MWC 2014: Nokia X, X+ and XL hands-on

MWC 2014

GSMArena team, 24 February 2014.

Nokia XL hands-on

The Nokia showroom floor at the MWC 2014 is drawing crowds eager to see Android running on Nokia hardware. We've managed to get cozy with the Nokia XL for a minute and we're now going to tell you all about it.

The Nokia XL features a 5" IPS LCD display of WVGA resolution and it's not all that bad. Yes, the phone is cheap at €109, so we are not expecting much to begin with. That said, colors are nice, but contrast isn't great. As you'll see from the live Nokia XL photos below, it gets covered in smudges in no time.

This tells us that Nokia has cut corners by not placing a protective coating on top of the display to prevent it.

Tthe Android experience on the Nokia XL is reasonably smooth. The phone runs a version of Jelly Bean as far as we could tell, but the exact version is not specified. The 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 chipset does a good job of running and switching between multiple.

Nokia has also included a bunch of its Lumia apps on the XL including its Store, Camera, Mix Radio and HERE Maps. Microsoft's presence is also felt with the addition of Skype and OneDrive apps. Speaking of which, XL users will get 10GB of free OneDrive storage as well as 1 month free of Skype Premium. Speaking of goodies, Nokia also includes a 4GB microSD card in the XL's package

The Nokia XL is made of plastic with an exclusive paint job that the X and X+ don't get - bright orange. The finish feels very nice to the touch, similar to the Nokia Asha 501 and Lumia 1320.

At the back of the phone, there's a 5MP camera with LED flash. As you can see from the photos, there's a large physical key below the display, which acts like a Home/back button. The user interface is overly simple too, with two main screens - the app list screen and fastlane.

The list of apps is reminiscent of the WP8 home screen with resizable app tiles. The larger the tile, the more information it displays. For example expanding the People's tile will display your favorite contacts, while the Gallery will show the latest photos you've snapped.

The XL measures 141.4 mm x 77.7 mm x 10.9mm with a weight of 190g. The back covers are replaceable.

Nokia XL hands-on video

Check out the Nokia XL in action in our hands-on video below.

Synthetic benchmarks

The Nokia XL has the same CPU and GPU, but with more RAM - 768MB. We expected a minor performance edge, but the three benchmarks we ran showed virtually no difference. Again, the Moto G is the one to measure up to.