Nokia Social app has apparently been updated to v1.5 at Nokia Store and it brings more widgets. Looking for Nokia Social brought me to the ‘Social Networking Client’ which won’t let me download it as I apparently already have it on the N8.

Price: Free

Link: http://store.ovi.com/content/137675

Cheers SLAYER for the tip!

Here’s Adam Giles from Nokia. You might remember him most from his N8 demoes last year, especially that really cool 8 minute feature where he brilliantly clarifies what the features as opposed to just reeling them off. Shame we didn’t see that video on TV.

Adam was at Nokia World 2011 demoing the Nokia Lumia 710 and a couple of days ago he was at Nokia house doing an unboxing.

Was anyone there at the Nokia World 2011 party? You might have seen some of Adam’s incredible moves on the stage. These are the kind of guys (hopefully some girls too, ya know, just to be equal and all) we want at the face of Nokia demoing Nokia products. Real Nokia staff  who know about the Nokia products, but can present it really, really well. (Crickey, remember that N8 demo video, one of the first ones that was very cringe worthy? Yeah the guy wasn’t a presenter but one of the guys in charge, but still a lot of the blogosphere poked fun at the lack of professionalism in an official Nokia demo).

More folks like Adam Giles and Chanse Arrington. Do you have any favourite Nokia staff to present Nokia products? (I also liked the French Nokia guy, Jean Fourgeaud but he moved on since the N97 to do other things, and is now I think currently at Rovio).

Video by nokiauk

I heard about this video but hadn’t watched it yet. Joe was apparently T-Mobile’s most enthusiastic Windows Phone rep. We know how critical these guys are at being at the forefront of consumer sales. They’re knowledge, info and direction can lead to sales going one way or another.

There’s been several reports that a lot of sellers just go for the easy option, the familiar iDroid or something. As a thank you for this enthusiasm for the Nokia Lumia line, Nokia took Joe to CES to give him a weekend VIP treatment. Awesome! Great unexpected amazing everyday thing.

Elop makes an appearance in the video too. It’s not the usual official, serious scene; it’s a light hearted and quite humorous part (especially since most leaders in tech are rigid and don’t seem to be people that have fun in their job).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S3TUZeNA_c

Video by NokiaUS

Cheers Bill for the tip!

Here’s a cool guitar tuner app demoed by Nokia Brasil for the Nokia N9. This is available for both N9 and Symbian^3 handsets for Free.

Price: Free

Link: http://store.ovi.com/content/230671?

by nokiabrasil

Veja como é a interface do Afinatron, um aplicativo para o Nokia N9 que possui funcionalidades de um afinador eletrônico de instrumentos como guitarra e violão. O aplicativo captura um som tocado pelo instrumento e tenta identificar a nota musical. Mantenha seu instrumento musical afinado usando o seu aparelho celular.

Not sure if this is new, I remember Nokia already mentioning this in December, but apparently it’s something to report on. Perhaps it’s because there’s the other S^3 handsets shipping with Belle in addition to the Nokia N8?

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_now_shipping_symbian3_devices_with_belle_out_the_box-news-3732.php

This is Nokia’s twitter account confirming details. Now they have made a couple of error tweets in the past regarding Belle availability dates, but they’ve reiterated this one quite a few too many times to be wrong.

February is the scheduled time of release for Belle as an update for current S^3/Anna devices and will make them so much more usable and fun to use.

Cheers KF for the tip

Yle reported earlier this month that Nokia was possibly looking to F-Secure founder, Risto Siilasmaa to replace Jorma Ollila as their Chairman.

Yesterday they said Nokia’s board had officially nominated Siilasmaa for the position, with Dame Marjorie Scardino to stay as Vice Chairman. YLE says Olilla was going to leave in 2010 [was that an 'uh oh moment'?] but was convinced to stay to ‘shepherd the company through tough times’. Yup that seems to have worked.

http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2012/01/finnish_entrepreneur_nominated_as_nokia_chair_3207757.html

Cheers W-A for the tip.

As promised, after my exams I’d get around to N9 apps Here’s one that I was playing in revision breaks. It’s an awesomely addictive game called ‘Dalton – The Awesome’.

This is a simple running and jumping style game where as Dalton you must get away or kill if you can (with powerups) the zombies. Speaking of powerups, you get a skateboard to go faster, life heart things, a gun, and something that turns you into a giant.

It’s nice and responsive (as it must be for running games like this). It looks great, no? I think there’s one for Symbian too but this is 4 times as big in terms of download size at around 40MB. It’s free and it’s a must have for the N9 collection.

If you have more N9 app tip suggestions, I’m going to be going through them at our recommend an app section, mentioning in the comments that it’s for N9:

http://mynokiablog.com/tips/recommend-an-app/

N9 Apps: Dalton – The Awesome!

Price: Free

Link: http://store.ovi.com/content/232557

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t74lYwFPh0M

Developer Blurb:

Play as Dalton on his journey to kill all of the zombies standing in his way as he achieves TRUE AWESOMENESS!

BTW here’s the category for N9 apps. It was just for demoes but now it’s for anything n9 APP wise (as we can’t always demo the newest apps as they appear)

http://mynokiablog.com/category/applications/n9apps/

Cheers Yemi for the tip on this app

I love the deep black of the AMOLED Clear Black Display. It blends to the whole phone.

Once the most popular game in the world (not sure if still is or if that’s now Angry Birds), Snake is possibly the most legendary mobile game in the world. Last year we saw an app on iPhone that tried to replicate not just the game, but the phone itself to give that full blown experience.

Nokia Conversations posted about such an app for our Nokia Lumias called the Snake ’97. It’s a great little app that replicates a classic Nokia, can you guess what it is? (5110) . The buttons themselves work great, very responsive and they have a little vibration when you press them, kinda like proper haptic feedback – something I miss from N9. You get the so very memorable ‘drrrrrt’ sound when you hit a wall.

This is Snake 1 where the walls are solid.

The app has a trial so you can give it a go first before paying. I like this feature from a lot of the marketplace paid apps as sometimes I’m weary of paying for something I might not like.

#73) Snake ’97

Price: £0.79

Link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/apps/a9efa10f-fb0e-4437-9aa2-088db7e04a47

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrXMmTjLmdw

 

Developer Blurb:

Play Snake like it is 1997. This is a remake of the original Snake, complete with dot-matrix display and monotone sounds.

It is as addictive (and frustrating) as the original, play Snake ’97 and be prepared to loose some productive hours.

Simply launch the app, touch a button and start!

Snake ’97 features:

• - old school controls
• - original sounds
• - 9 original and 2 extra difficulty levels
• - a high score that cannot be reset (just like the original)
• - in trial mode you can earn up to 250 points!

The story behind this game is that my modern smartphone got damaged in an Amsterdam bar…, requiring me to revert back to an old phone. Suddenly I knew the modern smartphone was missing something and the idea for a accurate Snake remake was born.

Snake ’97 is an homage to the classic mobile phone game programmed in 1997.

By carefully analyzing the classic gameplay, timing and controls, this Snake ’97 remake is one of the most accurate available.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to contact me.

Have Snake fun!

 

Best regards from Amsterdam,

The developer,

Willem.

 

Rating:

Design: 9

Usability: 10

Performance: 10

Price: 10

Here’s an interesting video that perked me up just before my exams yesterday. It’s the Nokia Lumia Launch for Denmark and they did it with Style in Copenhagen. At the Danish National Soccer stadium, the Lumia Tiles literally came to life.

THIS is what we need people to see. To be aware of the Nokia Lumia line of products in order for them to give it a try. Because, and I will reiterate this, it is essentially a very good product. It performs brilliantly, and it just works. Simple, fast, fun. There’s a lot of people that would appreciate something that just works as a smartphone. The video is shown on both NokiaDanmark  and Microsoft‘s youtube channel. There is soooo much work that Microsoft and Nokia need to do to get people to recognise Nokia Lumia Windows Phones even exist. It would of course help if it was globally available but that’s another issue.

The video is titled ft Master Chief but you only really see a glimpse. :S

Check this out. Do you think it works becoming curved at the corners? I do like how there’s minimal space wastage. Though maybe not to the extent of losing the Nokia logo. Then again, the world’s most popular phone does not have its logo on its face. It is just known by its design.

The above was just for the display and wasn’t meant to be that entirely accurate. Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive are clearly on the screen as well as hearing the Nokia tune, Lumia 800 Ferrari. The comments on both videos are promising. Usually, Nokia phone videos in US audiences don’t tend to get much positive comments (often, premature dismissal of Symbian)

I would actually love it if Nokia somehow managed to make Lumia look like the above. Again, no buttons, curved corners (the phone could simply be rectangular and just replicate the colour of the shell to make it appear curved – or black it out as WebOS and  N9 does)

TheVerge reported that Apple CEO, Tim Cook, acknowledged Windows Phone as a legitimate competitor and the third horse in this race. Recently we heard a few Apple fans sharing their praises for Nokia Lumia for focusing on user experience first, in both hardware design and OS. Still, you wouldn’t expect the top man at their helm, Tim Cook, to acknowledge the Windows Phone effort based on current performance.

“There’s a horse in Redmond that always suits up and always runs, and will keep running.”

http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/24/2730972/tim-cook-phone-market-isnt-a-two-horse-race-theres-a-horse-in-redmond

As well as WP, He also notes that “there are other players we can never count out”.

Could Cook be talking about Symbian? MeeGo? BlackBerry? Bada?

Midnight rambling…

I think it’s good never to count out your competitors. Doing so would put you in deep trouble, like say, ignoring those doing the clamshell or heavens, touchscreens even if at first they don’t look to be threats. Consider everything as possible threats and do what you can to make sure they never become a proper one (Nokia could have easily snuffed out iPhone/Android before they ever got famous but they moved much too slow, like a giant trying to stomp on an ant…but those Ants had time to grow and turned radioactive and are now bigger than the giant).

A lot of people are discounting what WP can do. It is still very, very early days. Limited market release, 1m+ sales? Not mind blowing but not really terrible. Nokia never intended Lumia to ship in volume in 2011. Note, the Lumia only became available initially at 6 countries mid October. Mid October. 6 countries. Mid October. I seem to need to repeat this. It’s still too early to say it’s a success or a fail, regardless of what naysayers or even fans try to paint one way or the other. Really it’s possibly Q3 that we’ll get a fairer indication of how things are panning out (and I think Elop has mentioned 2012 is still transition time – I think he mentioned this last year already anyway).

Nokia Lumia is essentially a good product. It needs more time to get to more markets and to have that brand established and recognized. Such recognition is absolutely very powerful in Sales. Consider how much of iPhone sales are going, not on merit, but on the brand of it (though I do agree the 4/4S are very excellent smartphones). It’s easier for people to look, pick up and buy something they and their friends are familiar with.

Nokia must also do their damnedest to make sure they continue to create great Lumia products for that project to be successful. Great not just by Nokia standards, but one that meets and possibly exceeds industry expectations. The Lumia 900 in a way pleased a lot of the media (surprisingly enough) but as a geek, I’m still itching for a super high end Lumia and by the looks of things, we might not get one until Apollo arrives. I hope by then it’s not too late and Nokia learns to announce and release before people forget thing you announced.

In the mean time…lower end Lumia’s may help fill in the numbers (especially Tango ones) as they compete on price, but still manage to deliver a great user experience (it’s a pain to get a cheap Android and have the same user experience as S^1 :s).

The 710 could do well on T-Mobile USA and Rogers Canada, especially since it’s generally accepted to be very good value for money. The 900 could also be a big hit for AT&T. We know there’s more Lumias on the way, more to be announced at least every 3 months or so. With more handsets available, and to more countries, we should hopefully start seeing these numbers pick back up.

If we remember all the way back from last year, the transition is expected to be 2 years; annoying since we’ve already spent 4 years in transition from non touch to crappy touch (and snuffing the awesome touch as we went and played with Intel). Note the side bar of the graph below says 100% eventually being Nokia Windows Phone sales. The biggest worry is that when that is true, the Nokia Windows Phone sales is completely negligible. Who wants 100% of 0? The midway point in the graph below is expected to take place this year according to Morgan Stanley’s estimates as WP shipments begin to equal Symbian – though to the overall detriment of lower total smartphone sales for 2012.

Concerns of doubters are valid, but so is the hope still of fans that things are slowly (go frikkin faster, Nokia!) but surely clicking in to place and working out (“no one will buy Nokia WP”, well there’s already 1 million).

I wonder what the prediction is now by those analysts that once predicted quite lofty sales by Nokia and MS. Quite a bit of an overestimate but nice to hope that it could significantly pick up by 2015 – it doesn’t even have to be number 1 as a couple predicted. At least still a major, independent player.

We really need Nokia to step up and give people more of a reason to choose their devices. When’s the ETA for that awesome camera of the N8 that should have been there on the first Lumia, huh? The longer they take to get stuff done, the more opportunity to break out with WP is lost. Any expectations for MWC? We were told they were coming back in a big way last year to 2012 MWC but I’m unfortunately not that optimistic.