Time to have a look at the second of Nokia’s recent self-published game releases on the Ovi Store. After Ovi Maps Challenge targeted the single player experience, Bounce Boing Battle storms into view for a two player arcade challenge. But there's not much more to the game than the 'two players over Bluetooth' mode, and that feels like a missed opportunity to extend the Bounce franchise.
ThinkChange's nUnlock is a nice little utility application and it reminds me of all the little tweaks and hacks that turn up when a phone OS is relatively new and people want to add in certain functionality. While S60 5th Edition is pretty mature, ThinkChange have found what appears to be a small gap in the market for nUnlock to slide into. And I quite like it!
Is this a game or a marketing exercise? That’s the question that Rafe asked in his news posting on the release of Ovi Maps Challenge by Nokia. Personally, I think that this is clearly a game, but if you look back at the design remit, the team promoting Ovi Maps as a package may well have made an appearance. After that, though, it looks like they’ve left well alone. Let's explain why in the Ovi Maps Challenge review.
EchoEcho is a new cross-platform "where are you?" application and service, using SMS as its communications medium, to ensure compatibility with most phones. Reviewing it seemed like a job for Ewan Spence and he dived into with glee. Although he reckons it's "an answer in search of a question", both of us reckon it has potential. Comments welcome, no matter if you think it's a slice of genius or a complete dud!
Do you have a monthly, weekly or even daily data limit on your mobile account? I know I do, which is why we leapt at the appearance of Data Monitor as a utility to help keep track of usage. However, with barely more data-gathering functionality than the built-in Log utility and with an intrusive and hard-to-configure, always-on 'ticker', it seems that Data Monitor isn't ready for the prime time just yet, as you can read in David Gilson's review.
David Gilson reviews the free Pixelpipe Send and Share, the new incarnation of the popular uploading service that works independently of Nokia's Share online and thus works more seamlessly, using a wider range of file types and (presumably) on more devices. It's all win, win, win until David points out a few caveats, including less flexible authentication and a greater need to do some of the set up using your desktop's web browser.
Ewan takes a look at 'a new Internet experience' on his smartphone, in this case Webwag Mobile, from the Nokia Ovi Store. A service aggregator, this experience may well be a new one, but the clunkiness of the user interface and poor use of the information entered means that it's not an experience anyone's likely to enjoy or come back to...
Here's a common scenario. You've acquired a spare battery for your smartphone, either by buying one on purpose or by inheriting one from another device. Yet, in order to charge each, you've got to power the device down and swap cells, effectively using the phone itself as the charger. If, like me, you juggle more than one phone and more than one battery for each, this can get very tiresome. Enter this latest mains battery charger from Mobile Fun, compatible with nearly every Nokia smartphone battery from the last few years and reviewed right here. Summary? It's a slam dunk.
With a new Foursquare app available for S60 5th Edition, is it time for an easy route into the location-based game? Ewan has a look in this full review, concluding that, while a great start, a lack of search and discovery functions really hurts the app in real world use.
The third part of our Nokia C6 review offers an overview of the software and some insight into the phone's user experience. Part 2 covered the camera and multimedia software bundle. Part 1 covered first impressions and hardware.
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