Nokia X3 is one of the last slider phones from the Finnish mobile giant.
It is also the first phone in Nokia’s X series, which is a continuation
of the old XpressMusic series.
The design is pretty ordinary and the mobile we have for testing are in
blue and silver finish. The phone is available in red and black version
also. The size must be described as average. X3 will probably fit in
most pockets.
About buttons, there is a row of music keys next to the screen. In
addition, you will find the volume keys and camera key on the side of
the phone. Apart from this, the phone is equipped with the usual
suspects, ie numeric keypad, navigation keys and answer/hang up keys.
The numeric keypad is, as we have seen in several previous models, in a
whole piece. This tends to mean that it is impossible to know where your
fingers are on the keyboard. Nokia has set the keys so deep that you
notice how good you are on the mat.
Everything is not fine what keyboard concerns. Although one can detect
well the numbers finger is above – it seems that dividing the disc are
worse. There are in fact a little too easy to miss on the small keys,
even if you apparently press in the right place.
Lousy video
Another thing the Finns has not been to quite so well on the X3 is the
screen. On the basis of the specifications, it has a very good
resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. The screen is still failed by a terrible
bad viewing angle. Once you turn on the phone changes the color grade.
From the wrong angle, it is simply difficult to see anything on the
screen. This makes it as difficult to show off my pictures that took at
the party without leaving both the phone and grading responsibilities
for the one showing the pictures to.
Plastic construction
It is constructed almost entirely plastic. Some metals are found in the
back of the screen and on the numeric keypad. Besides this the rest is
plastic. Our blue version looks a bit like it is trying to fit into a
modern kitchen.
Despite the fact that the color can be described as a kind of offspring
of brushed steel, both looks and feels well that Bosch and Electrolux
have better control on the kitchen palette than Nokia does. It ends up
happy to be a matter of opinion, but we are inclined to believe that the
black version just looks less plastic-like print.
Menus
On the menu page Nokia X3 sets with the standard recipe. In sleep mode,
you can partly see the current status of e-mail client or the next task
in the calendar. These menus have not been significant in the recent
past. They will possibly be described as boring by someone, but they are
still functional and easy to find your way in.
Messages
Nokia’s system for messaging is increasingly simple and straightforward.
It is at all like little has changed on that front lately. A positive
thing is that the little strange dictionary from S60 mobile is not
located here. This means that the dictionary does contain a lot of words
you need from day one, and that it does not blindly try to help you
with words of varying lengths when it has run out of words to suit the
number of letters you have written. Thus the keypad feels somewhat
inaccurate pull down the user experience at the message fine things.
This could go a lot faster with a bigger and better keyboard. Initially,
we mentioned that we know well the difference between the keys – it
helps, but it does not help. Without the well-marked stripes between the
keys had been virtually impossible to hit the correct keys on the
keyboard.
In the box
In the sales package, we find the things we expect to find a mobile
phone these days:
- Phone
- Battery
- Chargers
- 2GB card
- Hands-free with soft earplugs and answer button
- Micro-USB cable
- User manual and CD with software
On the technology front, the X3 is modestly equipped. You will not find
3G or super-3G here. Wireless network and GPS are also in short supply.
This is so far not something we expect to find in a phone call at about
$200.
What we find on the equipment list includes the standard ports. Here is
the Micro-USB and mini-jack in question. One needs therefore to look up
if a blue cable should fail with, since most of standard equipment will
fit.
Even if your phone follow the standards in relation to the connection we
choose still out micro-USB for the benefit of memory card reader when
the files to be transferred. To move about 1 GB of files to the phone
thinks apparently time tags in Windows that half an hour is acceptable
speed.
Once we go over to the memory card reader is speed far more comfortable.
The same amount of data uses not more than about five minutes to land
on the memory card with this method.
Internet
The phone is equipped with pre-installed Opera Mini in addition to
Nokia’s own browser based on Webkit. Both work fine on your custom
pages. In the full web experienced, however Opera Mini works
dramatically faster.
The first thing we tried to do was to update to Opera Mini 5. We were
simply not allowed by the phone, and got the message "Invalid
application for service" we actually give up the attempt.
Because the phone is not equipped with any of the quick surf
technologies, that’s the fastest speed EDGE. EDGE feels a bit like
trampling around in the syrup when you’re used to faster speeds.
Despite the fact that we did not get upgraded Opera Mini its still the
most important place in the Opera Mini 4.2 which included – namely,
speed.
Of other features that may be mentioned is a very nice e-mail client.
There are however some specific that it seems as if one here goes out of
rest of the phone’s menu system and into something completely
different. The client who manages Google’s Gmail solution like for
instance far more on something Google has made itself, than the rest of
Nokia’s S40’s menu system.
Basic Functionality
Sound quality during conversation is smooth. It is not particularly bad,
but with the volume on max, there is little to go on in a noisy
environment, or if you have some bad hearing. In some cases, we noticed
some echo during the conversation, but for the most part the quality was
good without any harsh or other sonic problems.
The phone is noticeably slow at times, especially in places where we do
not, strictly speaking expect slowness. For example, sometimes look and
often the phone to a halt during the input of telephone numbers. The
natural reaction for many will be pressing on, in case the phone is not
considered a key press. But when the phone is recovered it appear
suddenly all the numbers you have entered up.
Like most slider phones have been with X3 opportunity to add on, clap
your phone. This is also the default setting, and answering of calls
happening as well by opening the phone.
We noted that the threshold for adding the middle of a conversation was
extremely low. From other Nokia’s models, we have learned that you
should be on track to add up the phone before it actually breaks the
conversation. With the X3 you should not press the phone a lot together
before the call is lost. On several occasions we experienced to be
broken in midway through the conversation because the phone was shoved a
few inches along, such as during a change of grip.
It will thus have very little movement in the sliding mechanism to
before the phone hangs up a call. Thus we experienced as a very
impractical solution, and there should have been placed far greater
margins. Since one does not expect it to so little, it took on several
cases, even a little while before we all discovered that the call was
lost.
It emerges clearly from the list of games that this is a phone that is
primarily directed at young people or others with high needs to be
entertained. Some of the games are also so addictive that they risk
becoming stuck in them for days.
Games
The City Bloxx game has grown to become a relative classic since it
appeared in, among other things, the models 5310 and 5610 from Nokia is
back after a of couple years. The game manages art piece to be for those
who play a little now and then, while still satisfying those who use
the weeks and months to improve. And here is the potential for
improvement that is always great, and much depends on what kind of
tactics you start to play with.
Block is a classic puzzle game where the task is to clear the largest
possible area of the screen to get the most points. Simple and fun for
those who like Tetris and Bejeweled.
Diamond Rush is something as rare as a kind of adventure games for
mobile phones. Here one must collect diamonds and other gems in a
two-dimensional world. The Bounce Tales game is a 2D sidescroller in the
direction of Super Mario, but with a ball instead of the photo plumber.
Rally Stars and Snake III is expected to be a racing game and another
variant of the good old Snake game. Guitar Rock Tour is something
similar to all the known party games, most of us prefer to play in the
living room.
In all, most of the games works well and there are quite a few hours of
entertainment to get here. The biggest problem is, however, that the
keys are so bad that one will be simply struggling to make correctly. In
addition to making the weak screen, it sometimes is difficult to see
what’s going on. It all works, but it could be worked so much better
with small improvements.
Music
The phone has a great music player that is easy to find your way in. It
is also very quick when it comes to keeping track of your music
collection. Often we see the players who have to think about a little
while after the first boot when you’ve updated your phone.
Here we were actually sitting to wait a little while in anticipation of
the update screen which usually shows up. It turned out that the player
was responsive from the start, and had already overview of the music on
the memory card. Good!
The interface is fairly intuitive, as I said. At one point it separates
from many other players. It is not unusual that one would like to take a
lap through the music library while a song is played. On other phones,
it is common to find a button that takes you to that which played in the
moment.
We will not find such a button in the X3. Instead, we used the back
button in practice to function as select mode between the library and
playback screen. This is continued in the fingers and is a system that,
if possible, is even easier to make than to have a separate button for
the playback screen.
Sound quality is good. Both the top and bottom are relatively
uncluttered submitted, a stereo perspective is in place – if not
endless, and the phone has forces it to operate relatively large
headphones fine. This is in no way a reference what portable audio
concerns, but it does the job with ease.
Video
Due to monitor the quality of video is actually the last thing you want
to look at this. Nevertheless, it comes with some sample videos
preloaded. Format support should also be relatively straightforward,
with both H.264 and WMV on the menu. It is thus not a big challenge to
get the movie to fit on your phone. Conversion to WMV at low resolution
and bit rate is needed for the whole useful results.
In addition to the display’s limited quality its also the phone’s speed
at a disadvantage. Video is rare on credible speeds on the small screen.
The picks are not so sound and picture is out of sync, but it seems
that the phone drop photos along the way.
The phone records video in the so-called QCIF resolution. This is very
low resolution, and days and years away from HD. The video is of about
176 x 144 pixels and with an impressive 15 frames per second.
In practice, this is little useful for anything other than the very
simplest video clips for MMS use. The solution works, but for most
purposes, one can forget the wide recording with X3.
In all, one can say that it is easy to get video onto the phone, but we
do not have the correct belief that so many will want it. Screen size,
picture quality and playback speed makes the phone unsuitable for this,
despite the good format support.
Radio
Radio has long been a common thing in mobile phones. For many of the
simplest phones have built-in FM radio that has been virtually the only
multimedia element. How well it works, we will get back to – but this
works ie without antenna.
Anyone who has tried to listen to the radio through a wireless handsfree
knows what this is about. Mobile manufacturers have managed to put in
place both inter precisely dated station listings and RDS long before
the internal antenna has been applicable.
The X3 has thus come with a little bit longer. You can listen to the
radio without having a set of headphones connected, but the radio sound
can not get into the wireless hands-free solutions. This is because the
radio section is quite similar and not plugged into the digital
circuitry in the phone.
Still one must therefore use built in handsfree radio kit if you want to
be able to use both radio and Bluetooth simultaneously. The purpose
here is therefore to be able to listen to the audio via the phone’s
internal speaker. This works fairly satisfactory.
Camera
Nokia X3 is equipped with a camera of 3.2 megapixels. There is no auto
focus, and we expect really not at such a reasonable phone. What we get
instead is something in the Nokia product sheets called "enhanced fixed
focus".
Directly translated thus has this phone and improved fixed focus. We can
unfortunately not find many redeeming qualities at the camera feature.
In the dusk the images are almost unusable. Indoor photos are totally on
the edge of the usable.
The most remarkable is the reason that the phone has major problems in
what is for most other cameras can be called good lighting conditions.
The test pictures we snapped with all automatic on, and the fair, you
can turn off a lot of it.
Anyway, we had assumed that the phone should be able to handle regular
outdoor pictures in full daylight. Instead, virtually the entire image
burned out, and some contrasts in the sky, only to forget to look.
It’s nice to see that the resolution has gone up also on the phones a
bit down in price classes, but we preferred a jump in picture quality
over many more pixels with the same poor quality.
Another annoyance is that the sound stops as the camera starts. It is
certainly not allowed to listen to music while taking photos. Why this
happens is uncertain.
Specification
Physical features, power and memory
Size
- Form: Slide
- Dimensions: 96.0 x 49.3 x
14.1 mm - Weight: 103 g
- Volume: 65.8 cc
Display and 3D
- Size:
2.2" - Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels (QVGA)
- Up to
262,144 colours - Active matrix technology
Keys
and input method
- Numeric keypad
- Combined Send-End Keys, dedicated Music Keys, volume and camera key
- Voice commands
Colours and covers
- Available in-box colours:
– Red/black
– Blue/silver
Connectors
- Bluetooth version 2.1 with stereo audio
profiles (A2DP and AVRCP) - High-Speed USB 2.0 (micro-USB
connector) - 3.5 mm Nokia AV connector (audio only)
- 2 mm
charging connector
Memory
- microSD memory card slot, hot swap, max. 16
GB
Power
- BL-4CT
860 mAh Li-Ion standard battery - Talk time: GSM up to 7.5 h
- Stand by time: GSM up to 380 h
- Music playback time
(maximum): 26 h
Environmental features
- Energy efficiency: Unplug charger reminder,
High Efficiency Charger AC-8 - Eco content and services: Eco zone
via Download!/Ovi store - Materials: Free of PVC, brominated
& clorados compounts and antimony trioxide as defined in Nokia
Substance List - Recycling: Device is up to 80 % recyclable
- Packaging:
Up to 60 % recycled material, 100 % recyclable - User manual:
Black & white printing, Eco tips on Green Page
Communication and navigation
Operating frequency
- Quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900
- Automatic switching between GSM bands
- Flight mode
Data network
- GPRS class A, multislot class 32
- EDGE
- TCP/IP support
Local connectivity and synchronisation
- Bluetooth version 2.1 with Enhanced Data Rate
- Support for PC synchronisation with Nokia PC Suite
Service
- Speaker-independent name dialling (SIND)
Call features
- Integrated handsfree speakerphone
- Automatic answer with headset or car kit
- Any key answer
- Call waiting, call hold, call divert
- Call duration display
- Logging of dialled, received and missed calls
- Automatic redial
- Speed dialling
- Vibrating alert (internal)
- Side volume keys
- Mute/unmute
- Contacts with images
Messaging
- SMS in conversational view with support for concatenated SMS for
long messages - MMS version 1.3, message size up to 600 kb
- Nokia Xpress audio messaging
-
Messaging:
– "Instant messaging"
– "Windows Live support (requires download of Windows Live Messenger
application)"
Web browsing
- Supported mark-up languages: XHTML
- TCP/IP support
Image and sound
Photography
- 3.2 megapixel camera
- Image formats: JPEG
- CMOS sensor
- 4x digital zoom
- Full Focus
- Focal length: 2.4 mm
- Focus range: 50 cm to infinity
- Automatic, daylight, incandescent, fluorescent
- Capture modes: still, self-timer, video
- Colour tone modes: normal, false colours, greyscale, sepia,
negative, solarise - Full-screen viewfinder
- Active toolbar
- Dedicated capture key, volume for zoom
- Landscape (horizontal) orientation
- Portrait (vertical) orientation
Video
- Main camera
– Video recording at up to 176 x 144 pixels (QCIF) and up to 15 fps
– Up to 4x digital video zoom - Video recording file formats: .3gp, MPEG-4; codecs H.264
- Audio recording formats: AMR-NB
- Video white balance modes: automatic, daylight, incandescent,
fluorescent - Colour tone modes: normal, false colours, greyscale, sepia,
negative, solarise - Standard S40 video player
- Video playback file formats: .3gp, .mp4, .avi, .asf.; codecs:
H.263, H.264, MPEG-4, WMV9 - Video streaming: .3gp, .rm
- Landscape mode video playback
Music and audio playback
- Music Player
- Dedicated music keys
- Stereo FM radio with RDS support
- 3.5 mm stereo headphone plug
- Nokia Ovi Player
- Nokia Music Store support
- Ring tones: mp3, midi, 64-tone polyphonic
- Integrated stereo speakers
- Navi wheel support
Voice and audio recording
- Voice commands
- Voice recorder
Personalisation: profiles, themes, ring tones
- Ring tones: mp3, midi, 64-tone polyphonic
- Video ring tones
- Themes:
– animated wallpapers
– screensavers
– colour schemes
– ring tones
Conclusion
Nokia X3 is the first slider phone in the X series focusing on music and
entertainment. In particular, the music makes the phone absolutely
honest effort on what sound quality concerns. The player itself is also
very good and easy to use. There are two things that really destroy the
experience with the X3. In the first instance it is a terrible screen
where the colors change character after every little millimeter to move
the phone. This makes the phone despite a capable list of supported film
formats are quite useless for video viewing. The phone is not fast for
the video display. The other problem is that the keyboard is anything
but easy to use. The keyboard is in a whole piece, but there is a
relatively high edge on it, which makes one expect that the keys will be
easy to hit. Very often in both messaging and gaming experiences you
will press multiple keys at the same time, despite the finger hits the
more or less right on the key you have aimed for. It does not matter
what the resolution of the camera is, the camera is in practice useless.
Resolution and frame rate of video recording is very low. Video clips
are suitable just to use MMS, but not too much else. Like any good youth
telephone, X3 also has a good bunch of games without of the box. Most
of these are of fairly good quality, and one can spend large amounts of
time with some of them. Among other things, City Bloxx is wonderful
pastime. Sound quality during conversation is quite straightforward. The
volume of the full-milling is the lowest layer and can be problematic
in noisy environments or if you are struggling with hearing.
Occasionally experienced slight echo during calls, but apart from that
we have no other hens to pick with the sound quality during
conversation.
Nokia X3 does not cost much. It can be much compared to similar priced
phones, and at least on paper is the specification list for such a
reasonable telephone impressive. It is still very basic functionality
that falls through, and thus becomes the grade then. The options for the
same specification list in the same price range are not as many, but
the functional screen and keyboard, we believe nevertheless is more
important than many features.
