Review Nokia X5

Despite an unexpected delay, Nokia officially released its new smartphone. The new phone called Nokia X5 has become the second model of the X-series with notch on the display. The distinctive features of the device - a dual camera, face ID and the use of AI in photography. In our system, the device gets a mark of 8,63 points.

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Design

The front panel has a large display, a big bezel at the bottom, and a huge notch at the top of the display. The notch includes sensors, front camera, and receiver. Usually, manufacturers of Android smartphones are trying to make this notch as small as possible (except for Xiaomi), but here we see it large enough for no good reason. Nevertheless, the design of the whole device is not bad at all; everything is stylish and pretty, neat, and even unique.

The back panel of the smartphone is made of glass and it houses a dual main camera, a flashlight, and fingerprint scanner. Nothing huge, the design is fully consistent with the Finnish manufacturer. 

The sides of the phone is an aluminum alloy of the 6000th series with plastic inserts for antennas. The right side has thin a power button and volume rocker. The left side has a SIM-card tray, where one space in the tray is intended for the nanoSIM format, and the other one for a microSD memory expansion card or the second nanoSIM.

At the top of the device, there are 3.5-mm audio jack and noise-cancelling microphone. While many mobile companies are removing the headphone jack, Nokia decided to keep it in the device. 

The bottom side has USB Type-C port (USB 2.0), a speaker and microphone. Since this device is budget one, we were quite surprised when we saw the USB type C port in here. Maybe this solution from Finnish manufacturers will encourage others to install this port on low-end devices.

The smartphone was presented in three colors: black, blue, and white.

The design was rated by the system at 8,87 points.

Display

The Nokia X5’s front panel is occupied by 5.86-inch IPS screen with a notch at the top. The screen to body ratio is 84%. The company also paid special attention to the “eye protection mode,” which automatically turns on when the gadget is used for a long time. 

This is not the first device under the Nokia brand, which has tried on a display with a “non-standard” aspect ratio, but now it comes with a ratio of 19: 9. The “bezel-less” 5.86-inch screen received a resolution of HD + (1520x720 pixels), while the pixel density does not reach the desired one as on “retina displays” (300 dpi) and is approximately 287 ppi. IPS-panel is characterized by wide viewing angles and good color reproduction. As for the brightness, then its max level is good.

The display gets 5,35 points.

Hardware

“Under the hood” of the Nokia X5 Plus was placed the MediaTek MT6771 chipset (Helio P60). It uses the big.LITTLE architecture, where eight cores, divided into quartets of ARM Cortex-A73 and ARM Cortex-A53, operate at clock speeds up to 1.8 GHz. For graphics processing, there is ARM Mali-G72 MP3 processor with three execution units, which supports a max resolution of 2400 × 1080 pixels (20: 9). The NeuroPilot AI technology takes care of speeding up AI-related operations, while CorePilot 4.0 optimizes power consumption. By the way, the chipset was called the most energy efficient system in the existing Helio P-line. Thus, with a 70% increase in performance, the Helio P60 was 12% more energy sufficient than the Helio P23. The basic configuration of Nokia X5 also consist of 3 GB dual-channel LPDDR4X RAM (1800MHz).

Nokia X5 Plus has 32 GB ROM, while storage can be expanded with a microSD / HC / XC memory card up to 400 GB (actually 256 GB). A place in the hybrid sim tray is provided for it, which is originally used for second nanoSIM card. 

Performance received 7,69 points. The Antutu tests showed 127649 points. More detailed results on test can be seen below:

Cameras

The rear camera module with LED flashlight includes two cameras - the main and secondary. The main received a 13-megapixel sensor with an aperture of f / 2.0 and autofocus, and the secondary comes with a 5-megapixel sensor. The maximum resolution of images is 4160x3120 pixels (13 MP) with a 4: 3 aspect ratio.

The front camera was equipped with an 8-megapixel sensor with an aperture of f / 2.2. Moreover, it has fixed-focus and the max resolution for the “standard” aspect ratio of 4: 3 is already 3264x2448 pixels (8 MP).

According to the Nokia Company, AI-powered camera help to get the effect of image depth, achieve a soft background blur, and use as the portrait lighting function. AI function are also used to improve the quality of images. We didn’t see anything new or super cool in the photos with this technology.

The main camera can shoot in Full HD-quality (1920x1080 pixels, 16: 9) with a frame rate of 30 fps. The front camera is limited to HD-resolution (1280x720 @ 30 fps, 16: 9). The files are saved in MP4 format (AVC - video, AAC - sound).

Cameras get 8,21 points.

Battery 

The capacity of the non-removable battery installed in the Nokia X5 is 3,060 mAh. Videos in MP4 format (hardware decoding) and HD quality at full brightness can be watched continuously for a little less than 7,5 hours.

The system rated the battery at 6,36 points.

Software

The device works on the stock version of the operating system Android 8.1.0 (Oreo). It is assumed that regular OS updates for two years will ensure security and protection. In addition, as stated in the HMD Global, the device will be updated to Android 9.0 (Pie).

The device's OS gets 9,88 points.

Conclusion

Most likely, Nokia X5 smartphone will become popular not only among fans of the famous brand. Therefore, its main advantage is the “bezel-less” screen with an aspect ratio of 19: 9. Among other advantages of the phone, it should be noted performance, cameras, and battery life. We recommend this phone to buy!