After much heavy rumor,
Nokia has just announced that it's launching its first Android handsets: the X,
X+ and XL.
In terms of
specs, all three will have a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, dual
SIM, microSD support and 1500mAh battery. The X has: a 4-inch IPS LCD display
(800 x 480), 512MB RAM, 3MP camera and will be available in green, black,
white, yellow, cyan and red. The X+ is similar but offers 768MB RAM and a 4GB
MicroSD card. Finally, the Nokia XL has a larger 5-inch display (800 x 480),
768MB RAM, 5MP rear-facing camera and front-facing 2MP camera.
During the
Mobile World Congress presentation, Steve Elop explained that users will
"benefit from the Android apps and ecosystem, but we have
differentiated." Essentially that means that there will plenty of
Microsoft and Nokia apps included from the get go. Skype, for instance, will be
preinstalled, and offer users 1 month of free calls to landlines and mobiles,
and Nokia's navigation apps will feature, too.
More
importantly, the phones take people to Microsoft's cloud, not Google's. Indeed,
it seems Nokia is distancing itself from Google as much as possible with these
Android devices, and Elop went as far as saying that the "Nokia X together
with Lumia represents a deliberate strategy to leverage Microsoft
services." There will, though, be plenty—"hundreds of thousands at
launch," apparently—of conventional Android apps available through a
Nokia-specific app store. SwiftKey, the swypey keyboard, will be available on
the X range for free.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the UI of the X range looks like a blend of Windows Phone and Android: there's a glance screen just like the company's Windows Phone models, and colorful tile-like home screen where apps sit in brightly colored bars. But there's the same familiar Android notification bar across the top, and some subtly tweaked folders and widgets that mirror Google's OS, too.
Interestingly,
despite the Microsoft focus, you will be able to sideload apps—including those
made by Google, in fact, any APK—though some may, apparently, need recompiling
to run properly on Nokia's forked version of the OS.
Price, you ask?
Well, Steve Elop was keen to point out that the X range is designed to be more
affordable than the Lumia range, both now and in the the future. The phone will
be "broadly available globally", starting in growth markets, and
they'll cost $125 for the X, $135 for the X+, and $150 for the XL.
They're certainly
cheap, then, but it's hard to say whether that represents good value or not.
Let's wait and see when we get our hands on one.
Source: GIZMODO
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