Tag: nokia event

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Nokia Remix: Singapore – Pictures from Lifehouse Concert and the Upcoming Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Will the new Nokia touch screen phone that comes with one year unlimited music download and more redefine what a phone can be?  I was holding one last Friday and I was thrilled by its potential.  And there is no event like a Nokia event.  Lifehouse was in the house, together with the local bands and my favorite radio DJs “The Muttons” too.  I took a picture with them.  It’s priceless.

I couldn’t attend the press conference during the day due to work commitment.  But the Nokia team was kind enough to give me a 1-hour personal demonstration on the upcoming Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.  Again, I tried to distract them and see if I could slip one into my pocket.  Again, I failed like the last time.

Come With Music

When it comes down to functionalities and user-friendliness, Nokia is king.  No doubt about it.  What the world has been silently waiting for is Nokia’s answer to Apple’s iPhone and its clones.  I certainly do.  While Apple threatened to shutdown iTunes early this month due to royalties dispute (current model is 61-29-9 cents split between the record industry, iTunes, and artists respectively), Nokia has worked out a deal with four major labels – EMI, Universal, Sony, and Warner – and more to give Nokia users one year unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalogue across a range of devices.  Is this new service “Come With Music” too good to be true?  Looking at how Nokia gives away free maps to the users, I am pretty sure that the only catch is “go buy a Nokia phone”.  Allowing users to unlimitedly and legally download music is as close to the Internet user behavior as it can get.  I am holding my breath on what the cost structure may be.

Touch, Play, Share

The new phone is a beauty.  If you are familiar with the XpressMusic series, the design of 5800 is a big leap ahead.  Weighted less than an iPhone, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic comes with a touch screen that supports wide-screen format and has an impressive resolution – best in its class.  I checked out a video clip played and the color is stunningly vibrant.  Another surprise is the quality of the internal speakers.  The music played out loud, really loud, and the sound is crisp clear.  These features alone are enough to put my beloved N95 to shame.  Can you visualize how badly I would drool to play the Ayumi music videos on this?

Unable to resist poking at this new baby, I am delighted that everything is literally at my fingertips including being able to put 4 of my top hot looking female contacts (with profile picture) onto the home-screen.  Maybe a bit too convenience.  Imagine one day Cynthia gets hold of my new 5800 while I was away and is able to track down my past communication and their respective blog updates with just a touch onto their profile pictures?!  Disastrous.

To be honest, I was skeptic on how this new touch screen phone handles my obsessive love in sending short messages, jotting down new blogging ideas, and drafting blog entries anytime, anywhere.  I asked for a demonstration and the enthusiastic product manager casually rotated the phone and the screen switched to landscape mode automatically.  Nice!  He then brought up the virtual QWERTY keyboard and I was like: though my fingers are not that fat, no way I can type a message with that!  Like a magician, he pulled out a stylus from nowhere (actually from behind the phone) and started typing.  Not bad.  Being a difficult consumer, I complained that QWERTY is not my cup of tea.

No problem at all, he said.  He then switched to a handwriting recognition mode that if you are from the Palm era, you would probably leap in joy (not to forget to mention the copy-and-paste function this new baby has).  Not bad.  But I am the type of guy who loves the old way of doing things.  The product manager did something to the phone and all of a sudden, I saw a life-size virtual alphanumeric keypad!  I pressed onto the virtual buttons and the phone vibrated in response.  Neat!  Lastly, for the musicians, the phone comes with a plectrum (see picture above … in my language, I call it a guitar pick) as an alternative to interact with the touch screen.  I know.  Who would have thought?

Final Thought

This entry is more like a preview than a review due to my limited time with the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.  There are tons of other cool functionalities I am running out of space to write including the synchronization to the social networking sites such as Ovi by Nokia, Facebook, YouTube, and etc.  I would like to leave you with this final thought.  Towards the end of “Sex and the City” movie, Carrie wanted to call her missing groom and she asked for a phone.  Someone passed her a touch screen phone (that looked like an iPhone).  Her immediate response was like: don’t give me that, give me something I can use.  I can relate to her.  And I don’t think I will have a problem with this new Nokia phone.  It is that easy.

Below are some of the pictures I have taken during the Nokia Remix: Singapore event with Lifehouse in the house with my point-and-shoot camera.  Enjoy!

PS. A big thanks to the Nokia team and the TEXT100 team!

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I See I Write

Jazz Up Your Life with Ovi by Nokia

And the good news is, you don’t have to own a Nokia phone to benefit from some of these cool services.  Check out the ticker below.  Avid readers of my site know my passion in organizing event photos in mosaic style for sharing.  Now, I can share my photos easily in ticker, slideshow, and mosaic styles.  How cool is that?

Share Photos Anytime, Anywhere

And if you do have a Nokia phone, you can upload your photos anytime, anywhere (note: all the features described here, I have experienced them personally over the weekend).  You can even create a live feed channel to have multiple friends of yours contributing on the contents.  What if your friends don’t have a Nokia phone?  Not a problem.  Each public channel comes with an unique email address.  Your friends can email the pictures to this address and they will appear at your channel, live.  Not comfortable to share your media to the public?  Create a private invitation only channel instead.  Truly connecting people as what Nokia inspires to do.

So I was invited for an interactive demo of the new Ovi services at Geek Terminal presented by Raj Sambwani (director) and his team.  Apparently, Ovi means door in Finnish.  And you don’t need to own a Nokia phone to sign up at Ovi.com.  Besides Ovi Share for photos sharing, it features music download too. 

Making Use of My Nokia Music Voucher

After I have bought Shakira’s recent album during initial launch, she released a deluxe edition later that features a new song “Hips Don’t Lie”.  Boo!  I ain’t going to buy another CD because of that one song.  To my limited knowledge, I don’t think we can buy music online via the iTune Store or Amazon.com here in Singapore.  So, the first track I wanted to download from Nokia Music Store was obviously my beloved “Hips Don’t Lie”.

The music download process is relatively painless.  I was required to install a component to my browser and the downloaded song is in Windows media audio file format with a bit rate of 192kbps.  Pretty decent quality and it is comparable to the rest of the online stores.  The good thing is that you can download the same song multiple times and you can play it in any device that support this format.  For some reason, I can’t get it recognized by iTune, which is a bummer because my entire music collection resides in iTune.  Also, first time authentication is required to play the song.  Each song costs S$2 (or for album, S$16).  If you are willing to spend S$176 upfront, you can get it down to S$1.66 per song.  Personally, I think the price is a bit steep compares to iTune Store or Amazon.com.  If Nokia could get it down to S$1.49 per song before discount, that would be really compelling.  Perhaps my music taste at times may not lean towards the pop culture, I do have a bit of challenging time finding what I want.

Other Cool Features from Ovi by Nokia

For the Nokia phone users, Ovi offers maps, games, files, and sync.  In the event, one friendly Nokia personnel helped me to set up my Ovi account and within seconds, all my phone contacts, notes, to-do list, and calendar items are uploaded to Ovi.com via the Wi-fi connection at Geek Terminal.  That is some really powerful tool.  Imagine this, for whatever the reason you don’t have your phone with you, you can still look up your contacts and other personal information from the Internet via the Ovi site.  All the important information from within the phone can be backed up over the air.

Another really neat feature is to the ability to send an attachment that resides in either your PC (that is switched on) or from Ovi.com via your Nokia phone.  You can even preview the contents before sending it off.  For those who are always on the go, I personally think that it is an useful feature to have.  Imagine you are having a nice holiday overseas and you bosses or your clients wants you to send that document to them right now.  And you don’t have the document with you.  Fear not, all you need is to take out your phone, browse for the right document from Ovi.com that you have uploaded earlier on, and send out the link .  You can even set the time of expiry for that link.  The real benefit behind this feature is that you don’t need to pay a hefty fees for the air time.  Effectively, you are simply sending a download link out, not the actual attachment that could be large in size. Subscription fee applies though.

Conclusion

Ovi by Nokia is still in beta.  Though I do encounter some difficulties over the weekend such as multiple files upload and different service offerings within Ovi requires individual registration and sign on, it does have offerings that are ready to face the world.  But how will Ovi flair?  It is easy to say only time will tell.  Personally, I think the success of Ovi will still very much link to the success of the Nokia phones in the short term. What Ovi may have an advantage over others is the seamless extension to our hand-held device – a mobile phone.

PS. A big thanks to the lovely Communications team of Nokia for patiently answering all my questions and helping out this rather low tech user!

Related Website: Ovi by Nokia

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I See I Write

Eyewitness: Upcoming N-Gage Hits ONE and Spore Origins at GCA 2008!

So I was invited to attend the Games Convention Asia and get to N-Gage with the inspiring people behind the gaming industry.  OK.  I will let the professional journalists to cover the media buzz and future road-maps.  What I wish to share with you here is a more personal coverage of their passion and my hands-on experience with the upcoming Nokia N-Gage games ONE and Spore.

Last week, I did a coverage of the PC version of Spore.  It is a great game, no doubt.  And I heard that this smash hit may be ported to other gaming platforms.  Here I am, this very evening, playing Spore Origins with a Nokia phone.  Too bad, I failed to distract the Nokia girl (more like the other way round) and my evil plan of sneaking out with one of their phones didn’t turn out as planned.  Nevertheless, I tried out the game briefly and it was cute, simple, yet fun.  Very much like the 1st phase of the PC version.  N-Gage has retained the customization features too (middle picture above).  The only thing missing is that in the PC version, you perform a “mating call” in order to level up.  I almost wanted to turn to this lovely Nokia girl besides me and asked how do I …

So I was introduced to Ralph Lämmche, the Senior Games Producer from Helsinki.  Ralph is such a fun guy, full of passion, and when he was demonstrating ONE (an upcoming fighting game), he was so much animated.  Ralph showed us the special 3D moves created using the motion capture technique, the customization available, how the world ranking works, and the technical challenges of implementing a game using a phone – all from the perspective of a game developer.  I asked how long it typically takes to develop a game and he said 18 months; I asked how long it took to capture the motion and he said a week; I asked what the budget was to develop ONE and he said … OK, I am not sure if that is a public information so …

I met Dan Scott too.  Dan is best known as the producer and creative director for Snakes, an updated version of the classic Nokia game and he overseas a portfolio of the N-Gage games.  Dan flew in from Canada and he does have this look of immense intelligence.  I asked how he creates games (because I did too as a hobby when I was young) and he took me on a journey of how ideas can strike us from anywhere, how he always have the audience in mind, the iterations of development and he may end up with something completely different from what was being conceptualized – for good reasons.

I asked if it is now easier or tougher for the new generation of game designers and developers (due to the leap of technology).  He said in a way it is easier because of the training available.  But in a way harder as in the old days, people from different disciplines could enter the industry, so long as you are good.  Truly inspiring.  I asked what are his all time favorite games.  He took a moment and replied Dungeon & Dragon games (old school, me too!) as well as the classic first person shooters such as Half Life and Doom (OK, I suck at those).  Which game does he look forward to the most?  Starcraft II.  Me too!

Check this out.  Dan always finishes a computer game (and he studied Robotics).  Gosh!

A lovely evening, certainly an eye opener for an avid gamer of decades years.  I hope you enjoy reading this and if you have a chance, do check out these upcoming N-Gage titles.