June 22nd, 2009
Marble maze is a labyrinth game for S60 3rd and 5th Edition devices. Like the previous game I reviewed this one also uses the accelerometer of the phone. This means that the marble is controlled by tilting your device and not by pushing any button. The objective of Marble Maze is to lead your marble from one end of the labyrinth to the other end of it or a specific destination which can be right next to your starting point like shown in the screenshot.
Leading the marble from one end to the other doesn’t really sound that hard since you have a top down view on the labyrinth but of course like every other interesting game this one also has a catch. The catch is that the labyrinth is full of holes in which the marble can fall in. If that happens you have to restart the level. Avoiding the holes is the biggest and actually only obstacle in the game. With every passing level it gradually gets harder to move past the holes and reach the end of the maze. Sometimes it can get really frustrating when you get stuck at a level but that is exactly what makes Marble Maze such a thrilling game.
All in all Marble Maze has 40 levels and you have the possibility to create your own levels. There is also the possibility to use a rubber ball or a ping pong ball instead of the steel marble. Each of them has a different feel while playing. Sadly the game doesn’t have any sound effects. The time you needed for every level is recorded so that you can try to improve it when you play the level again.
In my opinion every game which can be addictive and gets frustrating sometimes is game worth playing. Therefore this game is recommendable for everyone who likes to play simple and challenging games. The full version of this game costs $5,99. There is also a trial available here.
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Tags: accelerometer game, marble maze, nokia e55 game review
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June 21st, 2009
Here and Now is another creation of the guys over at the Nokia Beta Labs. The major task of this app is to show you what local events are going on and how the local weather will be in the next few days. Here and Now was released two months ago for devices based on S60 3rd Edition FP2 but after the last update it also works on FP1 devices. When this app is out of beta status Nokia is planning to preinstall it in the forthcoming Nokia devices. The Nokia beta labs also promise that the final version will include some more services than the two mentioned. Whether the new S60 5th Edition devices will also get this app is still unknown.
Here and Now defines your location via your network operator and the content for this app is provided by 3rd party companies. The weird thing about Here and Now is that it actually isn’t a standalone application. It is just a bookmark saved in the standard S60 browser.
The “app” is very easy to use and looks quite nice with its “soft” colors and icons which are mainly used in the events part of Here and Now. Each upcoming event has a different color. You will get info on the place, time and type of the event. Overall Here and Now doesn’t seem like anything special. It does things that other apps have been doing for a long time now. Maybe it will get interesting when Nokia add some more services like they promised.
You can download the beta directly at the Nokia Beta Labs. Like every other beta this one is also free.
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Tags: here and now, nokia beta labs, nokia e55 app review
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June 20th, 2009
Deep Purple is created by Adelino who is one of the more professional S60 theme creators out there. He has created many themes for S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and 2 but his themes also support the original 3rd Edition (3.0).
Deep Purple has a very dark background which has a purple shade to it. The background looks like as if it shows steps. The clock on the home screen is square with round edges. It has a glossy black color. The battery and status bars are in purple. Each bar seems to have a slightly different shade of purple.
The font color used in this theme is white. There is no secondary font color since the white is visible both in the black and purple parts of the theme. This theme comes with over 550 3rd party icons. They have the same design as the clock frame from the home screen. The icons are also glossy and most of them are only in the colors of black and white unlike the indication frame in the menus which is colored in purple. This purple has also a fading effect but the fading starts almost at the bottom of the frame. Deep Purple also changes the calculator button design so that they look more like the icons in the menus.
This theme looks quite nice but for me the deep purple has a too strong contrast in combination to the almost black backgrounds. To download this theme please visit the Adelino Themes Webpage.
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Tags: Add new tag, adelino design, nokia e55 theme review, S60 v3 theme
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June 19th, 2009
Since the Ovi Store service has started some while ago and games started to appear on it, some of the Nokia cell phone users wondered what actually would become of N-Gage which has been Nokia’s gaming service for quite a while now. Because of the availability of N-Gage on the N-Series and recently the E-Series (e.g. E55) and Xpress Music phones this gaming service became quite popular for mobile gamers throughout the last year.
At the beginning the Ovi Store mostly had non N-Gage games. But recently trials from N-Gage games are available on the Ovi Store. On the Ovi Store itself there are no indications of N-Gage while downloading the trials. They are available under the gaming category just like the other games. When you download the trials it will open N-Gage so that you can install them. Buying the game isn’t done over the Store but with the N-Gage service.
It looks like Nokia isn’t letting go of the N-Gage service just yet. But over the upcoming months it is quite possible that the Ovi Store will completely merge with the N-Gage service. The availability of the trials through the Ovi Store seems to be an indication just for this.
If Nokia manages to combine the N-Gage service and the Ovi Store successfully the end user should benefit from it. It should be less of hassle to try out and buy the game if it is within just only one service rather than split in two services.
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Tags: N-Gage, nokia game services, Ovi Store
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June 18th, 2009
Resco Bubbles is a very interesting S60 puzzle game made by Resco. The game play relies heavily on the accelerometer of a phone. Therefore tilting your phone is the only way to play this game. The objective of the game is pretty simple but during the game it can get very frustrating. Let me explain why that is so.
In Resco Bubbles you have to roll a silver marble on the screen and destroy all the bubbles that are displayed. That doesn’t sound really hard since this would make it one of the easiest and most boring games ever. But of course this game isn’t that simple. The bubbles have to be destroyed in numeric order. Therefore the bubbles are marked with numbers starting from one. If you hit the wrong bubble you will automatically lose a life. For example if you destroy bubble one to five in numeric order and then hit a bubble with a number higher than six you will lose.
There are also levels where you have to destroy only one bubble but to get to it you have to maneuver around a whole field of skulls. Touching the skulls will make you lose a life too. Resco Bubbles has 60 levels in total. They vary in difficulty, bubbles and things like the surface on which the marble rolls. On some surfaces like ice the marble rolls much faster than on surfaces made out of wood and such.
If you lose all your life’s you can start at any level which you already have cleared once. This really helps since sometimes you lose your lives very quickly if you are playing a difficult level. The best time you needed for each particular level will be shown on the upper right. This way you can always try to best it.
Overall it is a very entertaining but also very frustrating game. If you are a fan of motion sensing and hard puzzle games you should try it out. You can get the trial at the Resco webpage. The demo version is restricted to 5 levels only. The full version costs $9,95.
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Tags: accelerometer game, nokia e55 game review, resco bubbles
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June 17th, 2009
The Nokia Photo Browser is another great app from the Nokia Beta Labs. It is an experimental photo browser with many nice 3D effects. The photo browser was released at the end of March for the Nokia 5800 XM. But sometimes later it was also available for the S60 3rd Edition devices. Recently it got a major update with improvements and features. Sadly in the future releases the Photo Browser team will mostly focus on the S60 5th Edition phones. Still this app is already working very well on the 3rd Edition phones.
The browser looks very fancy because of the nice implementation of 3D effects. After starting the browser it will show all pictures on your phone in a grid view. It works in portrait and in landscape mode. To do this the photo browser uses the accelerometer. A smooth rotating effect is used during the change of displaying mode.
Pictures which take longer to load are simply displayed as blank images. Scrolling through the images is also very smooth and can be done very quickly. It looks just like the 3D pictures/video browser Cooliris which can be used as a Firefox add-on.
I already motioned that the newest release came with some new features and improvements. The improvements are better image zoom quality and better rendering and image processing speed. New features that come with this version of photo browser are a folder sorting option, a send function and an image rotating and deleting function. These features were really needed so that this app could be actually used as a real photo browser.
The Nokia Photo Browser is a promising app. It makes browsing pictures on your phone a pleasant experience. If you have an S60 5th Edition device you will get some very nice extra features over the S60 3rd Edition devices. Still as an owner of any current S60 phone you should have a look at this app. This photo browser is free and you can get it at the Nokia Beta Labs.
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Tags: nokia e55 app review, nokia photo browser
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June 15th, 2009
Today Nokia announced a new E-series smart phone. It is the successor to the E71 and is named E72. The front of the E72 looks very similar to the E55. The main difference here is the full QWERTY keyboard on the E72 which makes it considerably wider than the E55. The landscape screen and QWERTY keyboard are responsible for the extra width. It is also because of this fact that the E72 is 2.5 mm shorter than the E55 but at the same time it is slightly thicker than the E55.
The design around the d-pad of the E72 is the same as that of the E55 but the major difference is that the E72 has an optical d-pad which should come pretty handy while scrolling through the menus and pages. Besides the brushed metal around their d-pads both the E55 and E72 have a steel frame going around their whole front. The battery covers on both devices are also made out of metal and both use the same battery (1500mAh).
Some major upgrades in the E72 over the E71 and E55 are the 5MP camera with LED flash and the support for up to 10.2Mbps HSDPA. A very nice thing is that the E72’s LED flash can be used as a torch by simply pressing the spacebar. The camera and its LED of the E72 are surrounded by a silver frame. Video recording capabilities seems to be the same on both phones. The hardware platform (CPU+RAM) should also be the same.
Even though both devices are based on the same software (Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2) the E72 will have a range of new software improvements over the current devices. The E72 will be available in the 3rd quarter of this year and at a price of 350€ without taxes and subsidies. Therefore it will cost about 100€ more than the E55.
Overall the E72 seems to have better hardware and software than the E55 but it will come with a price. Besides that the E72 should also appear later in the market than the E55.
To get more info on the new E72 please visit the official Nokia Forum.
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Tags: e55 and e72, nokia e-series comparison
Posted in Comparison, news, release dates | 1 Comment »
June 14th, 2009
I already motioned that from now on I would review some premium themes from PiZero. This one is called Ruby v2. The themes name comes from its strong ruby red color which looks pretty awesome. Ruby’s home screen and menu background is ruby red with many lighter red wavy lines going through it. The lines are lighter in the middle and fade into the ruby red color of the background. Some other noticeable things on the home screen are the silvery battery and status bars and the simple analog clock. The main font color used in this theme is white which is very well visible because of the good contrast between the ruby red and white. Ruby red is also the secondary font color which becomes visible when you highlight icons, options, settings etc.
The secondary font color fits perfectly to the main color of the indication field which highlights the icons and such. Therefore the secondary indication field color is like the secondary font color. But the secondary indication field seems to have a darker ruby red. The scroll bar is also in the silvery white. Overall everything seems to harmony very well in this theme. It doesn’t have any complicated elements which gives it an unique look.
This theme is available at PiZeros website for 4,99€ which is a little too expensive for my taste since at the end of the day it still is a theme. If you really like the premium themes you should by one of the theme packs. This should save you some euros.
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Tags: nokia e55 theme review, ruby v2 by pizero
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June 13th, 2009
Pac-Man is one of the oldest arcade games. Just like Tetris it didn’t loose its charm even after almost three decades since its release. Up until now it has been an immensely popular game. Most probably this won’t change for a long while.
Pac-Man is based on a very simple concept. The player controls Pac-Man who is in a maze filled with yellow dots. The objective of the game is to eat all the dots in the maze. To make the game challenging four ghosts enter the maze the same time as Pac-Man. They have the ability to “eat” Pac-Man but there is a way for Pac-Man to “eat” the ghosts. To do this Pac-Man has to eat one of the four special flashing dots called power pellets. “Eating” is done when the ghost and Pac-Man touch each other. If Pac-Man gets eaten you lose a life and points. If Pac-Man eats them you get points. There are 255 levels in this game. It was actually designed to have an unlimited amount of levels. But in the 256th level there is a bug which turns the right side of the level in a mess of texts and symbols. Therefore it is impossible to finish the 256th level.
I think the price of Pac-Man at 4.99€ is quite reasonable since the game is just plain fun. You can get it at the Ovi Store which by the way got updated to version 1.05. I didn’t notice any major differences but it could be that they changed some things in the background. You should get the update just by opening the app.
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Tags: nokia e55 game review, Ovi Store, pac-man by namco
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June 12th, 2009
It has been a long time since Google started as a simple web search engine. Over the years it became very popular and is now almost a synonym for a search engine. With its popularity Google grew very fast into a successful company. This is quite visible if you look at Google and how it is trying to create new services for many different platforms like desktop operating systems and mobile operating systems. It now even has a mobile smart phone OS and a desktop browser .The most well known services for mobile operating systems (S60, WM, Android, Blackberry OS etc.) are Gmail, Google Maps, Sync and most importantly the video sharing website YouTube which Google bought just about three years ago. Google’s effort to give their users a better web experience led them to create applications like the Google Mobile App for S60.
The Google Mobile App allows you to start a Google search without extra opening your phone browser which comes pretty handy since this way of using Google is much faster than starting up your browser then visiting Google and then searching for something. Since one week Google extended this app. Besides the search option it now includes other Google services like, YouTube, Mail, News, Photos etc.
After starting this app which you can do via a shortcut key Google Mobile connects itself initially to the internet so it can give you suggestions while you are typing.
To download this app just visit m.google.com on your phone browser. Of course the Google Mobile App is a freeware.
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Tags: google mobile app, nokia e55 app review
Posted in Apps, reviews | No Comments »