Nokia X to be launched in India today: Here's what to expect

Nokia’s Android smartphone, the Nokia X will be launched in India today with events in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Exepctedly, there’s a lot of buzz around the X series of phones, as these are the first Nokia devices to run Android.   The smartphone is expected to be available in India from March 15 and is expected to be priced at Rs 8,500. What is not known is the price of the Nokia X+ and the Nokia XL, which are the other two phones in the X family, and whether Nokia will be offering some free goodies such as the ones they routinely throw in with the Lumia phone. Nokia has as yet not announced the availability of all of the Nokia X phones.   The Nokia X was spotted listed online on Indian retailer The Mobile Store’s website, which showed the availability date as March 15 and the price as Rs 8,500. We will have a full hands-on look with the smartphones once they are released.   Nokia had announced three Android smartphones as part of the X series at the Mobile World Congress last month.  The features of the devices are very much on the entry-level side. Nokia X and X+ have four-inch screens, while the Nokia XL has a 5-inch phone. All have a resolution of 800×480 pixels. All also boast dual-core Snapdragon S4 SoC with the CPU clocked at 1GHz.   There’s 512MB of RAM on the Nokia X, while the X+ gets 768MB of RAM. Both have 4GB internal storage and the ability to take in micro SD cards up to 32GB in capacity.   The camera however, is only 3-megapixel on the rear and there’s no front-facing camera. Both phones have a 1500 mAh battery, rated for around 13 hours of talk time on 2G and 17 days standby time. Nokia XL has 768MB RAM, 5MP auto-focus camera with LED flash on the back and 2MP front camera.   In terms of connectivity, the X family all have dual SIM slots, 3G cellular data, Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. The phones will likely be available in black, green, cyan, yellow, red, and white variants.   The phones run Android, although Nokia has tied up the login and app data to Microsoft’s cloud services. The phones run a version of Android Open Source Project, with access to sideloading of apps, third-party app stores and Nokia’s own app store. Users will get Skype, Outlook and OneDrive on these phones, instead of Hangouts, Gmail and Drive, while search is powered by Bing, not Google Search. Buyers of the Nokia X will get one month of free Skype calls to mobiles and landlines.