Archive for July, 2009

Nokia E55 App Review: Sports Tracker

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

Nokia E55 App Review: Sports TrackerNokia Sports Tracker is an application from the Nokia Beta Labs. This free Sports Tracker will help you find out what distance you jogged, at what speed and how long it took you to cover that distance and much ore. So overall it grants you a very interesting view on your  daily training status.

The Nokia Sports Tracker consists of two parts, the first being the app itself which you install on your phone and the second part being the standalone Sports Tracker website.

This app has four main parts; New Workout, Routes, Training Diary and Settings. In New Workout you can choose which workout you are going to do now e.g. running, walking, cycling, skiing. With the help of GPS you can then measure the distance of your running or walking sessions. To do that you only have to start the actual app in New Workout and stop it when you finish the workout. Each finished workout session is saved in your training diary from which you can upload selected sessions to the Nokia Sports Tracker website. Before uploading you can decide whether everyone or just your friends will be able to take a look into your activity results. On the website you can then compare your times with that of your friends for each route that you guys ran. With the help of the training diary you can also track your progress between a specific time frame very well.

During workouts the running app shows you the time, pace and distance. You also have access to other interesting information and graphs like your longitude, latitude and changes in altitude.

So that this app tracks your workout correctly you have to enter your characteristics such as gender, weight, height and age in the settings options. There is also a possibility to have multiple users on one device.

The Nokia Sports Tracker is a very interesting and innovative application for S60 phones. It is very helpful for every hobby athlete. The app shows what phones with the help of software have become. It uses the built in GPS in an interesting way and also helps to socialize with your friends over the Internet. Of course there are still things which have to be worked on like the official website of sports tracker but at the moment the overall app and service are pretty satisfying.

To get more info on this app just visit the Nokia Sports Tracker website.

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Nokia E55 passes the FCC – E55 Release date

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

The long awaited Nokia E55 just hit the FCC. We have all been waiting to hear something about the E55’s release for quite some time now since the phone was supposed to be released in the second quarter of this year. Now half a month into the third quarter of 2009 it is the first time that there is some confirmation that the E55’s will be released soon. The report about the E55 passing FCC is actually the only news related to the E55 release since the announcement of this E Series device.

The news we got were related to the Nokia E55 release and approval, no news yet regarding the yet famous Nokia E72.

Unbenannt Nokia E55 passes the FCC E55 Release date

So what is the FCC actually and what exactly does it mean when we talk about devices passing through it?

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is an agency of the US government. As the name indicates the FCC is heavily involved into communication devices which are supposed to be released in the US market. Before a device is allowed to be sold in the US it has to pass the FCC which means it has to pass many different kinds of tests related mainly to the hardware. The FCC journalizes every fact related to those tests on their webpage like SAR ratings, used accessories, connectivity tests and much much more which is hardly of use the normal cutomer.

So after a device passes the FCC it means that it will definitely be available on the market soon. But sometimes it can take weeks from passing the FCC and the official release to the open market. There are also cases where a device got through the FCC but never was released because of the cancellation of the device by the manufacturer or other complications.

All in all this just means that we are closer to the E55’s release but it is still unknown how close we actually are.

You can get the whole FCC report here.

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Posted in news, release dates | 5 Comments »

Nokia E55 Theme Review: Solstice by PiZero

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Again it is time for a PiZero theme review. This time around the theme is called Solstice and is free in contrast to the last few PiZero themes I reviewed. Solstice is PiZero’s newest theme and has a touch of nature to it.

The good thing with PiZeros works are that he really pays attention to the S60 Editions while making the themes. This way they fit both the newest S60 5th Edition devices and the older S60 3rd Edition devices very well.

featsuolt Nokia E55 Theme Review: Solstice by PiZero

Now let us talk about the actual theme. Solstice is very nature centric because of its background/ wallpaper. The background is a picture of grass and a blue sky with white clouds. The focus of the picture is on the grass and the sky is just blurred out. Not only are the colors sky blue and grass green present on the background but they can also be found in the menus.

There is no taskbar on the home screen. The main font color is white and the battery and status bars are also white but the battery icon is black since it wouldn’t be visible otherwise because of the white clouds. The secondary font color is in a sky blue just like the background of the pop-up menus. Icons in the menu are indicated by a white square field with rounded edges. There is also a secondary indication field which is grass green.

Like with all PiZero themes Solstice comes with a lite version. The theme fits both landscape and portrait mode very well which is pretty important since almost all the new phones have an accelerometer.

To get the theme just visit the PiZero website.

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Nokia E55 App Review: Ovi Contacts

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

screenshot0040 Nokia E55 App Review: Ovi ContactsOvi Contacts is another application form the Nokia Beta Labs. It is somewhat of an IM client which is available on almost all of the S60 3rd and 5th Edition devices. Ovi Contacts which was known as Contacts on Ovi is still not finished yet but it runs pretty stable. There were already some updates which got rid of bugs and introduced some new improvements.

What Ovi Contacts basically does is that it allows you to chat with your friends and shows your presence to them. With this app you can also show your friends what music you are listening to, your current location or your call status. The location feature is pretty nice. You can mark the place where you are at and share it with your friends. On the app itself the name of the location will be shown. It is also possible to let your friends view your location on a map via Nokia Maps.

At the moment Ovi Contacts only allows you to add contacts from Google Talk but not the other popular IM clients like MSN, Yahoo, ICQ etc. Because of this the app is somewhat limited but since it still is in development this can change pretty soon.

Some features that are missing are for example group chat and transfer of data like pictures and such. Even if it isn’t a very good IM client at the moment it is definitely heading into the right direction. It is a very nice app to socialize with your friends.

Like with all web based mobile applications it is recommendable to have a data flat which covers the bandwidth usage of Ovi Contacts even though it uses very little bandwidth.

To download it just visit the Nokia Beta Labs.

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Nokia E55 Game Review:Rolling with Katamari

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

ff2b82f70a4eea563ca0a606145b39ec Nokia E55 Game Review:Rolling with KatamariThe Katamari gaming series was first introduced in 2004 by Namco. Katamri Damacy was the first game in this series and was released on the PlayStation 2. There are several sequels to this game which mostly were released on the Sony gaming consoles. Several spin-offs were also released on the Xbox 360, Nintendo DSi and iPhone. So it isn’t surprising that there is also a Katamari version for all the cell phones that can execute java apps. This version is called Rolling with Katamari.

The concept of all the Katamari games is pretty much the same and mostly tied to an absurd story. In the case of Rolling with Katamari the King of all Cosmos has accidently knocked all the stars out of the sky and it is up to you to replace them. So your objective is to create a cluster which is big enough to replace a star.

There are 30+ levels and several different game modes. The basic game play is pretty simple. You have a small ball which you have to roll around and collect things with so that it can grow bigger. In each level you get a time limit and a specific objective. Which most of the time is diameter you have to reach during the time limit. A level mostly is located in different environments. You start on a circuit board then move on to a whole room and then to a park and etc.

Collecting things from your environment is not easy since at the start of the level you only can collect the smallest objects so that you are able to move on to the bigger objects. You have to be careful not to bump into bigger objects on the start of a level since this way you would lose precious time which is really important in later levels.

The game has decent graphics and sound. Controls are also very nice and simple. If you finished all levels you have the possibility to download more levels which is a pretty positive point about this game. Rolling with Katamari is a pretty absurd game but it is really fun to play once you get into it. To download it just visit the Ovi-Store.

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