Nokia X2 review: Fun times two

User interface – more of the same

The Nokia X2 is powered by the Series 40 6th edition software – it should be familiar to everyone now.

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 6th 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 special tips to use the Nokia X2.

The refreshed S40 UI

Active standby mode (or Home screen mode, as Nokia call it here) is available as usual. It divides the screen in four sections that can be scrolled with the D-pad and edited as users see fit. By default, the clock is on top, then the music and radio player and the Shortcut bar, which grants instant access to favorite functions and applications.

The new stand-by screen

You can of course customize that – rearrange things and add or replace things.

A handy feature is that pressing the end key while the keypad is locked brings up a clock that shows the time and date.

The main menu has the usual 6th edition views – Grid, Grid with labels, List and Single (which displays one icon at a time, like S30).

The new menu view mode, along with some of the old ones

As usual, there’s no multitasking support – if you’re running, say, Opera Mini you can’t read an incoming SMS or use most other features of the phone. Thanks to the dedicated music keys you can at least change the track (or radio station) and if there’s an incoming call, the app will be paused while you take it. You can’t make outgoing calls until you exit the app though.

Here’s a video of some of general features of the Nokia X2, including the dedicated Facebook app.

Regular phonebook

The phonebook of the Nokia X2 will store up to 2000 contacts, 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

Telephony is decent

The signal reception on the Nokia X2 was good, though not the best we’ve had. The in-call sound was crisp and clear though not very loud even at the highest setting.

There’s no smart dialing on the X2 – not surprising for an S40 device. There’s no voice dialing either, nor the Voice Clarity sound enhancement many other S40 phones have.

Calling Dexter on Nokia X2

We carried out our traditional loudspeaker test to find out the Nokia X2 is an Excellent performer. You can find more details about our test, as well as the results of all other tested handsets here.

Messaging is OK

The messaging department is certainly up to the task. The Nokia X2 is capable of handling all the common message types including SMS, MMS, as well as flash and audio messages and there’s easy email handling too.

The keyboard on the X2 is not the heavy texter kind. Other than that, there’s nothing missing – Conversations is here too (that’s the threaded message feature). Actually, Conversations replaces the regular Inbox.

Nokia X2 messaging app

The editor is well organized and you won’t spend too much time finding your way around. You type your 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.

Composing a new message and turning it into an MMS • threaded view

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 X2 took care of the rest.

We did have some issues at first – the Email app had disappeared, but that was probably some bug. We tried flashing the firmware (from V4.25 to V4.80) and the problem was sorted.