Nokia To Pit The X3 Smartphone Against Apple's iPod Nano?

Nokia's new X3 handset might not have the same credentials as its bigger brother, the X6, but it could well become the most successful "Comes With Music" mobile phone to date and even eclipse Apple's iPod range.

The device doesn't have a touchscreen and will be sold at a fraction of the SRP of the X6 - Nokia says £100 approximately - which means that it will be the cheapest CMW phone around. Even Nokia 5230's Xpressmusic will cost around 20 percent more.

It has a small 2.2-inch screen (320x240 pixels), a 3.2-megapixel camera, a 3.5-mm headphone, stereo speakers, built-in FM radio, dedicated music keys (like the 5310) Bluetooth and a Flash enabled browser running on a S40 platform.

We're not sure whether the X3 has a flash but Nokia says it can play up to one and a half days worth of music before the battery gives up.

The X3 features OVI - the first S40 model to offer this - and Comes With Music functionality, all packed in a slender slider phone format (although it is thicker than an iPhone at 14mm).

It comes only with 46MB internal memory but given the fact that it has a microSD slot which can take up to 16GB memory, it could well rival the likes of the iPod nano; the 16GB version costs £146 while a similar capacity microSD card costs under £25.