Nokia X2 - Review

“The X2 is a bog-standard Nokia that will make a perfect Christmas present. However, the phone’s camera disappoints and the lack of wi-fi and 3G is annoying”

A bog-standard mobile phone

Nokia X2: a cheap and cheerful mobile phone

The Nokia X2 is designed for anyone who prefers simple telephone calls and text messages to the bells and whistles that go with smartphones.

This means the X2 lacks touchscreen technology and high-speed mobile internet, for example. But what the X2 lacks in high-end features, the mobile phone makes up for in its lightweight yet solid construction and palatable £70 pay-as-you-go price tag.

Finding my way around the X2’s features was relatively easy thanks to its clear menu system and option for sticking frequently used apps to the homescreen. The phone’s four-way navigation button also proved handy.

Speaking of buttons, the X2 has plenty of them. The phone’s right side has volume buttons and another for kick-starting the rear-mounted camera.

On the left side lurks a strip of music buttons that helped me skip, fast-forward and rewind through my music catalogue.

The X2’s music player app is pretty bland. But you’ll soon forget about that when you realise that the phone comes with unlimited music downloads for 12 months - a Nokia promotion known as “Comes With Music”.

Opera Mini web browser

The battery cover become hot during charges

Music quality was impressive on the X2, using its 3.5mm headphone jack. True, sound reproduction won’t knock you for six, but the “Stereo Widening” feature (also available on the Sony Ericsson K850i) gave my songs noticeably more depth.

Despite Nokia’s Nokia X2 marketing guff promising me “Full web browsing of real web pages” I was shocked to discover that the phone doesn’t support wi-fi or 3G connections. This meant webpages took ages to load over Edge – a precursor to 3G – instead.

Emails loaded pleasingly quickly on the X2, though I had to manually sign-in to my accounts each time because the Nokia doesn’t “push” emails to its homescreen as top-end smartphones like the BlackBerry Curve 3G do.

The X2 can download apps directly from Nokia’s Ovi app store. The virtual shop isn’t as well stocked as the iPhone App Store and, thanks to the X2’s meagre mobile internet speed, you’ll need to be patient when downloading them.

Photography’s one area where the X2 failed to impress. Despite having a 5Mp camera at its disposal, the X2’s images showed poor colour reproduction and although focused, were much poor than the quality I’d expect of such a lens.

Comes With Music

Picture quality didn't live up to the 5Mp lens

The camera offers basic photography tools, including a self-timer and greyscale image effect, but could benefit from more advanced imaging settings, such as geo-tagging and face recognition, available on cameraphones like the Nokia N8.

If you’ve read this far and the X2 sounds like the right mobile phone for you, then these final two unique selling points of the phone could help make your decision.

The first is the included smart charger that recognises when the Nokia X2 is fully charged and flashes a message on screen to remind you that unplugging the phone will save energy and money.

The second is a dedicated button that instantly turns the phone’s camera flash into a torch - perfect for finding, say, your front-door keyhole at night.

Find your perfect Nokia X2 deal

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