Nokia X2

Nokia X2
I bought my new mobile phone – Nokia X2 about 3 months ago and have been extremely pleased with it. Previously I had a Motorola phone which was several years old and although it worked well for phone calls and texts I felt that I wanted something a bit more modern with internet access and a better camera.

**Basics of the phone**
This is a quad band phone which is advertised for “music lovers” because of its fm radio, powerful built in speakers and ability to download, play and store music. This model isn’t a touch screen phone you would have to upgrade to the X3 for this but the screen is clear and the text size can be changed so that it can be a good size for easy reading of messages. The phone has the capability of connecting to the internet and although the screen isn’t particularly large for internet browsing it is of good enough quality to view emails and Facebook, news websites etc. The phone is small enough to slip into a pocket and doesn’t take up much room in a handbag.

**The Look**
The Nokia X2 is a slim line phone measuring 111 x 47 x 13.3 mm. Mine is black with red trim at the top and bottom and red dedicated camera and radio buttons along both sides however it is available in silver with blue trim. The screen is a generous 2.2 inches wide and about 2.5 inches long and has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. There is a 5 way toggle button in the middle of the phone with “answer” and “stop/start” button each side. The non-querty keyboard is below. The back of the phone is slightly curved and dark silver, giving a nice feel in the hand and a stylish look.

**Battery time**
The blurb that comes with the phone advises that a fully charged battery allows talk time of up to 765 minutes and standby time up to 530 hours, with music playback time up to 26.8 hours. Of course, downloading from or generally using the internet tends to use up power more quickly.

**Memory**
The internal memory is 48MB but there is also a slot for a MicroSD memory card which can add up to 16GB – this has to be bought separately. Since buying the phone I have bought an additional memory card and a special usb to slot the card into so that I can transfer photos from my phone to my laptop.

**Accessories**
The phone comes with a charger and earphones for the radio and other music but not a USB cable, which would have been useful. However, this can be bought separately from Nokia if required.

**Applications**
The phone has lots of applications built in as follows:-
• World clock
• Web Search
• Countdown timer
• Stopwatch
• World clock
• Ovi Store
• Share on Ovi
• Flickr
• Opera mini browser
• Facebook
• Calendar
• To-do list
• Notes
• Voice Recorder
• Calculator
• Clock

All the above applications are easy to access and use. The Opera mini browser is great for accessing the internet and I can easily reach all the pages I would normally use on my laptop, just a bit slower.

**Personalising My Phone**
The X2 gives lots of opportunity to personalise the phone to individual taste. Within “profiles” is a General Style, My Style 1 and My Style 2, plus “Meeting”, “Outdoor”, “Silent” and “”Flight”. Each of these can be personalised and then saved so that when you require a different profile it is easy just to click on the appropriate style. The front screen, like most phones, can be customised with the shortcut icons you use the most, including the clock and your own wallpaper and screensavers. There are also pre-installed themes so that the nearest to your requirements can be picked.
There are quite a few ringtones and message alerts to chose from but I was a little disappointed in the variety available. I preferred the ones on my Motorola phone. However, there are loads, both free and chargeable, to choose from on the Ovi website (Nokia’s online shop).

**Emailing and Messaging**
Emails can be received and sent through Ovi Messaging (just sign up to make an account) or through your normal provider, such as Hotmail.

**The Camera**
The Nokia X2 has a very good 5 megapixel camera with LED flash. The flash bulb can also be used as a torch, a nice little touch which can be useful for trying to find keys etc in a dark carpark. The camera has a 4x digital zoom and full focus and saves photos as jpeg files for easy transfer to laptops or pcs. Pictures can be taken in portrait or landscape mode and rotated if required in the image editing mode. There is also a timer for taking pictures with 3, 5 or 10 second delays. Photos can be uploaded to a pc or directly from the camera via Ovi Share, Flickr or Bluetooth (if Bluetooth enabled).
**Video Camera**
The video camera is another useful addition. Each video clip length is dependent on the available free memory. The camera saves videos in mp4 format. There is a 4x digital zoom available.

**Music Features**
As previously mentioned the phone possesses a stereo fm radio with stereo speakers, giving a good sound. There is quick access to the Ovi Music Store where a wide selection of music can be purchased for download.

**Games**
The games listed are preloaded:

• Block'd
• Bounce Tales
• Brain Champ
• City Bloxx
• Diamond Rush
• Rally 3D
• Snake III
• Sudoku
Further games can be downloaded from Ovi Websit., such as Solitaire or Freecell for free and lots of others for a reasonable charge.

The phone comes with a manual which is useful in helping answer questions regarding setting up, texting and making calls, however, there is also additional support on the Nokia website at http://europe.nokia.com/support

**The Cost**
The Nokia website lists this phone as costing £99 for the phone only but it can be obtained cheaper at other places, such as Amazon for £70. However contracts can be obtained for £10 per month with free phone. I use Pay As You Go as I find this suits my usage and bought my phone for £60 through a Virgin Media shop. Virgin had the cheapest handsets when I was thinking of buying the X2 and because my previous phone was on the Virgin network and I was happy to stay with them (we have Virgin broadband as well) I was given a small discount, making the total cost £55.

**My Thoughts**
I am extremely pleased with my new phone, it does everything I need, calls, texts, good photos and internet and looks stylish too. I like the fact that I can choose to have my texts as “conversations”. This means that if I text someone regularly I can have a running list of those conversations until such time as I decide to delete them. I also like the fact that I can increase the size of the writing in my texts so that I can see clearly what I have written and what has been sent to me – very useful if, like me, eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be! I love the radio and will find this very useful when I am on holiday and get fed up with the music that I have loaded on my phone. It is also useful for lunch times at work. The only downside of the radio is that the button to turn it on is on the left hand side edge of the phone as I look at it and this happens to be exactly where I hold the phone, making for some embarrassing moments when the radio starts blaring out, usually when I am in a quiet place! I haven’t found a way to change this button from being dedicated to the radio and so have now learned to change the way I hold the phone and thus avoid it! A couple of other little irritations are that the backlight for the screen doesn’t stay on very long and starts to dim quite quickly and there isn’t any way to prolong the time. Also when a text message comes through the phone bleeps with my chosen tone but it doesn’t repeat the bleep so if I don’t hear the first notification I don’t necessarily know that there is a message until I next look at my phone. My Motorola phone used to repeat the notification until the message was read. However, after some research on the internet I understand that Motorola is one of the few phones that does this so although it is slightly annoying, I don’t feel that I am missing out too much.

I have found the phone very easy to use and set up to my liking and despite the couple of irritations mentioned above I really have no complaints.