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So the Mobile World Congress has been and gone, and usually at this time, it’s a case of having to wait for your favourite new handset to become available for purchase, which can vary from a few weeks to even a few months. But good news, if you were waiting (in Malaysia) to get your hands on a Nokia X, you are in luck . The Malaysian retailer Storekini has put up a product page with an asking price of RM399(Malaysian Ringgits), which roughly translates to around $121/£73, which is the equivalent of Nokia’s touted price of €89.
Of course, with budget pricing comes budget features, with Nokia’s smartly priced handset featuring a 4-inch WVGA display and a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor. Nokia have made some hardware cuts in order to meet the €89 price-point, and this is evident with just 512MB RAM, a meagre 4GB of internal storage (MicroSD is supported though) as well as the 3MP Fixed-Focus camera that is included. On the software side of things, Nokia have surprisingly chosen to use Android version 4.1.2 as the foundation for their Android family of handsets. I say surprising because Android version 4.1.2 (JellyBean) was first released in 2012, and doesn’t include the optimisations for low memory devices that Android version 4.4(KitKat) does, this affects areas such as multitasking and app resuming. It also remains to be seen what sort of update support Nokia will offer for the Nokia X family, whether the Android base version will be updated to a more current version.
The Nokia X uses a ‘fork’ of Android which ignores the services that Google provides, instead bundling Outlook, Here Maps, OneDrive, and Skype, with its own App Store pre-installed. The Nokia X user-interface features a mixture of Windows Phone/Asha design elements with a version of WP’s coloured tiles, and the Fastlane feature which has been ported over from Nokia’s Asha line of handsets . Luckily, if you don’t like Nokia’s overlay, you can always just side-load an apk of your favourite launcher on to the device to make sense of things. On the keyboard side of things, Swiftkey are also a FREE SwiftKey App for all Nokia X owners. Usually the Swiftkey sells for $3.99 in the Google Play Store, so this is something of a bargain to keep in mind if you purchase a Nokia X. It’s also possible to root and install a custom ROM, which is something you can get more details about here.
The Nokia X is pitched at emerging markets in Asia, Europe, India, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, with the now Microsoft owned Nokia planning to ‘connect the next billion people to the cloud’. If you were looking to buy someone their very first smart phone, is the cheap and colourful Nokia X something that would spark some interest? Or would you rather purchase a handset that offers more of a stock Android experience? Let us know in the comments or via our Google Plus page.