Nokia XL Review

The Nokia XL is an enigma. It's a handset simultaneously feels like an inevitability and an impossibility. A product that finds Nokia momentarily embracing the Android operating system, whilst outwardly rejecting it with a skin that purposefully call to mind the company’s allegiances to Windows Phone. It’s a phone that attempts to balance the company’s legacy of affordable devices with its current focus on premium hardware.

Former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop took his customarily (and largely welcome) blunt approach when unveiling the product back in February. Rather than doubling down the compay's single-minded commitment to the distant third-place Windows Phone, Nokia would finally release a pair of Android devices. But the XL was never intended to be a Samsung Galaxy S5 killer.

It’s a device aimed at re-establishing Nokia’s foothold in the developing world, where low-cost Android devices (such as Google's Android One phones) threaten to take an even larger slice of the pie, while offering a sort of backdoor entry into the Windows Phone ecosystem for a rapidly growing market. All of this means, of course, that the U.S. market wasn’t at the top of Nokia’s mind as it designed the X line.

As such, the XL isn’t currently available here, and it never will be. Among other factors is the dominant role of carrier subsidies in the States. A $150 off-contract price point doesn’t mean a heck of a lot to consumers in the U.S., where high-end devices are routinely deeply discounted, or just flat-out free.

And besides, few months after the device’s unveiling, it’s now clear that the XL and X are doomed to strange, brief anomalies in the Nokia story: a brief “try anything” approach quickly quashed with the Finnish handset maker now an official planet in the Microsoft solar system.

When Elop suggested the X and XL would be gateways into the world of Windows Phone, he wasn’t joking. The line might be sticking around after this first generation, but the skinned An-droid operating system sure isn’t.

The low-rent Lumia

For long-suffering Android devotees holding onto the hope for a product that marries Nokia’s beautiful high-end Nokia hardware with their favorite operating system, stop right here. The XL is disappointment wrapped in a plastic shell. Those capable of sufficiently adjusting expectations, on the other hand, read on.

Nokia makes no bones about the budget labels when it comes to the XL. Still, the company’s got Lumia designers at its disposal, so it’s no surprise that the premium line serves as strong influence on the XL’s industrial design, from the bright colors to rounded back plate. Our unit was the sort of neon green rarely found outside of kid gadgets and glowsticks. The phone also comes in an equally bright yellow, orange, blue and the decidedly subtler black or white.

Those who have spent any time with a budget handset know that the word is, more often than not, synonymous with bulk — a fact that certainly holds here. Couple that with a five-inch display, and you’ve got a phone that truly lives up the to the X in its name, at 5.6 x 3.1 x 0.43 inch (that’s a lot of bezel), weighing in at 0.24 of an ounce. Compare that to, say, the company’s 5-inch Lu-mia 930, which measures in a 5.4 x 2.8 x 0.39 inch and 0.21 of an ounce.

The screen, not surprisingly, will prove a 5-inch disappointment for users in markets like the States, where high resolutions are the norm. This guy is WVGA — that’s 800 x 480, with a pixel density of 187. A not entirely fair comparison, I realize, but just for the sake of reference, the aforementioned Lumia 930 rocks a 1,920 x 1,080 screen at 441ppi. A fairer match is the budget Moto E’s 540 x 960/256ppi QHD display. It is, as the saying goes, not much to look at.

Below the display is the single touch button, rather than the three to four customarily present on Android devices (and, for that matter, Lumia devices). It’s one of a number of ways Nokia’s at-tempting to buck the stock Android trend, and in this case, it’s not really a welcome change. Android users will find themselves fumbling to make due with a single back button. If you feel the need to only have a single button below the bezel, why not make it Home?

Above the display is a 2-megapixel camera — and the one on the back isn’t much better, at 5MP — the same you’ll find on Nokia’s budget Lumia 630. They’ll do the trick for quick snaps, but not a heck a lot more. For a handset maker that's placed as many eggs in the imaging basket as Nokia has over the past few years with its PureView handsets, this is the clearest indicator of the sorts of compromises the company felt obligated to make for the sake of driving down cost.

Ditto the speaker, a single-grille design located on the rear of the device. It’s thin and tinny, alt-hough it can get loud, courtesy of the volume rockers on the right side of the device — the phone’s only physical buttons, save for a power button just below them.

The back of the Nokia XL is removable. Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

The most surprising thing about the hardware for most U.S. users will no doubt be the inclusion of dual-SIM slots, accessible by popping off the back. The use of such a feature is relatively limited here in the States, unless, say, you need separate cards for work and personal use. In developing nations, however, where network coverage can be extremely spotty, there’s a lot to be said for a device that can pack two pre-paid cards at once.

Also worth a mention is the inclusion of an FM radio, another feature that will be a surprise to U.S. users, but makes a lot of sense for the third world, where networks can be unreliable both for streaming music and in emergency scenarios when you need access to news but don't have any connectivity.

Inside, you’ll find a dual-core 1GHz processor and an anemic 768MB of RAM. Suffice it to say you’re going to experience a lot of lag if you try to do too much at the same time. For those con-tent to do simple, single tasks, the phone mostly did the trick.

Windows phony

To hear Nokia explain it, the X and XL aren’t so much an admission of defeat as a gateway to bring the company’s Windows Phone goodness to the developing world. As such, it should come as no surprise that, on first blush, the operating system looks like the work of the company’s Microsoft overlords, with Android skinned to high heaven so as to look like some ancient Windows Phone ancestor.

In fact, the About Phone section of the handset’s setting doesn’t make any mention of Android at all, instead referring to the operating system as version 1.1.0.6 of Nokia’s X platform — which is to say its Windroid skin. If you were to really peel back the layers, however, you’d find Android 4.1.2 "Jelly Bean" — a version that dates back to 2012.

As with Windows Phone, the overarching aesthetic principle here is titles, titles, tiles. Rather than the classic row of Android icons, apps have their own brightly colored square. You can move them by holding down on the icon and make them larger via an arrow icon that pops up in the bottom left corner, with an option to change the color in the bottom right.

The Nokia XL has a tiled layout, but the tiles are in on way "live." Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani

The lead image in the camera roll shows up as its own tile as well, like on Windows Phone, though unlike that OS, there are none of the cool and dynamic auto-updating Live Tiles here.

Naturally, the XL is pre-loaded with Nokia and Microsoft apps like Here Maps and OneDrive. Our unit also came with BlackBerry Messenger installed, presumably for the added surreality of using BBM on a Nokia running Android skinned to look like Windows.

At the center of all this is the Nokia app market, arguably the biggest misfire of the whole Nokia/Android experience. After all, app selection has always been one of the primary knocks against Windows Phone, and robbing the XL of that wide breadth flies in the face of adopting Android in the first place.

The selection here is pretty abysmal. You’ve got Skype, Facebook and Twitter (all pre-loaded), but even a number of top apps like Spotify and Netflix aren’t available through Nokia’s store. It’s a big sacrifice to make for the company to so closely control the content and a big mark in favor of the myriad low-cost handsets running stock Android.

That said, the Nokia XL does provide access to third-party app stores. While Google Play is still off limits, stores like Yandex are hardly the black mar-ket. These markets can provide the app catalog that the Windows Phone Store — and Nokia app store — can't.

X marks the blot

When reviewing a product like this, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that, well, it’s not really meant for us. All of the notions of screen resolution, processing power and camera quality and the like need to go out the window. The Nokia XL is a phone created for markets where device cost is the primary purchase motivator.

Even by those standards, however, the XL is, at best, unexceptional. There are a few nice features targeted toward that market, namely pricing, dual-SIM and the inclusion of an FM radio. Add all of those up, however, and you’re still left with a phone that doesn’t offering a lot of reasons to pick it up over the countless budget Android devices in the world.

But, then, recent news had made it clear that Nokia won’t be sticking around the Android world in any respect, skinned or otherwise, dashing hopes that we’ll ever see Nokia’s hardware prowess successfully married with the openness and adaptability of Android. There is, perhaps, still some hope that this marks the beginning of a newfound commitment to the developing world, albeit one running Windows Phone.

For now, however, we’re stuck with 5 inches of phone that’s too enigmatic for its own good.