Nokia X3 Review

NOKIA X3

The Nokia X3 is our first glimpse into the new Xseries and we’re excited to see how things have changed since XpressMusic ran the show. And they have changed, the new angular look is a testament to that. The S40 on the inside has changed as well, throwing Ovi Store and basic multi-tasking into the mix.



Currently the Xseries is composed of two completely different phones. The Nokia X6 is a touch phone running Symbian, and the X3 is an affordable Series 40 slider. It packs stereo speakers, excellent audio quality and a built-in FM radio antenna for a complete sonic experience. All right, we said affordable, so don’t go looking for top-notch gear beside the obvious full music package.


Nokia X3 introduces us to the Xseries

The Nokia X3 runs the Series 40 6th edition but it’s unlike any S40 handset we’ve seen before. For a brief, joyful moment, we thought Nokia have finally given in and added multitasking. The truth turned out to be different but still there were small steps taken in the right direction. And you should see what they’ve done with the Gallery – it’s only a notch bellow the S60 one.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and let’s take a look at the Nokia X3 pros and cons.
Key features

* Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
* 2.2" 262K color QVGA display
* 3.2 megapixel fixed focus camera
* S40 user interface, 6th edition; rudimentary multitasking
* Stereo FM radio with RDS; Built-in antena (so it plays on the loudspeakers even if you don’t plug the headset)
* Stereo speakers
* Standard 3.5mm audio jack
* Up to 26 hours of music playback
* Bluetooth (with A2DP) and microUSB port
* microSD card slot (16 GB supported, 2GB included)
* Rich preinstalled application package
* Ovi Store, Ovi Maps and Ovi Share

Main disadvantages:

* No 3G connectivity
* Smallish display with poor viewing angles and sunlight legibility
* Slider action has an unpleasant plastic-on-plastic friction
* No accelerometer for screen auto rotation
* S40 interface feels clunky and out of date
* No true multitasking
* No smart dialing or an office document viewer
* A bunch of software bugs
* Video recording maxes out at QCIF@15fps

The specs look like nothing to be excited about but a shortish feature list never tells the whole story. So, think before you go “Nah, it sounds lame”, because you’ll be wrong about sound. We spent several days with it and now we’re ready to tell you the story behind those specs, the good, the bad and the ugly, the whole thing.

Final words

We have to admit the Nokia X3 is a tough sell, and that has almost nothing to do with the competition. In fact, there are only few top manufacturers that take music phones as seriously as Nokia. So, whether it’s XpressMusic or X3 (we like that one better), Nokia phones are having a ball. But there are so many of them scattered across different price ranges and platforms that any newcomer inevitably risks not getting enough attention.

The X3 ventures to offer many nice UI features such as active standby, threaded messaging, Ovi Contacts, Maps for S40, the new image gallery and the Ovi Store and it’s a versatile portable music player with an accent on FM radio among everything else. But it does look sloppy – both in terms of hardware and software.

Even if you look past the bad slider (maybe we just got a bad sample), it’s hard not to balk at that poor display. And what about loudness – a Below Average result from the loudspeaker of a music phone? Sure, music sounds quite good on it, but only if you can hear it.

On the software part we wish we saw real multitasking on S40. Competing manufacturers have long offered that on their feature phones. A document viewer wouldn’t have hurt either. Some social networking integration won’t be bad too.

And there are also the the software bugs that irked us. Getting an app for your highly promoted service that doesn’t work properly straight out of the box looks kinda bad to us.

Sure, we quite liked the Nokia X3 for its musical prowess, but the competition is tough, so we have to wonder if the X3 will make its mark or will it just be the Nokia X6 rouge brother that nobody in the family likes to talk about.

So let’s break it down for you as we see it. Close to that price range the Nokia 6303 classic can match the Nokia X3 spec for spec, and it even has an autofocus camera with a LED flash and VGA@15fps video recording. It’s more compact and has some metal on the body. On paper, the screen is the same size and resolution, but in reality, it’s much better. On the downside, it only has one speaker, comes with a 1GB microSD card, supporting only 4GB cards. But, the Nokia 6303 classic is cheaper.

Nokia 6303 classic

The Nokia 5235 Comes With Music is another option – a 3.2” touchscreen of 360x640 pixel resolution, 3G with 3.6Mbps HSDPA, Symbian skills and a built-in GPS. Oh, and 12 to 16 months of free subscription to the Comes With Music service, which means you can download all the music you want without paying a penny. If you already have a big music collection, you can just go for the Nokia 5230, which loses the 3G and GPS for Wi-Fi and a slimmer profile.

Nokia 5235 Comes With Music • Nokia 5230 • They look exactly the same

And here’s a previous generation Nokia music phone – the 5630 XpressMusic. It’s small, it weighs 83g, runs Symbian on a fast 600MHz CPU, has 3G with 10.2Mbps HSDPA and 2Mbps HSUPA, Wi-Fi and though it costs more, it comes with a 4GB microSD card. It’s also got the audio quality to match.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic

All told, we can’t help but wonder if the Nokia X3 is not an old, forgotten design Nokia stumbled upon and decided to dust off. There are better phones on the market already, so the prognosis for the Nokia X3 doesn’t look good. But Symbian and touchscreen are not everyone’s cup of tea, so a new generation music feature phone can hope to do reasonably well in the lower midrange. And the Nokia X3 price tag is an important ingredient in the mix.