB of RAM. It suggests a higher caliber chipset than it has in reality. The Qualcom MSM8225 Snapdragon S4 Play is an old generation Snapdragon with two Cortex-A5 cores at 1GHz and Adreno 203 GPU. In the face of today’s quad-cores, such configuration does not seem daunting but regardless, it is pretty much enough to power the Nokia XL.

Generally speaking about its performance, all the basic operations are executed without any problem and in a very decent manner. The Nokia XL has just enough performance to run Android. Keep in mind that it runs on Android 4.1, which benefits from Project Butter whereas Android 4.2-4.4 brought additional performance enhancements. This suggests room for improvement with a software update. The phone also works well for web browsing. It comes with a custom Nokia browser. On the other hand, gaming is restricted to causal games only.

The Nokia XL comes with 4GB of memory, which though is not something spectacular but it can be expanded via microSD card slot.

The new Nokia XL comes with a decent 5 megapixel autofocus camera with an LED flash. Moreover, the XL also features a 2 megapixel front facing camera making it the only phone in its group with a front facing camera. The camera is not something extraordinary or peculiar rather it is of mediocre level, and therefore, we cannot expect much from it.

The interface of the camera is pretty simple and it offers all the most commonly used options such as flash mode, white balance and exposure setting. Some advanced settings such as ISO, saturation, sharpness and noise reduction can be accessed from the menu. The camera interface also supports geo-tagging, face detection and color effects.

The picture quality is surprisingly good enough and we are pretty much pleased with it. The camera is capable of capturing a good deal of fine details, but at a price of over sharpened noise. The phone gives you three different sharpness levels to choose from ranging from Level 0 to Level 2. Sharpness Level 2 is too strong whereas the Level 0 leaves the image blurry, thus the acceptable level of sharpness is Level 1 which reduces the visible noise without harming the fine detail much.

The phone is also capable of recording panorama shots at 2500 x 500 resolution maximum. Video quality and video recording ability of the Nokia XL is not up to par. the camera is limited to FWVGA video (that's 854 x 480) shot at 30 frames per second. Although, you have options to choose between different video encoders but unfortunately there is no option for sharpness and color. The video quality unfortunately leaves something to be desired. The captured detail is quite low and compression artifacts are fairly visible.

The new Nokia XL comes with a Asha like music player, as we said before that the XL takes its characteristics from Asha, Android as well as Windows Phone, therefore it is not surprising to see music player similar to what found in Asha devices. With a tabbed interface, it gives you easy customization for your songs based on artists, albums and playlists. Furthermore, customizable equalizer with presets and user settings along with Bass boost and 3D effect sliders further contributes to customization feature. On exiting the music player, it goes in the Fastlane as a widget with only a play/pause button and on the lockscreen with play-pause-skip control.

Coming towards its video player, we have to say that it left much to be desired. Video player cannot handle HD. However, The XL is technically equipped for playing 3GP, AVI, MP4 and MKV videos up to 1080p resolution, but even 720p results in lots of fitfulness and missed frames. Thanks to its support for microSD cards, you can store plenty of music and videos. The phone has no dedicated video player, but all of your videos get listed in the gallery instead.

FM radio on the Nokia XL comes with a simple and neat interface that supports manual tuning as well as automatic scanning for channels. Same like the music player, FM radio also place a widget on the Fastlane but without any control. However, it is not available on lockscreen.

The Nokia XL is aimed at a narrow area of the market but the fact is that it is a smartphone which will likely have a big appeal in emerging markets. Though, it has some very good specs and is the best in the new X family yet it is just a step up from the Asha lineup instead of something to contend with Nokia's Windows Phone offerings or even most Androids.

The Nokia XL, like the Nokia X, looks confusingly similar to a Windows phone rather than an Android phone, mainly because of its tile-based menu screen. However, at the same time, it does not operate like an Android rather it has its own unique set of functionalities. With a 5-inch display, this smartphone tends to be of that particular size for becoming a flagship product however, in that particular case, it is nowhere close to achieve that status. It comes at a very amazing price and that for sure is a huge value for the Nokia XL especially when it is a dual SIM smartphone too.

To put it simply, the Nokia XL is not the best smartphone available out there as it runs on an outdated version of Android which is very slow and clunky. Though, the interface has been made very attractive yet its features leave a little to be desired. Whereas, on the brighter side, the phone looks like an extremely expensive smartphone, especially in one of the brighter color choices. Fastlane is an intuitive and very useful addition to the software as it lets you find your way around. Moreover, dual SIM and very strong reception leads to a good basic phone experience are also plus points.