Nokia launches Android running Nokia X

New Delhi: As reported by India TV Tech earlier, Nokia has unveiled Nokia X – the company's first device to run on Android OS – at the Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona. The other additions to Nokia X series of phones include Nokia X+ and the Nokia XL. The phones under the Nokia X family run a a heavily-customised version of Google's Android operating system, just like Amazon does for its Kindle Fire lineup. This means that the Nokia X won't give you access to Google Play, instead you have to use Nokia App Store, which already has some big-name apps such as Swiftkey and BBM. The devices also come with Microsoft services such as Skype, Onedrive and Outlook. In addition, users will be offered Skype with a month's free calls to international landlines in selected markets.However, this is not to say that users can't use Google Play Store for apps. However, the phone will run Android apps, but Nokia will curate a list of such apps. Both X and X+ smartphones, which fall under the budget smartphone category, cost 89 euros, and will be available immediately in select markets. The Nokia X and X+ feature a 4" 800x480 IPS LCD capacitive touch display making up for a pixel density of 233ppi. The Nokia X XL comes with a 5-inch screen and offer a 5 megapixel camera and 2 megapixel front camera. The Nokia X, X+ and XL are powered by a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8225 chipset with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. In addition, you can expand the memory through microSD card slot with support up to 32GB cards. However, the Nokia X+ and XL get a bump in RAM to 768MB. The Nokia X+ offers more memory and storage. It's priced at 99 euros and will be available in second quarter of 2014. The Nokia XL will be priced at 109 euros and be available in early Q2 2014."With the Nokia X, we benefit from the Android app ecosystem. However, we have built on this, with the device introducing new people to Nokia apps and services. It also means Android developers can bring their apps to the Nokia family in just a few hours,” Elop said."For developers, the Nokia X is a great way for developers to increase their revenues, and we will offer a bunch of different monetisation options."The Nokia X range comes with a new, tile-based home screen. A swipe to the right reveals a list of installed apps, and another one gets you to fastlane. You can reorganize the tiles similarly to Windows Phone 8 UI. They are resizable as well and the larger the tiles get, the more information they display.These devices also include Here Maps with turn-by-turn navigation and offline maps. The series also offer free cloud storage from Microsoft OneDrive with 7GB of space for free. Users can also access Outlook.com as their email service.A range of third-party apps comes pre-installed, including BBM, Plants vs Zombies 2, Viber, Vine and Twitter.