NOKIA X3 REVIEW

Nokia have never really 'wowed' the market with their slide phones, yet they still persist.

But this year they seem to have succeeded as Nokia overcame the slide-phone 'stigma' with the X6 that is no doubt one of the best smartphones of 2010.

That said the X3 is undoubtedly worth a go and will only cost you under £100. In a nut shell its a budget version of the X6 (which boasts a ridiculous plethora of features) but trouble is, as a stripped-down version, the shine is somewhat taken off the X3.

The design, exactly like the X6, looks sharp with subtle curves and is complimented with a nice contrast of coloured (red or blue, depending on the version) display-side buttons. For navigation, the X6 has a responsive D-pad to with two soft-option menu keys either side. The phone is comfortable to hold and the slide-action is clean and a joy to use. As a down point, the 2.2" display screen could be bigger and compared to the X6's 3.2" it's a long way down - we stopped seeing this small size screen since mobile displays got colour, didn't we?

With the limited screen size the home page only feels squashed with limited icons on to the screen and makes navigation feel claustrophobic and a struggle at first. Also loading freezes (though very occasional) on applications such as Google Mail didn't help. However, once you get the hang of the X3 you start to realise its beneficial points.

The music player, at the centre of the X3, organises all your tunes and has an impressive 70Mb internal memory to hold at least part of your music collection (the rest can be held on a MicroSD card - expandable up to 16Gb. No headset is needed for music playing or FM radio but there is a 3.5mm headphone jack if you want to. As for playing the music in our office the stereo output retained a very good quality at high volume level - much like having your own music player, which is the point I guess.

Furthermore, due to the lightweight version of this X series phone the battery lasts almost forever - 26hours music playback, 380hours standby, 7.5hours talktime.

The X6 camera packs a punch with Carl Zeiss optics but The X3 camera in comparison is only 3.2 megapixels with no sexy optics (boo!). However with a strong focus, 4x digital zoom, colour tone modes, landscape or horizontal mode for both camera and video, the camera is not to be scoffed at.

Going from one of the best handsets of the market (X6) to it's budget little brother, is a big step down. But as a modest, simplistic, reliable phone that will never creep up on you with lack of battery, it's a capable music player slider-phone. Still, we'd advise the extra outlay to upgrade to the X6.

SEE ALL DETAILS ON NOKIA X3 UNLOCKED - £119.99