8 Things To Do After Buying Nokia X To Make It Better

Spend some time reading this article and you’ll save a lot of time and confusion while using this device.

1. Learn How To Use It

It’s an Android phone but unlike any other. First, let’s get familiar with it.

The homescreen is a vertical scroll of all the apps installed. You can sort it in folders, make the tiles larger and add widgets.There is only one button at the front. Press it once to go back, hold it to go to the homescreen.There is no separate multitasking menu. Instead, notifications and the recently used apps are displayed on one screen, called Fastlane, accessed by sliding left or right from the homescreen. Worry not though, there is a way to improve this and we will discuss it in detail later in the article.

2. Update

Since your phone was packaged up, Nokia has released an update. It will take you from version 10.0.3 to 11.1.1. This update promises performance enhancement along with some fine-tuning of the homescreen. The size of this update is only 16MB and you can start downloading it by going to Settings->About->System Updates.

3. Set Up Your SIMs

Nokia X is a Dual SIM phone. If you are planning to take advantage of this fact, go ahead and set it up from Settings->Dual SIM. From here you can assign your primary SIM for calls, texts and SMS so the device won’t ask which SIM to use every time you want to call someone. You can also assign a SIM card as offline from here.

4. Import Your Contacts

There are many ways to do this. You can import your contacts from Google Contacts, your SIM card or the ones backed up in your storage. We have an in-depth guide on migrating contacts from your old phone to the Nokia X.

4. Add your Email Account

Be it Outlook, Exchange or Gmail, Nokia X is capable of handling multiple email accounts. While there is no Gmail app for Nokia X, you can still sync, read and reply with your Gmail account from Nokia X. To get started, go to the Settings app and select Add Account from the Accounts section and tap Email. Input your details, select the kind of account it is (Exchange, IMAP, or POP), hit Done and that’s it. Alternatively, you can use an app like K-9 Mail to sync multiple accounts, including Yahoo Mail.

5. Improve Fastlane

(Above: before – after shot) Fastlane is Nokia’s substitute for notifications panel + multitasking menu. If you use more than a handful apps on a daily basis, Fastlane can get cluttered very fast. Fortunately, there is a way to turn Fastlane exclusively into a notifications panel. You can access it from the same place – left or right swipe from the homescreen. Go to the Settings app and in the general section, tap Fastlane. From here uncheck the Apps option. (Alternatively, you can turn off the notifications and use it as a multitasking menu if you want).

6. Change The Keyboard To SwiftKey

Nokia’s built-in keyboard is not that great. Its prediction engine is not groundbreaking and it doesn’t support gesture based input. SwiftKey is the best for both those things. The great news is that SwiftKey is available on the Nokia Store and the app is customized for the Nokia X; so, it runs wonderfully on your device. Just go to the Nokia Store, search for SwiftKey Keyboard and download the app.

7. Activate Glance Screen

Glance Screen, one of the most touted features of Nokia’s Lumia series has made it’s way to the Nokia X. But its not as feature rich as the one found in Lumia phones. When you haven’t used your phone for a while, the glance screen will simply lit up and show you the time along with some notifications (like email, twitter mentions). It will also show up when the phone goes into sleep mode.

8. Set Up MixRadio

MixRadio is one of the best things about the X. Nokia has a sizable collection of songs and with MixRadio you get access to all these high quality songs for free. MixRadio works like a radio – you create different mixes (or playlists) by selecting some artists. Once done, MixRadio will randomly play songs from the artists you have selected. You can also download mixes to your storage for offline use (unlike iTunes Radio).