Nokia launches Android (4.1 Jelly Bean) Based Smartphones

Finally, Nokia launched its Android based mobile. Nokia must have understood that if they want to continue with good selling and wants to get their position back, they need to come with Android. Well, Nokia got three android based mobiles: Nokia X, Nokia X+, and Nokia XL. Let’s know about the phones’ features and the specification, so that you can understand whether you should buy one or not.

Specifications

All the three models are based on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Android Open Source Platform. Nokia X and X+ both have a 4” LCD display while Nokia XL has 5” display. Nokia X and X+ both have 3MP main camera, and there is no secondary camera for those two models, but Nokia XL has 5MP main and 2MP secondary camera. These Android phones are equipped with Dual-core 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4 Processor. The bad part is the RAM which is 512MB for Nokia X, and 768MB for Nokia X+ and XL, and the Display Resolution is WVGA 800X480 pixels for all three Nokia’s Android based phones. On board storage capacity is 4GB, and all the phones support dual SIM. As far as the battery is concerned, Nokia XL has 2000 mAh, and Nokia X and X+ both have a 1500 mAh battery.

If Nokia is still in Symbian World, they should come out of it. An Android phone with that much low resolution display, battery, RAM, and internal memory can never give them more users. Downloading a couple of good games will block the whole storage, and they won’t even give 4GB because system files would be there. I doubt if they can even run HD games (though I have not tried).

Availability and Price:

Nokia X, X+ and XL will not be launched in the USA, Canada, Japan and Korea. So, they are not launching in those countries that use high end smartphones, and reason must be its specification as I discussed earlier. Whatever, they have their own business policies. Nokia X+ and XL will be launched soon, and the expected prices are as follows.

Nokia XL: 130 Euro (coming soon)

Nokia X+:  120 Euro (coming soon)

Nokia X  :  100 Euro (available)

You can go to the Nokia website, and can check more detail even can order online. In Indian market Nokia X costs around 8600 INR.

The Android Open Source Platform

Well, Android is powered by Google, and the dark side is that you will not have access to Google Play Store to download any app, because Nokia’s Android phones are based on the Android Open Source Platform (AOSP). So, you are free to find an android app from anywhere on the web, or you can simply download it from the Nokia’s app store and install on your phone. The good thing is that you are free from a particular app store, and can install any app you find on the web. The benefit is that, you can install even those app what are not available in your territory, like PayPal. One of my friend tried to install PayPal app in India from the Google Play Store, and he got the error that this app is not available for your country (it happened a couple months ago, I am not sure if they made it available now), and then I gave him a setup file what I found on the open source platform, and this worked for him. There are some geeks as well, who find free apps from the web though those are not free on the Google Play Store. So, this is a good advantage you have with AOSP.

AOSP is too famous in China, because they discourage the usage of Google services. Around 40% of Android phones in China are based on Android Open Source Platform (AOSP). Now, it completely depends on you whether you would like to get one or not. What I think is “if the specifications are good, there should not be any problem,” but some of the Google Services won’t work for sure.