After the impressive Fissure & Shi themes, Tehk from Tehkseven Studios has been working on his next featured theme, Evo. We have got hold of the Evo (Bold) version for you. This theme should be available for purchase from their website in a few days time. In the meantime, enjoy these screenshots of the theme.

Nokia N85 – S60v3 FP2

S60v5 – Touch Screen Phones

Along with the cost of entry, to get themes published to the store, one has to be a “Premium Publisher”. I do not know what the criteria or requirements to become a “Premium Publisher” are, but I will certainly look into it.

Due to these shortcomings, there are very few themes available on the Ovi Store currently, with only 3 out of those being free themes.

But that does not mean S60 users do not have good themes available. There are a lot of really talented artists out there creating stunning themes. Most of these themes are free for use, but a few of them are premium themes, costing a few dollars. Starting today, we shall highlight a theme every week at our site. The theme could be a premium theme or even a free theme, but all the themes will be worth having on your phone.

The first theme to get highlighted is a premium theme by tehkSeven Studios called Fissure.

Fissure by tehkSeven Studios

Fissure is a dark theme with various shades of angled rectangular shapes that play with the concept of depth of dimension of the background wallpaper.

This theme comes in various editions – There are different editions for S60v3 N series & E series phones as well as a separate edition for S60v5 phones. Each edition is available with either the default icon pack of the phone or tehkSeven Studios’ custom Seven icon pack.

You can buy the default icon pack edition for €1.00 or the seven icon pack editions for €2.00. Or if you would like to buy the complete theme pack, it could be yours for €5.00.

S60v5 users would definitely want to try this theme out as I have used it on the Nokia N97, and can say that it looked absolutely stunning on the large screen.

Here are the screenshots of this masterpiece from tehkSeven Studios, which if you wish to purchase, you can do so from this page – Fissure.

Screenshots

Nokia E71

Nokia N85

Nokia 5800

There is a fascinating 11 page article by Mark Borden about Nokia in the latest issue of FastCompany magazine. Nokia’s EVP Tero Ojanpera is on the cover of the magazine and the article focuses on Nokia’s plans moving forward and the way they want to challenge what Ojanpera calls “that fruit company in Cupertino”. I strongly suggest that you read the article yourself but here are some interesting points:

• in 2008, Nokia sold 472 million cell phones and generated $70 billion in revenue, earning $7 billion in profits. They make 13 phones every second and are the 88th-largest company in the world with 1.1billion customers. Their market share is greater that its next three competitors combined but that those numbers are slowly being challenged.
• Nokia CEO Kallasvuo believes that its all numbers and scale game when it comes to app stores and Nokia will win that scale game.
• The company believes people adopt to new technologies because of three reasons : 1)survival, 2)social and 3)entertainment. Nokia refers to these as culture.
• Nokia’s R&D labs are working on a new technology that senses what a user is doing at any moment and then select music from a personal library to suit that activity.
• The article also mentions the legendary musician Dave Stewart. Dave is not an official employee but his title is change agent and acts as Nokia’s ambassador to the entertainment world.
• Stewart was trying to persuade U2 to release the bands recent album through Ovi but it never happened.
• Nokia’s Dance Fabulous game starring a singer named Cindy Gomez is the result of of Nokia’s plans of bridging music and gaming. The songs from the game are sold via Nokia’s Online Music store.
• Nokia’s CEO refers to the company as a “content provider that is deeply involved in media, music, gaming and navigation”.

Again, this is an interesting article and made me appreciate what Nokia has done to mobile industry. We always talk about how Apple is kicking Nokia’s behind but as the article suggests there are two sides to each story and Nokia might be the only company that can scale and make a comeback as a media company.

Touchnote – Utilities –  $9.99 for 5 Pack

This is by far one of the most interesting apps in the store. Touchnote which just this past week was declared the best Mobile app service at the MobileBeat 2009 conference, lets you capture a moment on your camera phone and send it as a physical greeting card to anywhere in the world.

I Parked Here – City Guides/Maps – $ 2.99

This is another app that uses the location-based technology to help you remember where you parked. The app uses cell connections instead of the GPS systems and guides you to the car by turn by turn navigation and set up parking meter alarms.

Compass Touch - City Guides/Maps – Free

Simple but very useful app that turns your phone to a compass and gives you direction in degrees and longitude and latitude coordinates.

Battery Extender – Utilities – 14 day Trial / $14.99

Another great app from the makers of Tweets60 , that extends the battery performance of smart phones by fine tuning the settings on your device.

Motion Board – Games – $4.99

This is a great looking game that uses the phones accelerometer and challenges your body balance and handling techniques.

One of the trends that we are noticing this year is the availability of more Location-Based Services (LBS) and applications. Using mobile devices, these applications leverage a users physical location to know where you/ and your friends are and use this data to provide enhanced services and experiences. We’ve also seen Internet giants such as Google enter into this market with Google Latitude and help fuel innovation across the board.

Luckily Nokia’s S60 and Series 40 platform includes a wide range of features to help developers and content producers make rich LBS applications and services. In this post, I am going to profile several of these apps that are available to download from the Ovi store.

Nulaz:

Nulaz mission is clear: “What is happening around you”- With Nulaz you can see where your friends are, share locations, and view local info. Nulaz also  enables you to share this information with other social network (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc).

Buzzd:

This is another location based social network and city guide that keeps track of local information in real time and helps you connect with people, events and places around you.

PhoneLocator:

PhoneLocator native S60 realtime GPS tracking application for Nokia S60 phones. It allows you to view the location of your phone and a trail of where it has been using this website.

Near Here:

For $2.99, you can download this City Guide app that helps you search for pretty much anything around you. With Near Here you can find practical places, your  current location and save them in your phone memory for future.

Trackut:

Trackout is a free location based streaming service that enables users to create location oriented groups, network with friends and share location tagged data.

Looking at other mobile app platforms Ovi store has a lot more grounds to cover when it comes to LBS but this is one area that Nokia is very familiar with. Remember they made an acqusition of Berlin based Plazes last year which has evolved into Nokia Maps. With Plazes and other recent acquisitions (Twango, Loudeye, etc) Nokia is in a great position to connect people through location-based services, maps, music communities and gaming services.

For now the only information that I can gather from the store is the application category distribution. Below is a chart of all the top level categories according to Nokia ( Applications, Games, Audio & Video and Personalisation) and the number of applications currently active in each. If this chart is any indication, there is a huge opportunity for developers to create apps in business, music and sports related categories.

NOTE: The Ovi web portal only shows the apps specific to your handset so therefore this chart was created for all apps available for Nokia N97. I also did not include the sub-categories ( total of 10 ) for Games category.

This chart will be updated on monthly basis.

Palringo is a FREE Instant Messaging chat program featuring text, picture and voice. Combine all your buddies from MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, and more. It works on 500+ mobiles including iPhone, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and others plus PC & Mac!

The great thing about Palringo is that you can also access Facebook chat AND Apple’s iChat.

Installation:

Before using this app, you must register for an account at Palringo. Once you are registered and have installed the app, you can then navigate through the menu and add multiple chat services.

Features:

Palringo has a very attractive user interface and this makes it easy to chat and navigate through the menu. One of the features of this app is that you are able to send and receive pictures and voice messages. Palringo runs on a low data connection and you can chat between multiple contacts simultaneously. The IM’s also show up real-time and requires no manual refreshing. You can also search for groups and join chat rooms with people that have similar interests. In addition Palringo makes it easy to update your status across a number of services in one try and supports insertion of location into your status so all of your friends can know when your location changes. <- Very cool.

Conclusion: Score 7/10

There are certainly other apps (Nimbuzz,  Fring, IM+Skype, etc)  that allow for multiple chats but since I’ve installed Palringo last week, I’ve noticed that my IM usage on my phone has gone up and I am more frequently chatting on my phone. The app runs smoothly and I’ve had no battery problems with it.

My only concern with this app is that you need to give them your IM account passwords and your account info is stored on their servers. I know this is a sensitive subject for some people out there but to me being able to access all my chat platforms from one centralized UI, makes it all worth it.

World Traveler by Psiloc is a recently launched traveling application that aims to ” make business traveler’s life easier”. This is another hot space that we are seeing many application developers are trying to tap into and it all makes sense because while traveling  many frequent travelers rely on their smart phones for flight info, weather and other data.

Installation:

The World Traveler comes pre-installed on Nokia N97 but other symbian s60 device owners can install this Free application directly from the Ovi store or from Psiloc’s web portal. The installation file is around 1.2 MB and it was very easy to download and install it via Wi-Fi connection.

Features:

Before I get to the feature lists of this application, you need to understand that World Traveler is a open platform application which means  other developers and travel related services can build plugins on top of World Traveler and use the API offered by Psiloc to reach customer base of global travelers.  This is a new development that we are starting to see in mobile applications industry and its great to see Psiloc has taken this approach.

World Traveler has one of the best designed interfaces of any application that is available for Nokia Symbian devices. The interface design of the application has a sharp and glossy looks to it and is very easy for users to navigate through plugin tabs and menu items.

World Traveler comes with a 5 day weather forecast and current conditions for over 2200 most popular travel locations worldwide. As a user, you have the option of choosing between Celsius or Fahrenheit units and if you want to have weather information displayed on the main screen.

The next useful feature of this app is its currency converter that calculates amounts in four currencies and gives you a clear understanding of price differences in different metrics and I can see why business travelers would appreciate this feature.  The application also provides a plug-in for World Clock with four analog or digital clocks which show local time at four cities of user choice simultaneously and a moving globe that shows day and night zones and present local time.

The World Traveler also has the option for Flight service and travel planning and alerts but the plug-in is under development and based on some reports it will be available soon as part of a paid subscription service. This is an area that we are starting to see many web travel services go in order to keep the basic services free for average user.

Conclusion: Score 8/10

No wonder Nokia has decided to have this app pre-installed on upcoming Nokia S60 devices. The gorgeous application interface, overall reliability of the application and the fact that its open platform encourages other third party travel services to be offered and installed  from the World Traveler application in a seamless, easy way makes this app a winner in my book and a must have for travelers. As other third party plug-ins become available, World Traveler can dominate this space, assuming that the pricing on its premium service is reasonable and compares fairly with the competition.

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