Nokia X2-01 Review

Here is the FoneArena Nokia X2-01 review. What would you do if you were a teen and given a handset as sleek with a solid qwerty and  music DNA running on the handset. One would type so fast, so fast you can barely see them! The X-series range of phones are music oriented devices, Nokia has picked up the demand and love for social networking and heavy texting and has released this lovely looking device X2-01.  Does this phone deliver ? find out in our review below

Box Contents

• X2-01
• Battery BL-5C
• Charger AC-3
• Stereo Headset WH-102
• User guide

Design

The most found element on the phone is plastic, though there is no compromise on the build quality. The phone feels premium and looks in a way which gives an impression that this is a sub 10k phone. Its slim, curvy, solid and sexy.

The phone has a 2.4-inch QVGA screen, D-Pad surrounded by receive/end calls, two navigation keys, and also two shortcut buttons, one to quick fire the Media Player and the other sending a quick SMS. On top a 3.5mm Audio jack and charger port.

Nothing to its right, on the left side of the phone is the micro-USB slot next to SD-Card slot protected by a single flap. And a VGA camera and battery cover to its back.

The QWERTY keyboard on the X2-01 is one of the most comfortable ones you’ll find in the market. It competes with company’s other qwerty phones like C3, E5 and its ergonomic design makes the phone a clear winner.

And, those two shortcut keys neighboring the D-Pad are totally customizable, the music key can be customized to open the music player, music library or FM radio. Similarly, the messaging key can be customized to open email, text messages or instant messages.

Interface, OS and more

This phone runs on S40 6th Edition OS. I’ve been a great fan of S40 OS just because of the way it functions. Its simple, reliable, usable and one need one not worry much about the OS for bugs or hangs. Reliable as I’ve said there.

X2-01 has a neat looking homescreen, the whole screen estate is used up well, it has multiple contact bar, a community widget kind of shortcut, and Shortcuts for apps, Customizable ie.. the homescreen shortcuts can be replaced by those which interests the user. Customizable menu – Single, List, Grid, Grid with Lables views. The Default font size offers a great read even for aged ones. Which can also be customized. This is great!

The X2-01 has PUSH mail & chat clients support out of box. With native email client Nokia Messaging 3.0 it is said to supports Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail among others. Wide chat services such as  Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and a handful of others are also supported by IM Client.

SNS are grouped in an app called ‘Communities’, which currently supports Facebook, Twitter and Orkut only. Works well, also a live widget for the same can be found on the homescreen. Which simply is handy!

The inbuilt browser was quick to load pages over a GPRS connection. Opera mini is integrated as default web browser and Bing as default web search. Few web service like Myspace, Youtube, AccWeather, Reuters, Hi5, Friendster’s web shortcuts can be found within the web app. The phone doesn’t have Wi-Fi or 3G support. So, GPRS is what you have to rely on.

FM Radio, Bluetooth, and pre installed apps and games like bounce, Nokia Life Tools* are notable ones.

*Also as a part of offering Nokia’s Ovi Life Tools(a range of services that covers Agriculture, Education and Entertainment) comes with 30days Trial subscription.

Overall Performance

Voice clarity on calls is better than just good. Loudspeakers are good enough to being able to notice on call when your phone is in pocket.

Camera Samples

You can absolutely expect nothing from VGA camera of  Nokia X2-01. Its just a feature that would want to see on paper. VGA camera  gives you extremely grainy photographs. The phone also does video recording but the results are, unsurprisingly, far from impressive.

Phone has an decent screen, snappier menu, music player is neat, phone feels good in hand, majorly helps in getting things like messaging and music get done without trouble.

And coming to battery performance of the phone, with heavy usage of MP3, PUSH Email, Communities widget running it’ll easily live for two days on a full charge. Brilliant!

Our verdict

Though Nokia X2-01 has nothing new to offer, its has the wow factor! And all thanks to Nokia’s design team. Appealing design which makes it feel richer than it actually costs. No matter the age group it is targeted on, everyone gets an immediate crush on the phone especially with  its ultra-comfy keyboard. If you’re texting and ‘IM’ing addict who’s looking for a total value for money product the X2-01 is a great buy. Look out for C3 too.

Pros

• Great QWERTY keypad.
• Great design and built
• Great battery life
• Value for Money

Cons

• Worst camera
• No 3G
• Messaging UI needs work

Nokia Asha 503 Hands On

Nokia said an interesting good-bye at the Nokia World Event, Abu Dhabi before being taken over by Microsoft by announcing a few Lumia smartphones and Asha feature phones. Nokia Asha 503 was the high-end phone among three Ashas that were launched. Asha 500 shares the same design language as the other Asha 500 series devices, but comes with a new crystal-clear look fusion of ice-like transparency and bold inner color. The Nokia Asha 503 comes with a bigger 3inch display, 5MP rear camera with LED flash and 3G connectivity.

You can check out our quick hands-on video right below.

There is a 3inch QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) touch-screen display and there is a single back button at the center below the display. In terms of software, it runs on the latest Nokia Asha software platform with Swipe UI and Nokia Fast lane multi-tasking screen that brings all the recent activities together. There is a 5MP camera on the back that comes with an LED flash but there is no front camera. As far as connectivity is concerned, it comes fully equipped with 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, FM Radio and there is a dual-SIM Variant as well.

Nokia Asha 503 will come with 10 free downloadable games from the Nokia store. There is a Nokia Express Browser that compresses data up to 90%. It comes preloaded with apps like WhatsApp,  Foursquare, Facebook and  Twitter apps. The pricing of Nokia Asha 503 was announced as USD99, but when it comes to India, we can expect be it be around Rs. 6,500. The device is expected to be released before the end of this year.

Nokia Lumia 1320 Hands On

Nokia announced their budget phablet Nokia Lumia 1320 along with the Nokia Lumia 1520 at the Abu Dhabi Nokia World event. The specifications of the budget phablet include a 6-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD LCD IPS Super sensitive display and Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and Windows Phone 8 OS with the latest Lumia Black update. There is a 5-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a 0.3-megapixel (VGA) front-facing camera. Nokia Music is available for free streaming of ad-free music along with Nokia HERE maps and location services.

You can check out the quick hands 0n video right below.

Nokia Lumia 1320 specifications

• 6-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD LCD IPS Super sensitive display and Gorilla Glass 3 protection
• 1.7 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400processor
• Windows Phone 8 OS
• 5MP Auto Focus camera with LED flash, 1080p HD recording at 30 fps
• VGA front-facing camera
• Dimensions - 164.25 x 85.9 x 9.79 mm  Weight - 220 grams
• 1GB RAM, 8GB internal memory, micro SD card support up to 64GB
• 3.5mm audio jack, FM Radio,
• HD Voice, HAAC mic
• 4G LTE/ 3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 + LE, GPS / aGPS, NFC
• 3400 mAh (integrated)

Like most Lumia phones, Nokia Lumia 1320 too comes in a wide variety of colors which includes Orange, Yellow, White, and Black colors and is priced at US$ 339 (~Rs. 20,900) before taxes and subsidies. The phone is expected to be available in India from starting of 2014.

Nokia Lumia 1520 launching in the UK next week?

The first Windows Phone phablet, the Nokia Lumia 1520, could launch in the UK this month, less than two weeks after its announcement. According to Carphone Warehouse’s Coming Soon page, the UK retailer will launch the Full HD Lumia 1520 by the end of October and if accurate, this could be the first time Nokia has bought a handset to market within a fortnight of announcing it.

The Lumia 1520 is the first Windows Phone device to feature a 6 inch screen, Full HD resolution and a superfast quad-core processor. The 6 inch 1080p display offers 367 pixels per inch and the 2.2GHz quad-core processor is accompanied by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset and Adreno 330 GPU. The Lumia 1520 comes with Nokia’s imaging prowess as the 20MP camera offers ZEISS Optics, PureView oversampling technology, Optical Image Stabilisation and a dual-LED flash.

At Nokia World 2013 yesterday, where Nokia announced the Lumia 1320 and Lumia 2520 tabletalongside their flagship, the company said it expected the Lumia 1520 to go on sale later this quarter and listed the UK as one of the launch countries. The Nokia 1520 comes with a recommended retail price of $749 (INR 46k) before taxes and subsidies and in the UK it’s expected to retail for around £500 (INR 50k) SIM free and unlocked.

At the moment Carphone Warehouse have only listed it as coming soon without any pricing and this is a tentative release date that is subject to change – we’ll let you know when we have more information on release dates and pricing.

Nokia Lumia 1520 vs Nokia Lumia 925 Hands On

Nokia launched some smartphones and feature phones at the Nokia World event in Abu Dhabi. They also launched their flagship device – Nokia Lumia 1520. The Nokia Lumia 1520 is a definite flagship phone as it packs top of the shelf specifications under a Full HD display. It is also the company’s first phablet and first Windows Phone phablet. The Nokia Lumia 925 on the other hand is a relatively old phone which was launched earlier this year and it built upon the PureView camera of Nokia Lumia 920 in a much lighter body.

We bring you a quick hands-on between the two camera centric Lumias and you can check out the video right below.

The first and foremost difference that anyone would notice is the huge size difference and the build quality difference. Nokia Lumia 1520 follows a typical Lumia build with a polycarbonate unibody design and matte-finish body while the Lumia 925 is grazed by Aluminum on the sides and has a polycarbonate body.

Lumia 1520 has a huge 6inch Full HD IPS LCD Nokia ClearBlack display(367ppi) while the Lumia 925 has a 4.5inch AMOLED HD display(332ppi). Because of the huge display, the 1520 is considerably larger than the Lumia 925 in terms of height, weight and thickness. The weight of Lumia 1520 is 209g which is nearly 70g higher than that of the Lumia 925 which weighs just around 139g.

Nokia Lumia 1520 is the first Windows Phone to be powered by a Quad-core processor and it runs on a 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 SoC, has 2GB of RAM and Adreno 330 GPU while the Lumia 925 runs a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, has 1GB RAM and Adreno 225. There is also a microSD card in the Lumia 1520 in addition to the 32GB internal storage while the Lumia 925 has just 16/32GB internal storage options and no microSD card slot. Both the Lumia phones come with Optical Image Stabilization, PureView technology and dual-LED flash. Lumia 1520 comes with a 20MP PureView camera at the back that produces 16MP images and a 5MP over-sampled image while the Lumia 925 comes with a more subtle 8MP PureView camera. Nokia Lumia 1520 will run on Windows Phone 8 Black at launch while the Lumia 925 is currently on Windows Phone 8 and has just received the Amber update.

What do you think of the two Lumias? Which one do you like – the compact Lumia 925 or the gigantic Lumia 1520? Let us know in the comments below.

Nokia Lumia 2520 Photo Gallery

Nokia’s device division might be acquired by Microsoft soon, but that hasn’t stopped the company from bringing back its mobility vision in computers back into its portfolio. We saw the yesteryear Booklet 3G, which was one of the very few notebooks that could use a SIM and now we see a similar vision in theLTE enabled Lumia 2520, one of the first tablets to launch without a WiFi-only variant. It’s a bold step by Nokia, wanting to fill the void created by WiFi only tablets that are seemingly used only at home. Launching it with a beautiful power keyboard as an accessory for some extra bucks, the tablet envisions portable productivity with standard Nokia influences in hardware showing off. We took the Lumia 2520 for a spin in front of our camera, so here is a photo gallery, for your viewing pleasure.

First up, we have the 10.1 inch AHIPS LCD display on the front with a full HD resolution and great colours. Apparently Nokia have worked hard to bring the reflectance down to 6% which naturally shows in the picture here. The brightness is rated at 600 nits which is much higher than the normal LCD and outdoor visibility is another target obviously, which Nokia proudly displays on the Lumia 1520 as well.

This is the cyan version of the tablet. You can notice from the smaller tiles that this is running Windows 8.1, but the RT version. However, the internals are really powerful now, being based on the blazing fast 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800 Quad Core chipset.

So above the display you have a 2 MP front facing camera that can do HD calls and along with it resides an ambient light sensor.

Below the display is the dock connector for the Power Keyboard and above it, the capacitive start button that takes you to the start screen.

Over at the top of the device, you have the very Lumia-like buttons for volume rocker and the power button.

And over at the left, you have the power port that connects to the external plug, and in turn powers the 8000 mAH battery of the Lumia 2520.

And on the other end of the same side you have the 3.5mm audio jack.

Just besides that you have the micro SIM and micro SD card trays that hide underneath a flap.

And on the right side, you have the micro HDMI port and the new micro USB 3.0 port, which makes the Lumia 2520 the second device in the world to sport this, after the Note 3.

Over at the back you can notice the Nokia branding in the middle, engulfed by that sweet matte cyan polycarbonate Nokia is known for. Some regulatory information at the bottom and the rear facing camera on the top left of the back.

The camera unit on the back is a 6.7 Megapixel unit with a f1.9 aperture lens and this is the same one as the Lumia 720. Although the camera on a tablet is pointless, many people do take photos with them, and hence forcing companies like Nokia to follow the trend.

This is the white one. The Lumia 2520 comes in glossy versions as well as matte. The White and the red ones are glossy while the Cyan and the black ones are matte.

As mentioned earlier, the Nokia Lumia 2520 runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor with 2 GB of RAM and runs on Windows RT 8.1, with 24×7 support from Nokia, how about that.

Windows RT 8.1 might have improved the portrait orientation side of things but a 10.1 inch device in portrait still looks comical, in our opinion.

This is the power cover that the Lumia 2520 comes with. It costs $149 extra and connects to the tablet through the dock. It offers a keyboard, a trackpad and extra 5 hours battery over the already impressive 11 hour battery life.

The cover also offers complete protection and nicely wraps around with magnets to the front. The trackpad portion of the keyboard is the one that wraps up while there is a bump at the bottom for the battery.

There are also two extra USB ports behind the case for adding extra peripherals to the device. This makes the cover more useful in our opinion.

Anyway, that’s all the photos we have, but don’t forget to take a look at the hands on video above and let us know what you think in the comments section below. 

Photo Credits Varun Krish

Whatsapp for Nokia Asha 501 coming next month, announces 350 million active users per month

Way back, when evleaks had leaked the Asha 500 press image(the same one that got announced today), one icon that stood out was that of Whatsapp. The most awaited app on the platform is finally revealed as coming next month with all the new Asha devices announced today at the Nokia World. And yes, it will be coming to the only Asha SW platform based device on the market today too, the Asha 501. I have been personally holding up on recommending the Asha 501 due to the lack of Whatsapp and now it’s a huge sigh of relief that it’s finally here, at least by the next month.

In an interesting stats release, Whatsapp CEO Jan Koum who came up on stage noted that there are now 350 million active monthly users on its platform, and out of them 250,000 Nokia users are being registered daily through their Asha, Symbian and Lumia devices. The company also said that Nokia and Whatsapp were both involved in the same philosophy of Connecting People and it was glad to work with Nokia on bringing Whatsapp to the Asha 501 and the others.

Building on the momentum of a total of 26 million app downloads on the Nokia store for the Asha 501, Whatsapp looks like a great addition to the store, and is obviously now not going to be a deal breaker when buying an Asha device. That said, even after the launch of BBM, the Whatsapp momentum isn’t going to stop, so we will be back reporting to you when the app goes live on the Nokia Store. Till then hang on and take a look at the rest of our Nokia World coverage.

Nokia Story Teller, Beamer, Nokia Camera and more coming with Lumia Black Firmware update

The Nokia Lumia 1520 and the Nokia Lumia 1320 are the two new Lumia smartphones that have launched today at the Nokia World event in Abu Dhabi. Hardware differentiators like a massive screen and unibody build aside, Nokia has also announced that its own “Lumia Black” firmware will be running on top of the Windows Phone GDR3 update that started rolling out recently. This is the successor to the Amber update that is currently available for all Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices and it brings all sorts of new app experiences and improvements to the new devices launched today and eventually to other phones too. The new apps shown off today, as a part of this update are – Nokia Story Teller, Nokia Beamer and Nokia camera amongst others.

The Nokia Story teller app is basically a different kind of a augmented photo experience. It uses geotagged photos and the time stamps to create a timeline of your photos and places it on Here Maps. This makes for a geo-located photo experience and with it being chronological, you can possibly tell better stories by remembering the places you visited on your trip. This also works for real-time usage as the Here map shows you nearby interests and locations. This app will be available for all the Windows Phone 8 Lumia devices and possibly enabled by the Black firmware update. The Story Teller app will be available on the Nokia Lumia 2520 tablet too!

Another cool app, or probably an enhanced app shown off today was the Nokia Beamer. This is the successor to the Photobeamer app that could beam photos directly onto the web browser. However, the Nokia beamer takes it a step further and allows you to mirror your screen in real-time with options to share anything on your screen, remotely to a web browser. This is pretty much like streaming video onto a server, and Nokia will be the one helping you host your stream. No details on the availability but this is one of those apps that would need the appropriate firmware hooks from “Black”.

The Nokia Camera app is the new unified camera app for Nokia’s Windows Phones. Announced along with the 1520, the app combines the powers of the Pro camera as well as the Smart camera app, with switching between the three different modes which includes the video, just a toggle away. This makes sure that the Smart camera is now not a separate experience and is frequently used than before. This will be naturally available to all the PureView devices like the Pro Camera, or possibly even the other devices.

Other than these nice little Nokia apps, the company has also improved Glance Screen, the standby screen that displays a screen saver, with notifications and even a pedometer for calculating your steps. The pedometer calculation is an example of third party integration on Glance Screen. Nokia is planning to roll out the “Lumia Black” update to all the Windows Phone 8 Lumias starting next year. We think it will be worth a wait, but with phones already running a preview version of GDR3, the wait is just going to be achingly long for us. Anyways, check out our Lumia 1520 photo gallery here, and stay tuned to the blog for more interesting information from Nokia World.

Micromax Canvas Magnus A117 with 5-inch 720p display, 1.5 GHz quad-core CPU press shots leak

Micromax already confirmed the existence of the Canvas Turbo by signing up Hugh Jackman as its brand ambassador. Now the twitter user MMXNewscaster has posted press images of the Canvas Magnus A117, the company’s upcoming Canvas Smartphone. This is rumored to come with a 5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD IPS display, powered by a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor and run on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). It would come with a 12-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, 1080p video recording and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera.

It is expected o come with Dual SIM support with dual standby similar to other Micromax smartphones. According to the MMXNewscaster, the rear back panel seems to be made of aluminium which is removable.

Micromax Magnus A117 rumored specifications

• 5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD capacitive touch screen IPS display
• 1.5 GHz quad-core processor
• Dual SIM (GSM + GSM)
• Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean)
• 12MP rear camera with LED Flash, 1080p video recording
• 5MP front-facing camera
• 3.5mm audio jack
• 1GB RAM, 4GB internal memory, expandable memory upto  32GB with MicroSD
• 3G, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPS/A-GPS
• 2000 mAh battery

It is not clear when Micromax plans to launch the  Canvas Magnus A117 or how much it would cost. Looks like this might launch ahead of the Canvas Turbo A250.

Nokia Protective Cover CP-623 announced for Lumia 1520

Alongside the Lumia 1520, Nokia also showed off a new protective cover accessory for the giant sized handset. The flip cover style accessory will double up as a stand. The protective cover is similar to the smart cover seen on the iPad and similar accessories have been seen for the BlackBerry Z10 as well. 

Unlike those, the CP-623 cover is not of the active variety and lacks a magnetic snap to switch the display on or off. The cover also lacks Qi connectivity though the 1520 has that built in so its not a loss. Available in a variety of colors including red, black, white and yellow, you’ll definitely find a color that matches your phone. The Nokia Protective Cover CP-623 will go on sale later this year along with the Lumia 1520.