Went to the Nokia Ovi Store Showcase at Ben & Jerry’s at The Cathay. I always like the fact that Nokia always try new places for their events. Anyway we can order anything on the menu we like in Ben & Jerry’s. Even the SGD$88 item which contains 20 scoop of ice cream! I only managed to eat 1 scoop and drink 1 cup of smoothies as I was pretty bloated.

By Nelson Wee

The Nokia Ovi Store showcase was to give bloggers a brief on the Ovi Store. Ovi Store supports up to 75 devices (even those 3 years ago models) running S60 or S40 OSes. When you launch the Ovi Store, it will detect your device and will only show applications that are compatible with your devices.

More Than Just Applications And Games

Nokia Ovi Store is not just about applications and games but it also includes Audio (podcast), Video (trailers, clips), Flash channels (screen savers) and Personalization (ringtones, wallpapers).

Ovi Store Applications

They also showcase some of the very interesting apps to us, the most interesting one to me was the app eyeSight. If you are in a meeting and forgot to silence your phone which is placed on the table, when the phone rings, just wave your hand above your phone and it will be silent automatically. Cover the earpiece with your hand and once you remove your hand, it will send a pre-configured SMS to the person who called you! Pretty neat application.

Downloading A Paid Application

The main highlight yesterday was the application buffet! They pass us their Stahub SIM cards, place it in your own Nokia phone and login to your Ovi Store account. Next, you can download ANY paid apps you like for free to your Nokia devices!

There is a Singapore Ovi Store which of course the prices of the apps are listed in SGD and they also allow you to pay by operator billing (Starhub only at the moment). By default if there is no localize Ovi Store in your country, the price listed will be listed in Euros and you are only allowed to pay by credit cards.

I did ask what will happen to N-gage, they say N-gage will still focus on games which are multiplayer based. But I think eventually they will move all the games to Ovi Store.

I was invited to Showcase Nokia 2009 where Nokia launches the Nokia E55, Nokia E75, Nokia N86 8MP, Nokia 6710 Navigator and the Nokia 6720 Classic at ZIRCA, Clark Quay, Singapore.

Showcase Nokia 2009 Pass

Nokia E75

Nokia E75 Press Images

The E75 is the exact clone of E51 just that it includes a slide out full QWERTY keypad. Thickness wise, it is not much thicker and it sports a 3.2MP camera. It is mean to be a scaled down version of E71. But personally, I will choose E71 over this anytime!

• Nokia E75 Official Site
• Nokia E75 Datasheet
• Nokia E75 Specification
• Nokia E55 & E75 Press Release

Nokia E55

Nokia E75 Press Images

I think the E55 looks much nicer than the E51, it is meant to replace the aging but popular E51. The keypad needs a lot getting used to, due to the fact it is a half QWERTY. In other words, each number of the keypad will only correspond to only 2 letters instead of the usual 3 on the normal keypad. The feel of it is solid but give me a very plastic feeling instead of the E51 which gives me a metal feeling. Thickness wise, it is still as thin as the E51 and sports a 3.2MP camera instead of the 2.0MP camera in E51. I seriously love the design, it reminds me of the smaller version of E71.

• Nokia E55 Official Site
• Nokia E55 Datasheet
• Nokia E55 Specification
• Nokia E55 & E75 Press Release

Nokia N86 8MP

Nokia N86 8MP Press Images

I think the Nokia N86 8MP was not announced in the Nokia event at Mobile World Congress (MWC) yesterday But it was announced in Singapore yesterday at Showcase Nokia 2009. The embargo is till 4pm today, but apparently nobody conveyed to me about this during the event. The only time I get to know that there is an embargo is from a text message from Text 100 saying that the press release within the thumbdrive given to us stated that the embargo date/time is in the long file name of N86. Upon double checking it, there is indeed the embargo and hence I removed the N86 portion of the blog post. The filename column of my Windows Explorer is not even wide enough to see the full filename and that is why I never notice it. But if I didn’t check the press release thumb drive (normally I don’t), I will still publish the blog post, photos and video that I took of the N86.

The N86 is Nokia first’s 8MP camera (Sony Ericsson has release 12MP one). Actually MP doesn’t matter because you are not going to print that large photos anyway and they do take up a lot of space. Personally I think 3.2MP is the idea one. It is the quality of the lenses and the flashlight that matters. The N86 has something called the “automatic aperture control” which controls the size of the aperture automatically depending on the surrounding lighting. It has a dual LED flash to support poor lighting during video recording. Personally I prefer the Xeon flash from N82 over dual LED anytime as I don’t know how many people actually use dual LED for video recording. I think people tend to take more photos than videos on a phone.

Design wise, it is similar to Nokia N97 design style but I think that N97 design is much better. Personally, I think that the N86 is set to replace N82 + N85!

Both the Nokia N86 8MP and N97 will be out before June 2009 accordingly to the spokes person. Finally the N97 prototypes are in Singapore, few days ago when I was at the Nokia Office, the N97 protos were not there yet.

• Nokia N86 8MP Official Site
• Video Of Nokia N86 8MP
• Nokia N86 8MP Datasheet
• Nokia N86 8MP Specification
• Nokia N86 8MP Press Release

Showcase Nokia 2009 Gallery