Nokia X Android smartphone listed online at Rs. 8,500 with March 15 availability

Nokia's first Android smartphone, the Nokia X, is now listed at an online retailer in India, with a price of Rs. 8,500. The retailer claims the Nokia X smartphone will be available from 15 March 2014.

The Finnish manufacturer had soon after its MWC 2014 event, listed the Nokia X, Nokia X+ and Nokia XL dual-SIM variants on its India site, without pricing oravailability details. At the MWC 2014 launch, the company had said the Nokia X would go on sale 'immediately' in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, India, Latin America, and the Middle East.

The Nokia X has been listed on the Mobile Store and was first spotted by Maktech blog. The Nokia X is available in its Black, Green, Cyan, Yellow, Red, and White colour variants. Of course since this is a third-party store, one cannot be certain if this will be the official launch price, whenever the phone is unveiled in India.

The Nokia X is based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), and is powered by Microsoft and Nokia services. The highlight of the Nokia X is the highly customised version of Android, with the Metro-inspired UI and access to Nokia's own app store. While there's no access to Google's Play Store, users can side-load Android apps from any third-party source. Nokia has used the AOSP version corresponding to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean as the baseline for its operating system.

The much talked of Nokia X and its other variants X+ AND XL have been launched at the ongoing Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona. As anticipated, the Nokia X is the first Android powered smartphone from the Finnish handset maker.

On the specs front, all three devices are powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon Dual Core processor and are dual SIM. Popular apps like BBM, Plants vs. Zombies 2, Viber, Vine and Twitter come pre-installed.
The Nokia X comes with 4-inch IPS LCD screen, 512MB RAM and a 3-megapixel rear camera.
The Nokia X+ has 768MB RAM and a 4GB MicroSD card and its other specs are almost same as the X. Unexpectedly, Nokia XL has also been launched at the event. The Nokia XL comes with comes with a 5-inch display and 5-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front-facing cameras. It is powered by 768MB RAM.
The Nokia X phones do not come with pre-installed Google Play Services. As a result the Play Store isn't available on the Nokia X or Nokia X+. Though, Android apps can be downloaded through Yandex Store.
All three variants of the Nokia X family have been priced according to the expectations. Nokia X will cost 89 euros, the X+  99 euros and the larger LX will be available for 109 euros.
The Nokia X was long rumoured and its launch at the MWC 2014 is on expected lines.

Nokia XL, the biggest of the three smartphones, sports a 5-inch screen, 768MB RAM, 5MP auto-focus camera with LED flash on the back and 2MP front camera. 

Meanwhile, Nokia X and X+ have 4-inch screens and 3MP fixed-focus cameras. Nokia X has 512MB RAM, whereas the X+ features 768MB of RAM. 

All the three devices are powered by a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and have dual-sim functionality, access to 3G networks and a display resolution of 800x480p. Nokia offers a 4GB microSD card free with X+ and XL smartphones, but not with the entry-level Nokia X. 

All three Android phones run on a 'customized' version of Android and will not allow access to the Play Store. 

Nokia has preloaded X, X+ and XL smartphones with Microsoft's cloud services like SkyDrive and One Drive, instead of Google's software, which may prove a dampener for some. The company is offering 10GB of One Drive storage for free, along with one month of free unlimited Skype calls to landlines and mobiles. 

Nokia has positioned the X-series phones between its Asha and Lumia lineup, but the mediocre hardware specifications and the fact that the phones are based on an old version of Android devoid of even Play Store, are big dampeners. We're also skeptical if Microsoft would continue with the X-series once it gains full control of Nokia.