Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type (Unlocked)

Nokia X3-02

Design, Call Quality, and Apps
The X3-02's design is one of its best qualities—that is, if you appreciate small, slim phones, and don't need a QWERTY keyboard. The X3-02 measures 4.2 by 1.9 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and weighs just 2.8 ounces. It's made of good quality matte plastic, and comes in dark gray. At first glance, it's almost impossible to figure out how Nokia got the phone so small. And then it hits you: the zero key is off to the right, instead of below the other nine number keys. I never got used to this during the review period. Aside from that quirk, the numeric keypad is easy to dial numbers on, and I could text relatively quickly (T9-style). Thanks to its small dimensions and big buttons (hardware and touch), this phone is exceptionally easy to use one-handed.

It has 2.4-inch, 240-by-320-pixel display is on the large side for a small phone. The plastic resistive display is bright and colorful, but Nokia's venerable font looked a little blocky. The haptic feedback was a misfire; it often trigged multiple times, even when I wasn't touching the screen. Worse still, during calls it triggered repeatedly, causing little vibration sensations on my cheek. Eventually I turned it off altogether.

Home Screen and Apps
The X3-02 is a Symbian Series 40 6th edition device. The home screen is configurable, but not in the usual sense; there's only one home screen pane with four shortcut sections. You can configure the shortcuts to do different things, but the result always looks cluttered and messy. The main menu contains just nine icons, but there are hidden submenus everywhere; this is a Symbian phone, after all.

The WebKit browser does a good job rendering WAP and WebKit pages, but desktop sites take too long to load. There's no multi-touch; zooming in takes multiple steps and is quite jerky. Combine it with the small, low-resolution screen, and this really isn't much of a Web browsing phone. You can download free and paid apps from Nokia's Ovi Store, which Nokia is in the process of rebranding to… something. The store is divided into subcategories, including free and paid apps, but it's sluggish and difficult to use.

Firmware updates are supposedly available over the air in Settings, but apparently not for my review model. I saw numerous connectivity errors all over the place, from the Settings menu to the Ovi Store to the email app. This was despite having strong HSDPA signal, a solid Wi-Fi connection, and no problems with voice calls. Assuming your data connection works, you can check Facebook and Web mail accounts, and chat over IM with most major services including Google Talk. There's no GPS, though.

Specifications
Service Provider
AT&T, T-Mobile
Operating System
Symbian OS
Screen Size
2.4 inches
Screen Details
240-by-320-pixel, 65K color, TFT plastic resistive touch screen
Camera
Yes
Network
GSM, UMTS
Bands
850, 900, 1800, 1900, 2100
High-Speed Data
GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA

Price Range $182.99