Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Camera
As with any phone at this price point the Nokia X has a very basic camera, which is understable. It is 3MP fixed focus camera with no special modes and it doesn't have a HDR mode. But it is not completely unworthy.
The interface is very simple with a capture button, a zoom slider white balance and exposure controls. There is no touch to focus control, as it is a fixed focus camera. You also cannot lock the auto exposure to a particular point in the frame either.
Switching to video recording or the panorama shot mode is very simple with just a touch of the camera icon in the bottom corner.
Panoramas are captured automatically; you just start the recording and move the phone through 360 degrees. It will tell you on screen if you are moving too quickly. The end results are fairly poor though.
The maximum video resolution is just 854 x 480 but the Nokia X actually does a pretty good job. As it cannot adjust focus, video is very stable and it puts more expensive handsets to shame. If only the capturing resolution was a bit higher.
Videos can be saved in various formats as well which is a nice touch and MPEG4 is included, making sharing easy.
When taking pictures, you can set the ISO manually, tweak the saturation, contrast and sharpness. Images are captured at a maximum resolution of 2048 x 1536 which is a 4:3 aspect ratio. Generally image quality is low, but it will be ok for sharing to a social network.
There is no front facing camera and there is no flash on the back, so all we have is the basic rear shooter.
Click here for the full res image.
Click here for the full res image.
Click here for the full res image.
Click here for the full res image.
Media
With its support for microSD cards plenty of music and videos can be easily stored on the Nokia X. Playing them back involves using some very basic but functional built in apps.
The music player organises your music by artist, album or song and has a nice now playing screen, which shows album art too.
The artwork and basic controls are also shown on the lock screen, which looks great though you lose the large clock to make room for this information.
There is a simple five band equaliser and a bass boost and 3D effect slider to adjust how things sound.
The problem is that sound output through headphones is of average quality at best and using the equaliser and other effects leads to distortion more than anything. I found using these effects to be a big battery drain as well and just not worth the trouble.
The Nokia X has no video player as such, but browsing to a video file using the pre-installed Astro file manager app will open a video player with scrubbing controls and not much else. Video playback works absolutely fine with the standard set of Android formats supported.
There are no options for purchasing media of any type installed on the Nokia X, but Nokia MixRadio is provided which allows for free streaming of music. You can only skip six tracks per hour though.
There doesn't appear to be an option to purchase MixRadio+, which gives unlimited track skipping, and unlimited offline mixes, but at least there is some option on there. The MixRadio music selection is very wide and the app works very well indeed.
With a small and relatively low-resolution screen combined with a poor internal specifications, gaming is not the Nokia X's forte. Simple games like Angry Birds play well enough but anything heavier causes frame rates to drop.
