The Nokia XL goes where Asha never dared, 5" screen territory.
Windows Phone itself only recently got there, but the Nokia X family is
really an extension of touchscreen Asha "smartphones" rather than a
failsafe in case Windows Phone get messed up.
Nokia XL official images
We say Asha "smartphones" because that's what Nokia chooses to call
them even if no one else would. Even the Finns eventually had to
acknowledge the limitations of platform - QVGA resolution kept screens
tiny and the app ecosystem never had much promise.
The Nokia X software is based on the Android Open Source Project,
just the OS without any of the Google stuff. The more advanced software
has opened doors to bigger, higher resolution screens and modern,
up-to-date apps, plus more powerful hardware.
The ease of customization also let the company create a unique, Nokia
experience with a blend of Nokia and Microsoft services filling in for
the missing Google goodies that we are accustomed to seeing on Android.
Here's the summary of what the Nokia XL has to offer:
Key features
- Quad-band GSM, GPRS, EDGE
- Dual-band 3G with HSPA
- Optional dual-SIM support, dual standby
- Nokia X software platform 1.0.1, based on the Android Open Source Project (4.1 Jelly Bean)
- 5" IPS LCD WVGA capacitive touchscreen, ~187 ppi
- 1.2GHz dual-core Cortex-A5 processor, Adreno 203 GPU, Qualcomm MSM8225 Snapdragon S4 Play chipset
- 768MB RAM
- Proximity sensor, accelerometer, display auto-rotation
- 4GB internal storage (1.2GB available to the user)
- Nokia HERE maps with free lifetime voice-guided navigation and offline maps support
- Data-efficient Nokia Xpress browser
- Nokia MixRadio
- Nokia Glance screen, double-tap-to-unlock
- 5MP camera, FWVGA video recording @30fps; 2MP front-facing camera
- microSD card support (up to 32 GB)
- Wi-Fi b/g/n connectivity
- FM radio
- Bluetooth v3.0
- Standard microUSB port, charging
- 2,000mAh Li-Ion battery
Main disadvantages
- Large and heavy for a 5" device
- Low screen resolution
- No Google services (Play, Gmail, Maps, Calendar, Drive), you can't even sync contacts
- Budget-grade hardware may result in system bottlenecks
- Poor video capture
- No smart dialing
- No document reader
The specs aren't meant to impress but, as an Asha alternative, the
Nokia XL prioritizes price over features. Indeed, the XL and its
siblings are cheaper than the revered Moto G (barring temporary
discounts and promotions).
We shouldn't discount the value of Nokia's premium services - HERE
maps with free offline navigation, MixRadio, Glance Screen and
double-tap to wake (trademark features that go way back). A familiar
brand name also counts for a lot, considering the Android low end is
getting populated with small brands with only the Lumia 520 / 525 to
fight back.
Nokia XL in our office
While the Nokia Lumia 520 has dropped to stunning prices of €100,
that's not without some subsidies from Nokia, Microsoft or both to boost
WP market share. The Nokia XL and its two shorter siblings instead
deliver hardware at its actual price, no catch.
It's a race to the bottom that in the long term will only get fiercer
as cheap smartphones become "good enough". Is the Nokia XL "good
enough" or perhaps even "better"? Flip to the next page and begin to
find out.
Design and build quality
The Nokia XL wouldn't look out of place next to a Lumia 520 or an
Asha 501. The phone uses elements from the design of both phones in
several places, including both hardware and software. It's bigger than
both, something that is instantly obvious in person.
As we already mentioned, the screen bezels on the Nokia XL are
thicker than those on the Nokia X or a typical 5" phone. Having grown
used to large devices we didn't mind the size much, surprisingly even
the 190g weight felt okay.
Nokia XL in the hand
Nokia typically makes heavier than average phones, but it has built
itself a reputation for rock solid durability. The Nokia XL has a
similar tough feel to it.
Anyway, the front features a flat, black glass with the colorful
polycarbonate of the back forming a thin border around the glass to give
the phone a bit of character. The only button on the front is a
capacitive back button similar to the recent Asha 50x phones and unlike a
typical Android phone.
A large 5" screen with a single capacitive button • the Nokia XL dwarfs the Nokia X
The level of software customization means you don't need the Home and
App switcher buttons, though that doesn't necessarily make them
redundant.
Above the screen, a 2MP front-facer is a first for the lineup - both
the X and X+ forego the secondary cam. The earpiece, proximity and
ambient light sensors are also above the screen.
A 2MP front-facing camera above the screen
The display has the Glance Screen feature, similar to Lumia phones
and Nokias of old (plus Motorola's Active Display). Basically, it keeps
the display on but in a low power mode, so it displays a clock and
notifications without burning through the battery.
The back of the Nokia XL is made of soft touch polycarbonate, a
long-standing Nokia trademark. It's a high quality material that we
prefer over the plastic of certain older flagships. The covers are
exchangeable, letting you customize your phone with the following
colors: orange (the one we have), bright green, cyan, yellow, black and
white.
At the back is a 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash. It's a
significant upgrade considering the Nokia X and X+ both have fixed-focus
3.15MP cameras with no flash. The video capture remains unchanged at
480p @ 30fps, however.
A 5MP auto focus with LED flash
At the bottom of the back is the loudspeaker. Under the battery cover
is a disappointingly small 2,000mAh battery, which looks tiny compared
to the bulk of the Nokia XL. In a couple of chapters we'll explore the
battery life in detail.
The 2,000mAh battery under the back cover • three card slots on the dual-SIM version
The card slots are below the back cover too - a microSD card slot and
one or two microSIM card compartments. We have the dual-SIM version of
the Nokia XL, though the device has a single-SIM version too.
Dual-SIM Asha phones have a hot-swappable second SIM slot, but that's
not the case with the Nokia XL. You have to power off the device to
remove either card (the battery blocks the way).
Having covered the front and back, what's left is the sides of the
phone, which have a very traditional setup. There's a 3.5mm audio jack
on top, microUSB port for data and charging at the bottom. The volume
rocker and the power key are on the right-hand side.
The power key is low enough to be easy to hit with your thumb,
despite the overall height of the phone. Nokia also has a double-tap to
wake feature, which is more convenient. It's quite accurate though we
did see the phone wake a couple of times from accidental taps.
3.5mm audio jack • microUSB port • volume rocker and power key
Battery life
The Nokia XL doesn't have a tack sharp screen or a blazing fast
chipset, but the upside of that should be good battery life. With a
2,000mAh battery we were a bit skeptical, yet the XL proved us wrong
with a 62 hour endurance rating. Note that we tested the dual-SIM
version of the phone with two SIM cards in it.
Talk time was pretty good nearly 11 hours, although the HTC Desire
600 dual sim did an hour more with a smaller battery. It's the web
browsing that was particularly impressive though, 12 hours is about as
good as we've seen (another dual-SIM HTC, the 5" Desire 700, did even
better).
It's the video playback time that let the phone down with 6 and half
hours. The video player has limited capabilities as we'll see later.
Anyway, for a dual-SIM device the Nokia XL showed excellent standby
performance. This allowed it to top both the Desire 600 and 700 in terms
of endurance rating. Check our
Battery life table for a comparison against other phones.
Interface
Android like you've never seen before
With Windows Phone, Nokia purposefully gave up control of the
platform after spending piles of cash to make Symbian competitive and
failing. Series 40 with its long history had accumulated too much
baggage along the way and lacked developer support.
That's why Nokia looked to Android - the OS was well developed, had
great developer support and was completely open for Nokia to tinker
with. The result is a custom software that mixes good ideas from the
Asha UI (Fastlane), Windows Phone (Live tiles) and Android (almost
everything else).
Nokia has brought Glance Screen on the X platform - it keeps the
display on, but in a low power mode so that it can display the time an
notifications. Glance Screen is the marketing name for the Lumia
handsets that Nokia phones (both S40 and Symbian) have had for a long
time.
Double-tapping the phone (it doesn't have to be on the screen) will
wake it just like pressing the power button will. This reveals a simple
but functional lockscreen with the time and date, plus widget-like
notifications for missed events. Depending on which side you swipe such
notification it will either take you to the relevant app (right) or
it'll be dismissed (left).
Nokia X Software Platform user interface - Glance, Lock, Home, Fastlane screens
Swiping the lockscreen itself reveals one of the two homescreens - the app drawer and the Fastlane.
The app drawer on Nokia X looks like a Windows Phone homescreen - all
apps shortcuts have the flat, two-color appearance of Live Tiles. They
are resizable and you can even change the base color of each tile.
What's different is actually none of those tiles is "live" due to the
hardware limitations of the device.
This homescreen will list of all your installed apps, so it might get
really long if you are lazy not to organize your shortcuts in folders.
There is a search field at the very top of this homescreen to help find a
shortcut or widget if it gets lost in the mess or is hiding in a folder
you forgot to check.
The app drawer homescreen • changing a tile's color • search is available too
Standard Android widgets are also supported and apps that come with a
dedicated widget, such as the BBM, will also appear in the widget menu
too. We suggest not to use too many widgets though because they may
noticeably impact the overall system performance. Another downside of
widgets is that virtually all of them were designed with Android
aesthetics in mind, not Windows Phone.
The widget list
Swiping horizontally from the app drawer will take you to the other
homescreen called Fastlane. Those of you familiar with the Asha user
interface will recognize it immediately.
Fastlane keeps track of all your recent activity, opened apps go
there, recent web pages, along with contacts you've called, messages and
emails, calendar events (birthdays, to-dos), recently installed apps,
recently shared content, recently taken notes and pictures, radio
stations, and even social network posts, replies, likes and goings-on.
The music player and the FM radio, if active, will also appear here.
Fastlane homescreen • Personalizing Fastlane
Fastlane is basically a mix between an app switcher, notification
area and a history list. It can be personalized from the Settings menu
where you can opt out of some of the services and notifications in case
you are getting overloaded with content.
The Settings menu
Items from the Fastlane can be dismissed by long pressing the screen
and hitting one of the X buttons that appear. This way you can dismiss
both apps and other items here.
Note that the single button below the screen is a back button, but if
you long press it, it will jump straight to the homescreen, bypassing
other screens you might have visited.
There is a separate notification area, which you can pull down form
the status bar. It shows notifications for missed events and quick
toggles for sound profiles, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and mobile data.
The Notification area • A contextual menu
Contextual menus, if available, are marked with three short
horizontal lines at the bottom. They areaccessible by swiping up from
the bottom of the display, just like the notification area.
The so-called Nokia X platform 1.0.1 UI is based on Android 4.1 Jelly
Bean. The core of Android may be unchanged and relatively old, but at
least it got in on Project Butter. There's not much processing power to
spare on the Nokia X so Butter is essential.
Performance is good, though not as snappy as Android on a more
powerful chipset (especially a newer Android version). We examine
performance in more detail on the next page.
Performance
The Nokia XL has a dual-core processor but that suggests a higher
caliber chipset than it has in reality. The Qualcom MSM8225 Snapdragon
S4 Play is an old generation Snapdragon with two Cortex-A5 cores at 1GHz
and Adreno 203 GPU.
The XL has 768MB RAM, more than the Nokia X and some recent
entry-level Androids (like the Sony Xperia XL), but that still doesn't
count for much.
We start off with the usual - processor benchmarks. Here the Nokia XL
isn't last, but only because there's the Nokai X below it. Cortex-A7
devices like the Xperia E1 and Galaxy Grand Neo (dual and quad-core
respectively) pull clearly ahead.
Connectivity
The Nokia X supports quad-band GSM/EDGE on both SIM cards and
dual-band 3G networks on its primary SIM card. Either SIM can be used
for a data connection, but you can't use both.
Again, note that only the SIM1 slot has 3G, so it's best to put the
card with the data plan there. There you get HSDPA speeds up to 7.2Mbps
and HSUPA up to 5.76Mbps. With SIM2 you're stuck at EDGE speeds. If you
have the single-SIM version, you don't need to worry about card
placement, of course.
Then there's Wi-Fi b/g/n, which will get you fast data speeds and it
doesn't eat into your data plan. Bluetooth 3.0 with EDR handles things
like wireless hands-free dongles but also local file sharing.
The Nokia XL uses a microUSB port for both data connections and
charging. There is no USB on-the-go support, though. Both USB and
Bluetooth can be used to share the phone's data connection with a PC,
the usual Wi-Fi hotspot option is available too.
And finally, there's the standard 3.5mm audio jack.
Source
GSM Arena (Design 8.1/10, Features 7.9/10, Performance 7.8/10) -
May 02, 2014
Official Website
