Nokia
X3 Touch and Type

The X3 Touch and Type (also known as the X3-02) was the first Nokia phone to use a new variant of the company’s Series 40 software platform (Series 40 6th Edition) which made it possible to support a touchscreen. The device was primarily a music phone but was also aimed at people who had fairly heavy mobile Internet usage. It had 16 keys (12 numeric keys plus send, end, music and messaging) as well as its 2.4-inch resistive touch screen which had a resolution of 240 by 320 pixels. It featured a five-megapixel camera, quad-band 3G and HSPA, Wi-Fi and a brushed aluminium case, and was 9.6mm thick. It came preloaded with e-mail, instant messaging and social networking clients. Nokia had upgraded the processor for the new version of its Series 40 operating system to improve responsiveness to fix an area of historic weakness. The X3 had an ARM 11-based chip running at 400MHz to 600MHz. Rather confusingly, X3 Touch and Type shared a model number with two other Series 40 phones: the X3, a GSM slider phone, and the X3 CDMA, a monobloc device that was designed for the Chinese market. In the case of the X3 Touch and Type, the "X" indicated that the phone was a music-optimised device, while the number indicated the relative price point. The X3 Touch and Type cost €125 when it was launched. At the time, the phone’s specifications, which included HSPA and Wi-Fi, were considered fairly aggressive for the price. The inclusion of Wi-Fi suited operators concerned about data traffic as Internet usage spread from high-end phones into prepaid and mass-market segments. It meant that consumers could use a lot of data while only paying a modest prepaid tariff. This phone arrived at a time when smartphone features were increasingly being pushed down into lower-priced phones. Although Nokia had competitive Symbian products costing less than €100 it needed to be able to address even lower price points. Full smartphone operating systems such as Android and Symbian required hardware specifications that were too high for low-end phones, so there was a growing trend towards touch screens and other high-tier features being supported on proprietary operating systems such as Nokia's Series 40 and Samsung's Bada. The decision to implement touch support on Series 40 was an overdue move by Nokia, given moves by its competitors in the mid-tier. Full-touch devices had become increasingly successful in this segment, and the market had a mix of low-cost Android phones from Chinese manufacturers and proprietary products from LG and Samsung. Sadly for Nokia, despite its efforts with the X3 Touch and Type and others with Series 40 6th Edition devices, it was never enough to compete with the future onslaught of low-cost Android smartphones.