With Apple eating Nokia’s lunch at the premium end of the market, and Google stealing developer mind share with their open source Android operating system, and the South Korean duo LG and Samsung biting the Finnish company’s feet in the low end and emerging markets, what does Nokia decide to do? Release a dumb phone that has a touch screen.
Say hello to the Nokia X3 Touch and Type. No, I’m not joking. That’s the full name. That or X3-02, the materials provided to the press don’t really prefer one over the other. Anyway, the specifications: quad band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM/EDGE, quad band (850/900/1900/2100 MHz) HSPA (unspecified speed), 106.2 mm x 48.4 mm x 9.6 mm body, 78 gram weight, 5 megapixel camera, 17 day standby time, 3.5 hours of talk time if you’re using 3G, 5.5 hours if you’re using GSM, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, and a microUSB port. And oh yea, the screen: 2.4 inches, 240 x 320 pixels, 262,000 colors.
All yours for only 125 EUR (160 USD or 105 GBP) and available this quarter. Below are two videos that showcase the device. Note again how Nokia is using the “touch and type” marketing slang to somehow convince you that having a choice of whether you want to stab a small screen or tap a keypad that doesn’t adhere to the standard 4 rows, 3 keys per row format, is a good thing.
Sure, it’s cheap, but it doesn’t have GPS. Sure, it’s got an aluminium backside, but that’s because you need to make sure the thing doesn’t break during the first 3 weeks of getting familiar with the offset keypad.
I’m genuinely confused as to what the company was thinking when they conceived this concept and then spent the next 2 years bringing it to fruition. Couldn’t they have made it a side slider like the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro or Sprint Epic 4G? Couldn’t they have thrown Symbian on it and hacked off the 3G in order to make it cheaper? Couldn’t they have thrown in GPS and made it just a tad bit more expensive, but infinitely more useful?
Help me understand this brick. Please.