It’s now known that Nokia’s new non-Android budget smartphone, the Nokia X, is fully capable of running a host of Android apps, even those not available in Nokia’s own Store app. Luckily, finding and installing these apps is easy, too. We’ll walk you through a simple tutorial so you can take advantage of it too.
The Google Play Store is not available on the Nokia X due to competition with the Windows Phone platform and limitations of the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) fork Nokia created for the X series. This means users cannot easily use many popular apps such as WhatsApp.
If there is no app in Nokia’s own store, users can choose to check any of the other four Android app stores: 1mobile market, SlideME market, Aptoide and Yandex Store. These are available from the Nokia Store homepage as well as from the search results page. Once installed, you can use any of them as easily as you would the native app store.
For example, you can open the 1mobile marketplace and select the category you want to browse or search for the title directly. Download and installation proceed as usual.
For apps that remain inaccessible, Nokia allows sideloading from third-party sources. Android apps can be downloaded in APK format, although security is definitely a concern since APK files can be manipulated and infected by malware just like PC software installation files.
A few companies, such as Whatsapp, provide APK files directly from their own websites. Various download websites (such as www.download.com) also provide APK files for some applications. You can load these files onto your Nokia X via USB cable or download them directly through the browser.
If you just downloaded, you can tap the file name from the Fastlane screen or find it in the Downloads app. The first time you try to install the APK, you will see an error message informing you that installation of apps from third-party sources is not allowed for security reasons, but you can change this setting in Settings.
When you click the “Unknown Sources” checkbox in the “Security” section to allow this action, you will see a second warning message. After that, you are free to install whatever you like and accept the risks. You can now click on the APK file name again and the installation will proceed smoothly.
Some apps, especially those that require Google services, may not function or have limited functionality. You won’t be able to sign in to Google services to share game scores, and location-sensitive applications that rely on Google Maps won’t work.