It's a difficult time to feature phones, with smartphones fast becoming a workable option at the low-end of the market. On the one hand, most customers are expecting smartphone features such as touchscreen and Wi-Fi from their feature phones.
The X3-02 continues this trend, and manages to be all together interesting and simple. It's a tiny phone in a world of huge slates and sliders, with a footprint barely larger than the legendary Sony Ericsson W800 while maintaining the same ultra-thin profile as the iPhone 4. It has a 2.4-inch QVGA resistive touchscreen match with a 16-key numeric.
The X3-02 seems light but not unsubstantial, and build quality gives confidence. High-grade plastics are used throughout, and the battery cover is marked from a sheet of anodized aluminum.
The 5 megapixel camera generally lives up to Nokia's high standards for stills. You'll find a microSD card slot under the battery cover, but sadly no card was provided with our X3-02.
Since there's no accelerometer or GPS, shots lack any orientation or geolocation data. The camera interface is basic and portrait only, but Nokia provides a surprisingly capable picture editor. While the X3-02 handles stills with style, it captures VGA video that is best described as mediocre. The sound quality is poor, and the framerate is capped to a jerky 15fps.
Software
Series 40 is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide and is generally regarded as one of the more intuitive non-touch user experiences on phones. The interface is polished both esthetically and functionally, and the user experience remains shrewd.
The premium is the 2.4-inch touchscreen, but it has a QWERTY keypad on the display. Third, Series 40 remains a dumbphone OS at the core, with no reliable notifications and no real multitasking. Nokia bundles apps for email and social networking, but only the latter dispatches notifications. Multitasking is restricted to music playback and only functions when the camera is not being used.
Finally, no GPS means Ovi Maps is not available and Google Maps is all but useless without a separate Bluetooth receiver. We're amazed that the X3-02 lacks even simple cell-based positioning.
It covers the basics, but we experienced problems loading some sites like the full version. Opera Mini has pre-loaded and works like a charm. The built-in email client handles multiple Ovi Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, POP3 and IMAP accounts.
On the plus side, the media player workings fine and handles music and videos in a variety of common formats such as MP3, MP4, WAV, H.264, AAC+, XviD, WMA, and WMV.
Overall
The Nokia X3-02 Touch-and-Type is a combination of quality hardware with a pleasing phone experience. It's a well-brought-up phone for those who just want a strong and inexpensive device that focuses on main functions and offers a few extras in a small and familiar package.
News Source: mobile.engadget.com
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