Nokia XL – Flexibility of Android, packed in a stylish body
This year, the Mobile World Congress was a big one for Nokia. Reason? Well they showcased their long rumoured android smartphones. While they were expected to be powerful, they all turned out to be pretty low end device. Barely powerful enough to handle your everyday smartphone duties. Putting such hardware in this device is justified on their behalf because apparently this is just a move to put more Nokia hardware in customers’ hands so that they eventually upgrade to high end Nokia devices which are running windows. The transition would be smooth because they have made the software on this device to look and feel a lot like the windows phone. They showcased three Nokia devices running android. The Nokia X, Nokia X Plus and Nokia XL.Nokia X and X Plus are very much similar to each other except for the quantity of RAM . The Nokia XL has got the hardware similar to Nokia X Plus but has got a larger display and obviously different dimensions . We take a look at what this Nokia device is like.
Design
The device has got its Nokia family look and it is the biggest of three Nokia android devices. It measures 141 x 78 x 10.9 and you can clearly see that it is neither very slim nor small. Though the weight of this device is distributed well and it feels manageable in one’s hands. The display dominates the front and has got a capacitive back key right below it. The back key handles multiple jobs. It would work as a back key on most of the screens but on the home screen it takes you to the list of recent apps, and back. It is available in multiple colours like many other Nokia devices. The back is a sea of plastic in matte and the colour is given by the wraparound shell only. This is good as you can just replace the back panel when you are bored of your device colour.
Display
The device is an affordable one so it was very obvious that they would have to slice corners . It just gets bad when they decide to cut costs in case of display. They did so with the Lumia 625 by putting a low resolution screen on it and then they have done the same here. It has a 5 inch display with a resolution of just 480 x 800. The pixel density is very low at just 187 pixels per inch . The screen is very dull and small text is hard to read .Everything on the display looks slightly fuzzy. Thankfully it is an IPS display so the brightness levels and viewing angles are pretty good. You can easily use the device outdoors if you raise the brightness.
Software/ Interface
Turn on the device and it welcomes you with a familiar interface. The thing here is that it would be familiar to windows phone users. The icons are arranged in tile like array like you would see on Lumia devices. They can be resized and configured. The widgets are showed here as well . There are various Nokia apps that you can find here .They have done a really good job with the interface here and it is way better than what people at HTC or Samsung make.
The android version is 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and as we said, it is not even remotely stock. They have removed support for Google account and other Google services to make way for Microsoft services. Everything is Microsoft here. Nothing here would require you to sign into your Google account . In fact the applications like maps have been replaced with the alternative apps by Nokia. There is no Google play store. Instead you get another app store that is available for the Nokia android devices only. Nokia says that the app developers can easily transfer their apps to this app store in no time at all. It has got most of the popular apps here already and many other apps are finding their way in. The notifications on this device are displayed on lock screen like many other Nokia devices. You can pull down the bar on top to change the device settings and that is it. It hasn’t got any other functions that you would need. To access the notification centre or fast lane as they call it, you just need to swipe right or left on the screen.
Hardware
The device has a Qualcomm chipset just the like its younger siblings Nokia X and X Plus. The Snapdragon S4 Play chipset runs a dual core processor running at a clock speed of 1 GHz and an Adreno 203. The hardware is a bit old now and the GPU has aged. It struggles when it is handed the job of processing 2D or 3D. Thankfully it has got 768 MB of RAM against the 512 on the Nokia X which helps matters a bit. The UI is not as sluggish as it is on Nokia X and won’t slow down much due to the number of running apps. You get all the connectivity options that you get on a low end device. It has got HSDPA support with download speeds up to 7.2 Mbps. It gets Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP support and has got Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n. On-board storage is just 4 GB but there is option to add a micro SD card up to 32 GB. The hardware is powered by a removable 2000 mAh battery which is up from the Nokia X by 500 mAh. The camera is pretty average but it is way better than the Nokia X and X Plus. It is a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash. There is a 2 megapixel secondary camera as well for video calling.
Verdict
Nokia XL device runs almost the same basic hardware as the Nokia X+ but has got slight improvements over it like the primary camera and front camera. It has a larger display as well but has lower resolution. If you can live with it, this is a pretty good device.
Author Bio
The article has been written by Kundan Kumar, who is passionate about technology and how its changing everyone’s life by making it easier. He’s working at 91mobiles.com and writes about the latest in the tech domain, right from devices to innovations.
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