The Touch and Type X3 comes from the latest batch of Nokia phones and combines a fully touch sensitive screen with traditional numerical keypad below – the first Nokia phone to offer such a combo. The touchscreen revolution has seen a plethora of handsets employing a full frontal screen, and although some devices come with an additional slide-out QWERTY pad, many instead have to rely solely on a software keyboard for input.
Some people like this, others find it fiddly and complain that it cramps up the display unnecessarily. This is why the X3 02 Touch and Type is a welcome break – a more traditional phone that still comes with the modern features made possible by touch sensitivity. It admittedly looks less impressive than it is, but with its metallic finish and 5 great colours to choose from it certainly ain’t a bad looking phone.
The screen on the X3 02 may not be as big as some of the huge 4″ (and now even 5″ +) screens we are seeing with the likes of the Dell Streak and HTC HD2, but is still roomy enough to provide some fantastic touch screen fun. At 2.4″ this screen is not exactly ideal for watching the latest movies as you might on a phone like the SE Vivaz, and its own camera only features a QVGA resolution by comparison. The 5mp camera is however higher quality than the iPhone 3GS‘s snapper, and comes with 4x digital zoom and many other additional features. The X3 02 also provides plenty of entertainment value with its games, including Guitar Hero 5 and Hip Hop Tournament that will provide hours of entertainment on long boring journeys. There are also plenty more games that can be downloaded from the Ovi Store (along with other media content).
The numerical keypad on the X3 02 is much more optimal for texting compared to on screen keyboards, which no matter how sophisticated often seem to suffer from the problem of inconsistent responsiveness and a lack of feedback regarding buttons you have pressed. The X3 02 comes with a great range of messaging features included too, such as Nokia Messaging Service 3.0, Ovi Chat instant messaging, Flash messaging and Nokia Xpress audio messaging. The Touch and Type supports many other instant messaging clients including GTalk, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live (MSN).
Running on Symbian Series 40 the X3 02 can browse the web with Opera Mini browser, and supports access to YouTube, Facebook and MySpace among other social media services online. With Wi-Fi and 3G HSDPA support the Touch and Type provides a great deal of connectivity for such an affordable phone. Of course there is also the old GPRS and EDGE, as well as Bluetooth and a USB 2.0 connection.
The X3-02 is not a high end phone. It doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles of HD video or 3D gaming. What it does do however is provide a great deal of entertainment, messaging and connectivity features at a very affordable price. For the same cost you will be hard pushed to find another phone offering as much. Of course one of the main highlights, and the source of this phones name, is the combination of touchscreen and numerical pad. While there are other phones adopting this design, this is the first such handset from the world’s leading manufacturer Nokia. This is an ideal phone for all those who want to experiment with touch sensitivity but at the same time require the texting power provided by a physical keypad.
The X3-02 is due for release in the coming months so be sure to check back to compare Nokia Touch and Type deals when this phone officially hits the shelves.
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