Nokia X Software Platform, What’s With That?
Nokia has released its new line of phones at MWC2014 the Nokia X, Nokia X+ and Nokia XL and the X in the name is more than just a series it’s the name of the operating system on the phones “Nokia X Software Platform”, at the core of the operating system is the base stripped Android and on top of it is the integrated modifications and additions of the Nokia applications, with an effort to make the phones look and feel more like a Windows phone than an Android.
Nokia in a bold move has come out to venture into a little unchartered experimental territories and straying slightly from the partnership promises with Microsoft, or is it?
To answer the previous predicament let us dwell slightly deeper to see what has been actually put into the phones, what can be achieved with it and how?
The Nokia X series phones are built around the Android OS 4.1.2 Jelly bean but only with the basic structure which is the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) which as the name goes is an open source system and thus can be used by anyone without making many changes, this means almost all the apps that have been created for other Android phones shall work perfectly well on Nokia X Series too, there are a few exceptions but we will come to it in a short time.
From the looks the Nokia Phones look nothing like an Android phone and have a more comparable windows phone look to them with tabs and home screen windows, the phone has a home screen with various application tabs like Outlook, OneDrive, Skype, HERE Maps, Facebook etc. preloaded, which can be resized as in a Windows phone and the second home screen has all the recently used apps and notifications along with messages, mails and all the others, one notable thing here is there is no app drawer and the home screen1 is the app drawer and if a user has a long list of apps then it would surely take a long time to go through the list.
But again when we are talking on the matter of Apps, then what about them and where to get it is an obvious question. To reply promptly there is no Google Play Store to serve you there, yes, No PlayStore, well don’t worry there are ways to handle this, actually there was to handle this issue.
- Instead of Google PlayStore the Phones point to the Nokia Store which would allow you to load your applications, Nokia has scanned them for compatibility and/ or malware to put them on the store, and says most of the apps wouldn’t need anything changed in them.
- Google PlayStore is staple only in some locales but most other countries have their own playstores like 1mobile in China, Yandex in Russia and Nokia is comfortable to allow access to them for loading the apps.
- Nokia has also allowed access to Side Load apps to the phones and this means one can load all the APKs that he likes only restriction is that they are not allowed root access. Meaning most apps from most sources can be loaded on to the Internal/External Memory and installed.
When Nokia has built its own AppStore and has not integrated or liaised with Google what does this mean for the App Developers, because of no Google Services, Nokia has come up with its own APIs ground up and while most developers might simply place their apps at the Nokia Store some might need slight changes. Some of the major APIs that have been written independently are
- Notifications which normally would be appearing at the Status bar would now be diverted to the Notifications area on the HomeScreen2 and thus have to use the Nokia X Software Platform API to be able to deliver the notifications properly.
- Payments shall need integration of a new API of Nokia X where the developers can be paid through the Nokia payment structure or through using the direct Carrier Billing through the Cellular partners where the phones have been marketed, another change in the payments category is that instead of users to pay up ahead to use an App Nokia is bending more towards the try-n-buy methodology and believes that once the customer is satisfied with the App there is a higher possibility to buy it.
- Location services have also to be accessed to the Nokia X APIs as now these have to be accessing the HERE Maps from Nokia/Microsoft rather than the Google Maps locations.
Most of the APIs though have changed and may need addition/ modification by the Developers, it is being iterated by most at Nokia that the changes are very minimal and would need very little effort as they would only have to change the APIs concerned.
It also has to be said that Nokia is more liberal with its policies as to the restrictions on what has to be used on the phone or from where it has been taken and would allow most other Apps even from Google to run on the phones as afar from the likes of Amazon for its Kindle Fire which did use the skewed AOSP, but the online shopping gain has restricted any of the applications or browsers from Google to run on its Kindle Fire. Therefore the approach of Nokia, to use its own store along with local App Stores and allowance of Sideloading making it possible for the Users to load Apps to their choice which would work on 4.1.2 Jellybean and does not any application of Google to be loaded on the Nokia X series.
Nokia is also hoping and seems quite aggressive on releasing more phones with the X Series AOSP in the near future which only points for now that the Android version shall also be revised to the more recent one’s sooner if not later, thus enabling most other Apps designed for the recent versions of Android can also be installed and used on the later coming phones.
The possibility that the Nokia X Series phones to be released on March 1st and 2nd weeks around the world in many markets like China, India, Thailand, Middle East, Eastern Europe etc. and with the budgetary price range can cater to many with an aspiration of a smartphone but at a small price does seem quite a lucrative idea, adding value to the small priced phones is the brand Value of Nokia which has been known for quite some time now to build quality and rugged phones that would last a pretty hard beating most times.
Now we have to wait to see if this strategy of Nokia / Microsoft works to pull crowds and how big a success can it be in capturing the losing market share and in regaining its foothold in the smartphone markets around the world.
