App Review: Nokia World Rally Championship (Plus how to win a Lumia 800)

I’m not exactly sure how many of you are racing enthusiasts, even if you aren’t I suggest you try this app (Yes I’m recommending the app before even starting the review, here’s why). Personally I consider myself an above-average car fan, nothing over the top but just enough to get excited when I see a rare car (I don’t follow ANY championships AT ALL), but I was interested in the WRC because one of the legs/tracks is actually in Jerash, Jordan- seen above (that’s where I am YAY!- I was planning on checking it out with some friends but we totally forgot about it).

Well a quick re-cap anyways, the 2011 season is of course over, won by Sebastian Loeb  for the eighth time straight, I would not want to mess with this guy, I’ve tried rally driving on Gran Turismo 5 and IT IS HARD!!! so that’s a serious achievement. The 2012 season starts sometime late January, and if you’re interested in cars at all I suggest you keep this app with you till then.

The Review:

Nokias’ WRC Live app is available for all Nokia platforms from S40 to Windows Phone- (Exclusive for Nokia Lumias) & Meego too! FOR FREE.  The app itself is EXTREMELY thorough, it has everything from normal news, to championship rankings, to hall of fame, and of course it has content Exclusive to the app not even available on the official WRC.com from images to videos to live text commentary.

Now as mentioned above I’ve never followed a single racing event (Except what I hear on TopGear – Salute to Jezzah, Hamster and James for my favorite show), so I wasn’t expecting much once I installed the app (My initial intention was just a quick review to enter the contest- more on that later); but I was honestly surprised once I saw how awesome the app was.

From a developers point of view the integration of the app into the OS is really impressive (tested on S^3/N8-00), I assume it’s written in QT (not sure how to check) which would explain why it’s really smooth. For an app with as much content as this I expected slow stuttering performance with the occasional un-responsiveness, but none of that was there at all. Transition from one topic/content section to another is nice and fluid with no apparent lag.

One thing I really liked about the app was the integration of the phone’s status onto it, something as simple as informing me that my battery is low is a nice touch that proves that the app was made by someone who understands how the OS runs (of course being an official Nokia app they should).

Once you open the app after the initial loading screen (first screen-shot) you get to the screen above/ home-screen, as you can see you can select between news (the bar on-top automatically refreshes giving you the latest news. To the left under “just finished” you’ll find a re-cap of the latest race (in this case the final race of the season in Wales), and on the right you can access ALOT of information about whatever you want, be it Race results, Drivers history/hall of fame, or exclusive media.

News:

Once you select the “News” tab you’ll find a list of articles even in the off season (23rd of Dec. = today), which means you can stay on top of things even when the seasons over, best part is it’s not an RSS feed, it’s a full news app; meaning no need to open the browser for more pictures/details jsut tap on it and you’re there. You can even share the news article through Facebook or Email!

Live Text- commentary, Race Overview & Championship Standings-

Simple but effective, live updates for you on the go brings you twitter feeds with the “#WRC” hashtag as well as official updates for when you’re not in front of the TV.

The WRC Live App even has a Route Overview which shows you the track/course outline on our favorite Ovi/Nokia Maps (another sign of how well integrated this app is, reminds me of sportstracker a bit; except instead of running/hiking your zooming through mud, sand and snow)

You can even turn on Itinerary/split time records to get detailed info about how long it takes each racer to finish each leg/lap, plus the split difference between the racers!

Of course you can always check the rally results at any time to see what the standing of your favorite driver is under Championship Standings,  where you can find detailed results for every single leg of the  rally so far including what position each driver got and what their total score is.

Drivers/Teams-

Here you can find all the information about every driver participating in the rally along with a nice list of ‘Hall of Famers” each with more information about their career history than a Wikipedia page.

Anyone else notice “The Stig” ???

Media Content:

As mentioned before the app contains Exclusive Images and Videos (that’s how Nokia rolls, none of that mainstream stuff) from crashes to interviews to race round-ups, unfortunately for some reason I wasn’t able to view any of the videos as I kept on getting a server error. (Can someone check if it’s a wide-spread problem or only me?)

Thankfully though the images were working fine, and that by itself is a treat; some of the images available are truly breathtaking, capable of conveying the intensity and sheer awesomeness involved in the World Rally Championship. Which is of course the main point of this whole app; so well done on that front Nokia

Of course you can also choose to share these photos via email/Facebook as well, so you have no excuse not to spread the racing fever.

Wrap-up:

Throughout the whole experience of this app I only felt that two things were missing; (well not missing, probably just because this app spoiled me so much that I found myself craving for more). Anyways if possible two things I’d like to see are:

• The ability to save/download media content onto your own mobile device, or at least be able to set them as wallpaper. (If I can share them with others I might as well help myself first)
• A little silly but I felt that the app could use some background music, maybe at least through the first loading screen; something rally related, maybe some engines roaring or crowds cheering- Just my own personal crazy opinion.

The Nokia WRC app is truly something worth downloading, it has more content than most “premium/paid” apps and it runs as smooth as you could hope for; head on over to the Nokia store to download it.

http://store.ovi.com/content/128268

Or if you’re still not convinced watch our quick video review (not really that quick):

And heres the official preview video by Nokia:

How to Win a Lumia 800-

(I know it’s the part most of you are here for), The people over at Nokia connects are running a competition, simply all you have to do is review the Nokia WRC app and share it to enter the competition to win a Lumia 800.

– As I was saying above I was planning on doing a tiny review in the comments section about the app, just to enter the competition, but once I tried the app it felt unfair to sum it up in 50 words. Good Luck.

In case you’re interested here are some shots of 2011 season (showing Nokias partnership with the WRC, as well as some awesome looking cars)

Of course you can find a bunch more over at Nokia Connects Flickr Page or at the Official WRC Website (contains alot of the images available through the app):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nokiaconnects/sets/72157628536008907/

http://www.wrc.com/fanzone/gallery/

Tags: Competition, featured, Lumia 800

Category: Applications, Competition, Event, Fun, Lumia, Maemo, MeeGo, MNB, Nokia, Reviews, S60, Symbian, Video, Windows Phone