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The Nokia X is a slow and laggy Android mess

posted on Feb 25th 2014 by

Nokia X-1

There is one common thing that people who don’t use Android love to mention, and that thing is lag. Lag is when something fails to react in timely fashion to a certain input. In the case of smartphones this usually refers to scrolling or opening apps. Android has been plagued by this for a long time, which is why detractors love to bring it up, but it has gotten a lot better in the last few years.

Flagship Android devices like the Galaxy S4, HTC One, or Nexus 5 have practically no lag, but that’s only because they are brimming with horsepower. Use a low-end Android phone and you will be greeted with plenty of lag. The Nokia X is certainly not immune to this. A Vine from someone at MWC shows just how slow the X is at opening an app. In fact, a Vine (6 seconds) is not long enough.

This is really the biggest issue we have with Nokia’s Android phones. They already have an awesome low-end device that runs just as snappy as many high-end phones. The Lumia 520 is not much more expensive than the Nokia X. Nokia could easily offer a cheaper Windows Phone device once their deal with Microsoft gets finalized. Instead they are trying to push Microsoft services into emerging markets with a device that could turn people off.

Are you surprised by how slow the Nokia X is?


  • Ivan Kovačić

    Totally agree. I don’t see the point of this mess…

  • Wolf

    I think there’s some myopic bias going on here - I own a stock 520 and 620 and spend an inordinate amount of time watching the silly “progress” dots running across the screen while they struggle to open core apps.

  • http://winsource.com/ Joe Fedewa

    I was more talking about things like scrolling, pinch to zoom, swiping, etc.

  • Nick Mantzoros

    That’s what happens when you run a skin on an underpowered device. I remember the HTC sense skin on Windows phone 6 chugged like no one elses business.

  • Wolf

    Except that you didn’t actually mention any of that in the story and pointedly mentioned the >6 second app startup issue, of which both the 520 and 620 suffer from on the majority of stock apps.

  • Philo

    Well tbh, Cortex A5 @ 1Ghz Dual-Core is slower than a Single Core A9 and it’s probably hardly optimized.

  • DustiiWolf

    That honestly doesn’t seem too bad to me. I’ve seen worse from higher end androids, and despite a wait time, that looks as if it still opened fairly smooth, unlike some low-end androids that even the opening animation lags.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004906743437 Michael Smith

    Honestly, you are completely dishonest in many ways because you first say that low-end Android smartphones are very slow, you then acknowledge that the Nokia X is targeted as a low-end Android smartphone and yet you would expect this low-end Android Nokia X not to be slow!!!!! Pure dishonesty.

    Guess what, the Android Nokia X is as slow as any other Android low-end smartphones!!! What a big surprise!!!! Consequently, there is no mess at all, just a confirmation that when it is a low-end Android smartphone, it is bound to be slow, even and despite the fact that it is an Android Nokia smartphone!!!

  • evilsushi

    I think that was the point. This was not a hit on the Nokia X it was more an acknologement that Android simple does not perform well with low specs (and not even that well with high specs if my Note2 is an indication of anything)

  • evilsushi

    I would have to agree, While WP8 is as smooth as butter in scrolling and such it does take a long time to open apps. Especially the first time, probably because of JIT compilation.

  • Nokia4Android

    Does the author really hate android or IOS so much that a mere mention of this OS seems to doomed any smartphones that comes with it? Its really a half-hearted move by nokia, afraid of making MS angry over the move. It also point to show Nokia’s desperation and disappointment over the WP platform, in particular the lack of apps. If WP platform is so good, how come not all phones come loaded with WP? The fact that not many smartphones manufactures opted to join the WP platform is surely a telling signs that its not a better option than the other OS out there. Lastly, its a underpowered phone, why would you expect it to perform better than any other low-end devices? Let Nokia add in Android and top it off with a powerful high end specs, that’ll restore nokia to its former glory.

  • http://winsource.com/ Joe Fedewa

    “why would you expect it to perform better than any other low-end devices?”

    Because Nokia makes a Windows Phone with the same specs as the X and it is much, much faster. Android is a step backwards in terms of performance.