Nokia X3 Specs and Features

Yeah, we understand that for some of us the price tag of the Nokia X6 multimedia smartphone is just too high. But there’s an alternative if you are still insisted to get a brand new Nokia Xseries phone, and here it is, the Nokia X3. The current price is £10-per-month, 24-month contract. You can also pick it up for around £90 on a pay-as-you-go deal, or £120 SIM-free. So what we have here is a Nokia X3 review, and we will talk about the X3’s design, X3’s screen, X3′ s OS, X3 features, X3 specs etc. So let’s just start, shall we?

We’ve talked about the Nokia X3 Specs and Features, so let’s just skip it and go to the design part.

Nokia X3 Design Review

The Nokia X3 has a rather similar nuance of design compared to the Nokia X6. Whereas the X6 is an all-singing, all-dancing touchscreen device with the bare minimum of physical controls, the X3 is a pretty traditional slider phone with a small screen and no 3G or Wi-Fi support.

Series 40 has plenty of other neat features, but its clunky design makes it feel rather dated. At least moving through the menus has been made pretty straightforward, thanks to the phone’s large direction pad. Although the keys on the slide-out keypad are very flat, they’re actually quite responsive, so it’s fairly easy to quickly tap out long text messages.

Nokia X3 Screen Review

In fact, even by slider-phone standards, the X3’s 56mm (2.2-inch) screen is pretty tiny. Its low resolution of just 240×320 pixels isn’t great either, but it’s the viewing angle that is its most annoying limitation. Turn it slightly to the left or right, and colours look either very dark or completely washed-out.

Nokia X3 OS and UI (Symbian)

The X3 uses Nokia’s Series 40 software, rather than the more advanced Series 60 operating system that you’ll find on X6. The version of Series 40 used on the X3 has, however, been updated to support the Ovi Store, letting you buy and download new applications directly from the handset.

Nokia X3 Music Features

The X3 is primarily being promoted as a music phone, so it’s no surprise to find a column of dedicated music buttons lined up vertically to the left of the display. These give you quick access to the track-skip and play/pause controls.

There’s also a standard 3.5mm headphone jack at the top of the phone, so you can easily swap the included headphones for your own cans if you want. The supplied headphones aren’t all that bad, however. They offer decent bass response and, although they’re rather lacking when it comes to the higher frequencies, you can compensate for this slightly using the music player’s equaliser control.

The music player actually looks rather basic, but it’s pretty simple to use. Songs are sorted into the usual album, artist and track-title categories. Album art is also supported, although there’s no flashy navigation feature, as there is on the iPhone, with its Cover Flow feature, and some other recent touchscreen handsets.

Nokia X3 Camera review

Unfortunately, the phone’s camera is rather disappointing. It’s only got a 3.2-megapixel resolution and, while colours in photos captured outdoors look rich and vibrant, the lack of a flash means indoor shots are very dark and grainy. There’s no autofocus either, so you have to be quite careful when framing your photos to avoid camera blur.

Calling quality and Battery life

If there’s one area where Nokia phones usually excel, it’s call quality, but the company has dropped the ball with the X3. Even though we tried the phone in a number of strong-signal areas, call quality was mediocre at best, and downright awful at worst. Sometimes, even with full signal strength, callers would sound overly robotic, as if the signal were breaking up.

At least the X3’s battery life isn’t bad. We got around three days out of it before it needed to be topped up with juice.

Nokia X3 Review Conclusion

Well, let’s just say the phone specs and features can’t make us jumping off our chair. The lack of 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity is still acceptable, due to its low price. However, the low call quality and poor display are quite disappointments for me. The phone just stands as a good music phone, not a great one.