Welcome to Week 2 of Nokia’s DiscOVIries Contest! I hope you all had fun submitting your entries. In fact, I would have wanted this guy to win the contest, but he’s still probably playing Left for Dead. Last week’s contest winner will be announced tomorrow.
Now since last week required a workstation shot which apparently, some people did not have we’re making this week’s theme and mechanics more enjoyable!
There’s no other way to demo this game for the N Gage than to show it. It’s basically a combination of Boogie for the Nintendo Wii and Dance Dance Revolution, all put together on your mobile phone. What makes this game challenging is that there’s no rhythm bar, unlike in the Wii’s Boogie.
There is no multiplayer component so you can’t play with friends but since you’re logged on to the N Gage Arena, you can compare top scores per region and even globally.
Universal’s Cindy Gomez (up and coming artist) is also inside the game as an avatar which you can play. Five of her songs are included as tracks but you can use any music track within your device.
The game uses an achievements-based system to unlock items so leveling up allows you to see more items and use them as apparel for your avatar.
Dance Fabulous is available on free trial for the N Gage which you can buy later on.
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I’d feel bad for you if you recently bought a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone. Today, Nokia launched the 5530 XpressMusic phone, the cheapest touch screen music phone in their entire roster, which retails for about 200 EU. Holy cow, that’s just about, or less than, P13,000 if I’m not mistaken.
The complete hands on after the break.
The following post is a paraphrase of the media workshop conducted by Loren Shuster, which is essentially a mindset establishing thing for the media. A lot of these are trends and product features and when mentioned, my own thoughts.
There are 1.3 billion users on the Internet. Over 40% of these have mobile Internet access as well. In 2008, the number of mobile Internet users doubled, making the mobile Internet the only way to access the web for developing countries.
it is estimated that by 2012, the number of mobile Internet devices will surpass the total number of desktops that have Internet access. By 2012, there will be over 1 billion people accessing social networking sites via mobile phones. There are 9.3 million individuals using mobile Internet per day. 8.2 million use the mobile Internet for maps.
The ability to personalize and customize information on your phone is important. Content is determined on the terms of users, not corporations.
(Jayvee’s Note — This is the point where they show how the Nokia N97 has customization for the home screen.)
In 2008, Nokia has shipped 60 million converged devices, 36 million were N-series devices. Within these devices is the Ovi Services which is composed of the following 5 parts:
Maps and Navigation
Music
Messaging
Games
Media Services
(Jayvee’s Note — Shuster talks about the Ovi Store. This is basically stuff we’ve heard in local press conferences, but in addition, he mentions that the store also houses flash-based content.)
In addition to this, there are also embedded business models for other companies to adapt into their plans, such as the Maps feature within Ovi (adding your businesses into the Maps and I would guess paying a premium to be seen).
Using Ovi services, you can share locations and actions and behaviors of all your friends. You can track where they are, see their schedule, know what photos they take, hear the music they listen to, and share your own schedule as well.
(Jayvee’s Note — I guess this is preempted by the new RSS feed feature on your phone’s home screen which made debut in the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Phone. The new 5530 XpressMusic allows you to track up to 20 friends, but these are basic functions such as calls, RSS feeds to blogs, social networking profiles and SMS.)
Now on to developing markets. Ovi Mail’s reach successful across Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand. Mostly thanks to the less than 50 EU phones that were recently launched and ease of use email.
With music downloads, Nokia has brought in more than 3 million music downloads, which surpasses piracy in Singapore. By taking away the cost barrier from Comes with Music, you can download unlimited amounts of music, 80% of the downloads are actually complete albums. (Jayvee’s Note — Comes with Music allows for 1 year free download of songs from the Music Store — around 4 million songs.)
Hi folks. You probably read my first hands on with the Nokia 5800 last year. My first impressions still are basically the same, now that I finally have the unit with me and I’d like to supplemement that review with this post. I’ve been pondering how to go about reviewing this phone and opted out from a specs perspective, and will talk about the experience of using a touch screen Nokia device. Thus this review is oriented for Nokia users who are wondering how well the touch screen technology has been implemented on the 5800.
Before I continue, note that this is not Nokia’s first take on the touch screen. They had two devices in the past that did this, and their “N” web browser tablets also do the same. But this is the first time Nokia has put out so much marketing for an XpressMusic phone that seems to be more like an Nseries device because of the way it’s implemented.
The photo above shows you how to get around to the different “hot areas” of the phone’s main menu. Because of the touch screen, you can find other ways to access the clock, alarm, connectivity, and profiles without creating shortcuts. With the XpressMusic menu button on top, you also don’t need to use the custom shortcut buttons for the multimedia functions. Thus, I use the 4 shortcut keys for putting in other things such as messaging, calculator and the camera.
Below are comparisons with the Nokia E71, the Apple iPod Touch (Generation II), and the HTC TyTn II. The 5800 is handy and light to the hand, similar to the Nokia N82.
You can customize the phone’s home screen to use the traditional S60 menu of calendars and updates or you can use the “RSS friend” tracker that updates you with the information of 4 of your chosen friends. I personally don’t find the latter function to be as useful (it does sound cool but I prefer to have my dates and to do’s on the menu).
How well can you text with it?
It’s been four days and I don’t use the QWERTY or mini QWERTY mode of input. I stick to the good ‘ol fashioned numerical keypad that works almost as well as real keys. There have been mixed feedback on how sensitive the keys are compared to real hardware buttons but I sincerely think that you can get used to it.
A small reservation I have is the method for finding names, as it can get rather confusing when you have the entire A-Z displayed, and as you type in a name, some letters go odd man out on you to see what’s left. It can be confusing at first but come to think of it, it’s the most efficient way save for offering multitouch on the keypad.
Browsing through names using the scroll bar can be a chore. I’m glad that the keypad senses your entire thumb even if you’re not directly touching the scroll node. To scroll up and down, it’s most comfy to put your thumb above or below the node and let the phone scroll itself up and down the contacts list.
If you are a Mac user, as of late there is still no sync tool for iSync. But guess what? I was able to find a workaround to getting a flawless sync to work with Apple’s iSync. You can download the plugin from that link. Keep checking the official iSync plugin page for an official driver.
There seems to be something up with the signal. The screen flickers on and off at times when I’m on a call and I tend to lose the person I’m talking to on the other line. It doesn’t happen often but it needs to be addressed.
Battery life is another issue. It’s not as bad as when the first N95 came out. You will get a day of full charge on this thing if you use the multimedia and WiFi sparingly but you may need to carry around a spare charger for a really long day.
So, I know a lot of guys lined up the for the huge pre-sell discount. How goes your Nokia 5800 experience so far? Leave a comment and let’s figure things out!