Introduction
Nokia is trying really hard to build back some lost trust. The new Symbian^3 smartphones are just one weapon in their armory. The other is the touch-enabled lineup of feature phones called Touch and Type. S40 has never before been into the touch business, but the X3-02 is here to change all that.
You have the right to remain skeptical. In fact a healthy does of skepticism is welcome – this market just might not have enough room for yet another touchscreen feature phone. And it’s a S40 phone at that. But you know what – the Nokia X3-02 will not listen to doubters. It’s a phone whose glass is always half full. Half full with touchscreen and half full with keys.
Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type official photos
The Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type doesn’t rely on its touchscreen only but on good looks and charm too. It comes in four different colors and has a redesigned keypad. That’s right, Nokia refuses to give up on the good old numeric keypad and it will be an essential companion on the X3-02.
So, you have the touch, and you have the type. There’s the right measure of style too. But that’s not always enough for a classy phone. People want features as well. So, let’s take a closer look at them.
Key features
Main disadvantages
There are quite a few things left off of this S40 handset, but it’s the first with a touchscreen on board. Wi-Fi is a rarity on this platform too. In fact we’ll admit quite ahead of our conclusion – we do like the Nokia X3-02 already.
The Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type Dark Metal and White Silver versions all over
But it’ll take more than that. You’ll have to simply love it. You’ll have to not notice the bad. One thing the Nokia X3-02 won’t give you is multitasking. Another important absentee is GPS and navigation. We just can’t have everything, can we? That might be quite an omission for some, but we hope the performance and ergonomics will make up for that. Let’s see how those shape up right after the jump.
Down to earth retail package
The Nokia X3-02 retail package is simple and to the point. All the basics are covered and that’s that.
The modest retail package
There is a charger, the familiar tiny Nokia microUSB cable (market dependent), a cheap-looking one-piece headset and some paperwork. No bundled microSD card this time.
Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type 360-degree spin
The Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type measures 106.2 x 48.4 x 9.6 mm (a volume of 45.3 cc), which makes for a pretty compact phone. It’s a remarkably slim set – we need to give it that.
Design and construction
The debut of Symbian on touchscreen was less than inspiring in terms of design. One would think S40 could’ve been treated even worse. But you can stop worrying about those things right now – the Nokia X3-02 is an excellent performer and quite a looker.In a way, the X3-02 is trying to earn the approval of some of the best looking phones S40 has to offer. The platform is home to some of the all-time hottest handsets. Think the 6500 and 6700 classic, the Luna and the Sirocco. Do we even need to mention the Arte series? The truth is, the Nokia X3-02 more than makes sense in such a distinguished company.
The X3-02 is a small, lightweight and stylish handset which trades on a classic design. Budget or not, the phone doesn’t feel and look cheap at all, in fact quite the opposite. It’s made of high-quality plastics and is solid, well-built and attracts no fingerprints. Oh, and there’s a touch of metal on the rear cover. That’s the way a phone should behave.
The 2.4" resistive TFT touchscreen takes the upper half of the front panel of the Nokia X3-02. It has QVGA resolution and can display up to 256K colors. Despite its decent brightness, the image quality is nothing to write home about.
The 2.4-inch display is OK
Since it’s a touch phone with a numpad, we can’t expect a lot from the screen. It still managed to impress us tough. Its touch sensitivity is good enough. The sunlight legibility is also decent, but not perfect.
Friendly size and weight were a priority – making the most of the keypad and touchscreen is obviously a challenge in a package so small. The Nokia X3-02 is an effectively compact and lightweight handset with a great keypad. The limited screen size is the only thing users should consider.
The 2.4” display is on the small side – for a touch phone – but otherwise reasonable for a bar-shaped feature phone. The thing is there’s no D-pad on the handset, so all the navigation takes place on the screen. Well, almost. If you’re keen on doing things the old-fashioned way, you’ll be glad to hear the Nokia X3-02 supports the intuitive menu system with numpad shortcuts. Like on almost any regular Nokia set to date – smart and feature phones alike – each icon in the main menu grid has a corresponding alphanumeric key. Combination of number keys will also let you access the deeper levels of the menu.
There is one more thing about the touchscreen – its haptic feedback is the most responsive and accurate we’ve experienced. Wherever you tap on the display, you’ll feel the vibration right under that particular spot. We don’t know exactly how Nokia manages to create the illusion of vibrations in different places, but we think it’s awesome. At times it even feels better than the great tactile feedback on the Nokia N8 and C7.
There are four keys under the display with a smooth glossy coating: two Call keys and two special buttons (Messaging and Music). They are all decently sized and with distinct press – and their finish sets them apart from the number keys for better touch orientation. They do wobble a bit though and are perhaps the weakest point of the build.
Below the control deck is the 12-key alphanumeric keypad. It uses an unusual configuration, placing the *, # and 0 keys on the left column. It’s an unusual 4 x 3 layout but we are still confident in saying that it’s among the best dial pads we’ve seen. Not that we’ve been dealing with keypads too much recently – it’s been mostly touchscreen. But anyway, the keys on the X3-02 are great in size and feel good under the thumb. The solid, even feedback is also greatly appreciated.
The keypad is reasonably comfortable • the blue backlit on the White Silver version and the white backlit on the Dark Metal one
The White Silver Nokia X3-02 has a blue backlight under the keypad, while the Dark Metal handset uses a white backlight.
The only things left to note on the front are the ambient light sensor and the earpiece at the top.
The earpiece and the ambient light sensor
The left hand side of the Nokia X3-02 has nothing but one of the battery cover latches. The other one is on the right, along with the lock key, the volume rocker and the the lanyard eyelet. Unfortunately, there is no dedicated camera key.
The bare left and the crowded right side
The top of the Nokia X3-02 features the microUSB port, the 3.5mm audio jack and the Nokia proprietary charger plug. The microUSB slot can be used for charging, and there’s even USB On-The-Go support.
There are three jacks on top
The mouthpiece is integrated in the keypad, and the loudspeaker hole is the only thing to find at the bottom.
The loudspeaker is at the bottom
The back panel of the handset features the 5 megapixel camera lens and nothing else. The camera lens has no protection against scratches save for being slightly set back in the device. That means you need to be careful handling the phone if you want the image quality to stay the same as the day you bought the handset.
The lonely 5 megapixel camera lens
Removing the steel battery cover reveals the SIM bed, the microSD card slot and the 860 mAh BL-45 Li-Ion battery. Despite the microSD card slot being under the battery cover, it’s still hot-swappable.
Quoted at up to 5 hours and 20 minutes of talk time and 408 hours of standby in 2G networks or 3 hours and 30 minutes of talk time and 408 hours of standby in 3G networks, the battery really sounds like something. Nokia also promises up to 28 hours of music playback.
Checking what’s under the hood
The build quality of the Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type is impressive and it should be one of the phone’s best selling points. We had both the White Silver and Dark Metal versions and we should say the available paintjobs is another tick in the plus box for Nokia.
The keypad may seem strange at first, but after a while it starts to feel quite natural. The X3-02 is one of the best S40 phones to date with a great compact design and shape, fitting perfectly in your palm and nearly any pocket. With a small and low-res touchscreen and a full-size numpad, it’s not a usual package. People will be right to doubt the usability but we’d like to assuage their fears: the phone is comfortable to handle. And it’s such a great looker.
The Nokia X3-02 held in hand
And now we are going to see what Nokia did with the S40 user interface.
Touch-enabled S40 looks good
The Nokia X3-02 runs the Series 40 6th edition software – the environment should be familiar to everyone now. The few things you’ll find different are the touch-optimized icons and system fonts. Besides that, everything is almost the same.Here is a demo video of the Nokia X3-02 user interface.
The vast reach of Nokia means that many people have at some point used an S40 device. But old glory aside, S40 still has important features missing and things that need polishing – even in the touch edition.
Anyway, familiarity is not a bad thing. Plus, the UI is simple and fairly intuitive so you can get going right away, you don’t need any special help or instructions to use the Nokia X3-02.
The refreshed S40 UI
Active standby mode (or Home screen mode, as Nokia call it here) is available as usual. It divides the screen into four sections that can be edited as users see fit (by tap and hold on any section). By default, the clock is on top, followed by Favorite contacts, then Music player and radio and the Shortcut bar at the bottom, which grants instant access to four favorite functions or apps.
You can customize that – rearrange things and add or replace shortcuts.
The stand-by screen
A brand new feature on S40 Touch Edition is the lockscreen. It’s pretty standard – a clock and tap-to-unlock key. A handy function is that pressing the end key while the keypad is locked, brings up a clock that shows the time and date.
The lockscreen
The main menu has only two views – Grid and List. The grid layout is handy for offering numpad shortcuts.
The Grid and List views
Multitasking support is still missing on S40. The only way around it on the X3-02 is the special Messaging and Music keys. You can launch the music player from virtually anywhere in the phone interface. If there’s an incoming call, the app will be paused while you take it. You can’t make outgoing calls unless you exit the app though. The Messaging button offers two shortcuts: New Message and Conversations.
There‘s no D-pad on the Nokia X3-02 but the soft keys are there. Only virtual this time – they’re at the bottom of the screen, and there’s a virtual Menu key between them. The soft keys are user-configurable – you can assign a shortcut of choice to each of them. We do think though, at least one of them is best left with Go To. It’s the kind of quick menu we’ve seen on many S40 handsets but touchscreen makes so much difference.
Go To is a handy quick launcher
On the X3-02 you get a 3 x 3 grid of virtual buttons serving as shortcuts to frequently used functions or apps. It’s a quick launcher of sorts that makes a lot of sense. The whole thing is fully customizable – you can set a shortcut to virtually any item in the interface. And it makes sure you don’t repeat an item that’s already in the grid. Nicely done.
Another thing to note as missing is an accelerometer. Unlike some of its S40 non-touch siblings, the Nokia X3-02 leaves out features like tap-for-time and turn-to-mute. As for screen auto rotation, it’s not badly missed we think, given the screen size. Some might still find it a nuisance though – having to manually set display orientation where it matters: in the camera viewfinder, image gallery and the video player.
Typical S40 phonebook
The phonebook of the Nokia X3-02 will store about 2000 contacts depending on the fields you use, which isn’t as good as unlimited storage but should do for 99% of the users out there. You can set the phonebook to display contacts from the phone memory, SIM memory or both.
The phonebook can be searched by gradual typing
Adding a contact is simple and straightforward – the phone asks for number, first and last name and that’s it. When you need to add other details you can always go back and edit the contact.
Each contact can be assigned a variety of fields but the phone numbers are limited to 5. First names are separated from last names, eliminating problems, which may occur with synchronization. You can assign ringtones to each contact.
Some of the available fields when editing a contact
Contacts display as a list of names with thumbs. There’s kinetic scrolling but isn’t nearly as fluid as on some of the more recent S60 touch phones. When a contact is selected shortcuts are available to make a call, send text, view conversations, etc. You can view the contact’s details or add new ones too. Tapping and holding on a contact reveals extra options such as Edit, Delete, Move or Copy.
Telephony
The reception on the Nokia X3-02 was consistently good and in-call sound was crisp and clear. The lack of smart dialing was not surprising for an S40 device. There’s no voice dialing either, nor the Voice Clarity sound enhancement feature many other S40 phones have.
Calling Dexter on Nokia X3-02
We carried out our traditional loudspeaker test to find out the Nokia X3-02 is a Good performer. You can find more details about our test, as well as the results of all other tested handsets here.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overall score | |
| Apple iPhone 4 | 65.1 | 66.2 | 60.3 | |
| Nokia C5 | 68.5 | 65.6 | 73.5 | Average |
| Nokia 5530 XpressMusic | 70.6 | 69.7 | 75.7 | Good |
| Nokia X3-02 | 75.1 | 66.6 | 75.7 | Good |
| LG KM570 Cookie Gig | 75.1 | 69.5 | 82.7 | Very Good |
| Nokia 6700 slide | 75.5 | 65.8 | 82.7 | Very Good |
| Nokia X2 | 80.2 | 75.7 | 84.7 | Excellent |
Messaging is OK
The messaging department is certainly up to the task. The Nokia X3-02 is capable of handling all the common message types including SMS, MMS, as well as flash and audio messages and there’s easy email setup, too.The keyboard on the X3-02 is up to the task and will please the heavy texters out there. Conversations view mode is here too (that’s the threaded message feature) and in fact Conversations replaces the regular Inbox.
Nokia X3-02 messaging app
The editor is well organized and you won’t spend too much time finding your way around. Nokia has added four new virtual controls due to the lack of D-pad – two arrow keys, letter case switch and symbols. Of course you can tap to move the cursor wherever you want, but you’ll still need those two arrows for precise positioning. The symbol and letter case features are also available from the numpad, so there is no real need of them on the screen.
When composing the message there’s a character counter and message part counter available and when you’re done you pick the recipient from the contacts list, the recently used numbers, the call log or contact groups. You can have a favorite contact too (just one).
And of course, you can enter the number manually if it’s not on any of those lists.
The email client does pretty well to meet most user needs. It works with POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4 protocols and supports multiple email accounts. The email client supports SSL, which enables it to handle a Gmail account for example.
The email client is pretty good
Setting up the email client was extremely easy. It just required an email address and entering and confirming the password – the Nokia X3-02 took care of the rest.
The new gallery is definitely better
The S40 Gallery app was trying to be too many things at once and being a photo gallery wasn’t among its strong points. Now, there’s a separate icon in the main menu – Photos, which serves the one and only purpose of viewing the photos and videos on your phone.The functionality is pretty much the same, but at least the Photo gallery gets rid of the cruft of file managing features and leaves only the image-related stuff in.
The Photos app is now a proper gallery
The Photos app on the Nokia X3-02 offers only a single viewing mode, displaying a grid of 12 pictures on the screen. You can switch to landscape mode from the menu though – it makes better use of the screen real estate when you open a photo (there are black bars in portrait mode).
There’s flick scrolling and it’s fluid enough. It’s only you can see the phone struggle with the slide animation at times – much like it does with any other scrolling item throughout the interface.
Viewing a single photo
Zooming in on a picture is only possible with the onscreen zoom shortcuts. At least, it’s fast and relatively smooth, even for 5MP images.
Timeline view
You can organize photos into albums, view them in a timeline (they are ordered by the date they were taken) and of course you can start a slide show.
As for the regular Gallery app, it’s still here – but it’s hidden in the Applications menu. It’s quite a capable file manager, especially for a feature phone. It can manage folders and files – both one by one and in bulk.
The regular gallery
A familiar music player
The music player of the Nokia X3-02 has decent looks and a solid set of features. It has great all-round functionality, including album art, and a fair number of formats are supported.The music player is controlled either via the on-screen interface or the shortcut hardware key just below the display . Songs can be filtered by artist, album and genre. The player handles AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, WMA, AMR-NB. Naturally the A2DP profile is supported, allowing the use of stereo Bluetooth earphones.
The music player does the job
As usual, the artist and title of the currently playing song are shown on the homescreen. They appear in the Radio and music area on the homescreen so they need to be enabled in the Homescreen mode settings for the info to be displayed.
Equalizer • homescreen • the shortcut key launches the quick media menu
The music player also has an equalizer with a few available presets.
FM radio
An alternative to the preloaded content on X3-02 is the FM radio. It matches the music player interface and covers all basic functions.
The FM radio interface
RDS support is available and you can make the handset search and save all available stations in your area. RDS info and frequency appear on the homescreen, much like with the music player.
Xvid video support debuts on S40
At first we couldn’t believe it either. But after a while we realized that the old-school S40 video player has been upgraded with Xvid support. And the best part is it managed to play every Xvid video we threw at it (granted, files have to be up to 700MB and of up to nHD resolution). It’s not the best in the class, but it’s way better than we had hoped for.
The Nokia X3-02 hardly suited for watching video clips
As far as the user interface is concerned there are shortcuts for fullscreen mode, fast-forward or rewind and that’s that.
Unspectacular audio quality
Despite the X label, Nokia X3-02 didnt manage to impress us with its audio output quality. The volume is pretty loud, but we've seen far cleaner outputs from Nokia handsets.Don't get us wrong - things aren't too bad and if you aren't much of an audiophile you probably won't be too bothered by the sub-par noise levels, dynamic range or stereo crosstalk.
At least things don't get much worse when you plug in a set of headphones, with the intermodulation distortion and stereo crosstalk the only reading to take a (soft) hit.
Here go the results so you can compare it to some of the other handsets we have tested so far.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| Nokia X3-02 | +0.04 -0.15 | -63.2 | 64.0 | 0.051 | 0.134 | -61.0 |
| Nokia X3-02 (headphones attached) | +0.56 -0.17 | -63.6 | 63.6 | 0.061 | 0.413 | -50.4 |
| Nokia 5250 | +0.03 -0.05 | -85.8 | 85.7 | 0.0034 | 0.018 | -82.2 |
| Nokia 5250 (headphones attached) | +0.64 -0.12 | -83.3 | 83.0 | 0.0077 | 0.305 | -55.8 |
| Nokia X2 | +0.10 -0.87 | -85.7 | 85.6 | 0.0100 | 0.021 | -85.6 |
| Nokia X2 (headphones attached) | +0.56 -0.64 | -85.6 | 85.5 | 0.014 | 0.314 | -58.3 |
| Nokia N8 | +0.07 -0.33 | -89.9 | 90.0 | 0.0059 | 0.015 | -90.9 |
| Nokia N8 (headphones attached) | +0.50 -0.18 | -89.9 | 89.9 | 0.016 | 0.300 | -55.6 |
| +0.20, -3.87 | -89.0 | 87.5 | 0.0089 | 0.019 | -89.2 | |
| +0.27, -3.49 | -85.7 | 83.3 | 0.0088 | 0.248 | -40.4 | |
| +0.01, -0.07 | -90.1 | 90.0 | 0.0068 | 0.012 | -89.6 | |
| +0.01, -0.07 | -90.4 | 90.4 | 0.0036 | 0.092 | -68.4 |
Nokia X3-02 frequency response
You can learn more about the whole testing process here.
Another fixed-focus 5MP camera. Only Nokia knows why
The Nokia X3-02 has a 5 megapixel camera– but there’s no autofocus. The maximum image resolution is 2592x1944 pixels.Typical Series 40, the camera settings are rather limited. The available options include portrait mode, white balance, various effects and a self timer.
The camera user interface
While impressive as a number, the 5 megapixels of the Nokia X3-02 camera fail to impress. The produced images are the same quality as the X2 ones – lot’s of noise and way too heavy compression. These two combined seem to bring down the practical resolution of the X3-02 camera to way below 5MP. There’s also obvious oversharpening and even some purple fringing too.
Nokia X3-02 camera samples
Synthetic resolution
We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia X3-02. Yep, we meet the pink spot in the center of the frame once again. You can check out what that test is all about here.
Nokia X3-02 resolution chart photo • 100% crops
Inadequate video recording
Things don’t get any better with video recording. The X3-02 manages VGA resolution at 15 fps, but better video recording uses a lot more processing power than the X3-02 can’t afford.The result is the same as the still images – low contrast, lack of detail, heavy compression, lots of over sharpening and purple fringing. Some of the videos can be enjoyed we guess but only on the phone’s display.
Camcorder UI
Here is a video sample for you to check out.
Connectivity: the whole package, save for GPS
The Nokia X3-02 offers quad-band GSM and UMTS support. There is also HSPA support, download speed potentially reaching 10.2 Mbps, and up speed as good as 2 Mbps.Bluetooth is version 2.1 and A2DP is of course enabled. The Nokia X3-02 uses a microUSB port for both data connections and charging.
The bigger treat though is USB On-the-go. The Nokia X3-02 can access USB flash drives and even other phones. Of all the USB flash drives we tested, the X3-02 only failed with one (card readers don’t work either). Non-Nokia-made handsets generally refused to share their memory too.
An interesting questioned occurred to us – what happens when you connect two USB on-the-go devices – which opens which? It seems it depends on which end the USB on-the-go cable is. By the way, a special USB-OTG-enabled cable like the one that came with the Nokia N8, is not included in the X3-02 Touch and Type’s box. You’ll have to buy one separately.
Anyway, the X3-02 successfully browsed the N8’s memory drive but, when we turned the connection the other way around, something odd happened. Both devices started flashing “Device not supported” warnings. So, your mileage may vary when using USB on-the-go to connect to other phones (both S40 and Symbian devices worked).
Wi-Fi connectivity is also at hand. In fact, the Wi-Fi is one of the key features of the Nokia X3-02 – it is one of the cheaper Wi-Fi enabled phones on the market.
The Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type also comes complete with a memory card slot. Coupled with a card reader it can usually give you the fastest data transfer rates.
And finally, there's the standard 3.5mm audio jack, which allows you to use your own headphones, but doesn't have TV-out functionality.
Solid web skills: Wi-Fi, 3G and a (small) touchscreen
Browsing the internet on the Nokia X3-02 is a pleasant experience. Even the most elaborate pages are rendered well and finding your way around is reasonably comfortable on the touch-enabled display.
The touch-enabled S40 web browser
As you might guess the virtual cursor is no more, but there is some familiar touch controls borrowed from Symbian S60 – the full screen switch and the zoom key. There is kinetic scrolling too, which works well enough.
The dedicated zoom key is the only zooming option – neither double tap nor the volume rocker works.
Despite the Adobe Flash Lite 3.0 support, Nokia X3-02 web browser doesn’t support Flash. If you want to watch some YouTube stuff you’ll have to rely on the mobile version of the website. Anyway, the lack of Flash is not a big deal, especially for that small screen and the hardware specs.
Like most other S40 phones, the Nokia X3-02 has the Opera Mini 5 browser preinstalled.
The Opera Mini web browser is available too
Organizer and apps
The organizer on the Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type is well stocked as usual and things have been touch optimized.The Calendar starts off with the month view – when you press and hold, a bigger number will pop up just above your finger so you can aim easier.
When there’s an event on that date, the event description will pop up instead (it’s not visible otherwise, just like on the old S40 version).
Day view is also available, but strangely, week view has gone missing. You have various kinds of events available – reminder, meeting call, birthday, anniversary and memo.
Calendar month and day view modes • setting up an event
The alarm app is brand new too – the big, touchable numbers make it easy to set and you can make it ring only on specific days. You can customize the snooze time too, but there’s only one alarm available.
Setting up an alarm
The other organizing functions available include a voice recorder with a 60-minute limit, a stopwatch and a countdown timer. They have been touch optimized as well, though we wish the countdown timer used the same big numbers as the Alarm clock.
Countdown timer and stopwatch are available
The Nokia X3-02 calculator offers two versions - basic and advanced. In addition, a loan calculator is also available. It’s now easier to use as you can directly tap the functions instead of having to scroll and select them with the D-pad.
The calculator: basic and scientific • voice recorder
The X3-02 comes with two converters – one for general measurements and one for clothes. The first one is excellent – it has a long list of supported conversions and you can add your own. The Size converter for clothes is essential for shopping abroad but it’s not quite as optimized for the platform. You have to enter a size then tap OK, then tap the result to see the info – too many taps considering the flexibility a touchscreen offers. Anyway, it’s an application specific issue.
The unit converter is quite good • the size converter is great for shopping abroad
The Search application offers Google Search or Bing Search initially, though other search engines might be available depending on your country and region. Searching launches the web browser – you’d probably be better off using the Opera Mini 5 search bar.
The World clock can tell the time in up to four cities. It offers a long list of cities, but there’s no search (so you have to scroll a lot for, say, Washington) and you can’t just tap on the map either.
World clock applications is well familiar
The last preinstalled app is Shazam – a music recognition service. Unfortunately, you only get a 30-day trial version.
Shazam music recognition app is just a trial version
Google Maps was not preinstalled, but we tried it anyway. It installed just fine, but it expected keyboard controls, which we couldn’t use – the Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type has neither D-pad nor softkeys. We tried cheating and downloaded the touch version for the Samsung S8000 Jet off getjar.com, but that got us nowhere either.
Facebook and Twitter clients
Social networking has been creeping its way into Series 40 for a while, but this is probably the best implementation we’ve seen yet. The key differentiator here between the X3-02 and the C3 (the non-touch one) is the touch screen – Facebook has so many features that it’s impossible to have a simple interface. Which is where the touch screen comes in – it makes interactions much simpler.In the Nokia X3-02 the Communities app is the SNS central. It handles both Facebook and Twitter accounts, including several accounts of each type (though only one Facebook and one Twitter account can be connected at a time).
The Facebook section supports the full communication capabilities of the site. You can view messages and events, friend requests and event invitations. Write on people’s wall and browse their profiles, post photos (either from the Gallery or you can snap a new one on the spot), post status updates, read news feeds and follow groups.
The dedicated Facebook app
Twitter is an inherently simpler service but the app has plenty of features too. You can update your status, check your @mentions, send direct messages and reply to tweets too.
One cool thing is the Shorten links button – Twitter will shorten links automatically, but only after you send the tweet. Shorten links will use bit.ly to shorten links beforehand and give you a few extra characters.
The Twitter app
We found two things missing from the Twitter part of the app. The first one was support for retweeting. The other is an option to upload a photo to TwitPic and its likes and have the URL for that photo embedded into the tweet automatically.
S40 doesn’t have multitasking, even in this touch-enabled incarnation, but you can still receive updates even when you exit the Communities app. Put the Communities tab on the homescreen and pick a default account and you’re good to go.
Communities on the homescreen • picking a main account • settings
The default account is what you see first when you start the app (so if you only have a Facebook account, you don’t have to tap the Facebook tab every time). Also, only the updates from the main account will be visible on the homescreen. You can also set the time to receive new updates – say, from 8:00 to 22:00.
Ovi Store for S40 goes Touch with new UI
The Ovi Store is evolving – it got a new user interface for the Symbian^3 version and we’re glad to report that this new interface has been carried over to the touch-enabled Series 40 phones.
Ovi Store for S40 with a new UI for the touch version
It’s more user-friendly and it is finally making some serious effort to attract more developers. You can browse the apps available in the Ovi Store by categories – Applications, Games, Audio and Video content, Personalization; or by collections – currently only Go Green is available for S40 with just one app.
The number of apps is increasing too
Your account profile keeps track of all the apps you have installed under My stuff. You can now also select where games and apps should be installed and where audio and video should go. That’s nice – we wish Android had that right from the start.
There are already plenty of apps and games there, a lot of them free, and chances are that the most important apps will be there soon enough. They are still behind the big players in the app store game, but we’re seeing that the important apps are making their way to the Ovi Store. Other than that, we can live without the 50 thousand book titles and thousands of other questionable “apps”.
Many games on board
The Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type came with four games preinstalled.Climate Mission is a series of environmentally-themed puzzles that will take you across the world. At the beginning of each challenge, there’s a small nugget of information. The game is fun and educational.
Climate Mission is the puzzle game for those who recycle
What kind of music phone would the Nokia X3-02 be if it didn’t come with music. Guitar Rock Tour 2 is a rhythm game in the same vein as Guitar Hero. Hip Hop Tour is the other music-related title – it puts you in control of a break dancing character and requires a level of accuracy and skill. You can use songs from your own library too.
Guitar Rock Tour 2 • Hip Hop Tour
The final game is Memorize – it has three variants, which require you to remember an ever growing string of things. This can take the form of a Simon Says type of game or, say, playing notes on a virtual piano keyboard.
Memorize is a simple yet challenging game
Final words
The Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type marks a new beginning for the Series 40 platform. Maybe we’ll see an all-touch S40 one day, maybe we won’t. But the X3-02 is an excellent phone as it is, and a keypad this good can only be considered a plus.The X3-02 Touch and Type is in a way a spiritual successor to the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic. It was small and thin, with its focus placed firmly on music. The X3-02 offers the same formula, but with better ingredients across the board.
It’s about the same size and weight and it’s thinner (9.6mm vs. 9.9mm) but the screen has increased in size to 2.4” and grown sensitive to touch. Music is still in the limelight – not with dedicated play/next/prev keys but with a media key and a handy touch menu.
The Nokia X3-02 also offers things that the 5310 couldn’t even dream about – fast 3G, Wi-Fi b/g/n, a 5MP camera, Xvid video support. The transition to touch was handled better than on Symbian S60 too – the menus have actually been redesigned to work more effectively with touch.
By adding touch to the Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type, Nokia put it in direct competition with all those affordable touch phones that have cropped up since the 5310 XpressMusic.
The Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type is the obvious competitor – it has almost exactly the same specs though it’s thicker (11mm) and heavier (100g) and lacks the dedicated messaging and media keys. However, we guess it would be cheaper.
The Samsung S5560 Marvel fits the bill too – an affordable touch phone with Wi-Fi, a 5MP camera, 3.5mm audio jack and microSD card slot for music. It does have a bigger 3” screen and multitasking though.
Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type • Samsung S5560 • Samsung S8000 Jet • Samsung M5650 Lindy
The Samsung S8000 Jet, which impressed with a WVGA 3.1” AMOLED screen, D1@30fps video recording, has a rather competitive price tag. It also has an 800MHz CPU, DNSe, 2GB or 8GB of built-in memory and a GPS receiver.
If you’re on a tighter budget, the Samsung M5650 Lindy offers a touchscreen, 3G, Wi-Fi and DNSe, though the camera is just 3MP. It’s well versed in SNS too.
Going smartphone is another option – the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic comes with a bigger, higher-res screen, an auto-focus 3MP camera and 4GB microSD in the box. The Samsung B7300 OmniaLITE offers another smartphone OS that’s falling out of popularity, but it’s got a reasonable price. Its spec sheet lists an 800MHz CPU and Windows Mobile 6.1 (upgradable to 6.5) covered in TouchWiz. Plus, smartphones offer much more flexibility than any feature phone. It is priced a little higher though.
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic • Samsung B7300 OmniaLITE
Anyway, now that we’ve got the alternatives behind us, we gotta say that the X3-02 is a love-it-or-hate-it affair. We found ourselves surprised at how likable this phone is – the Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type is not only slim and attractive but it’s also got the specs to match most other feature phones. We only wish it had a slightly more competitive price tag.
