Nokia Music Store goes online in India!

After the announcement of the Nokia 5230 and 5530, you’d expect that things would be a little easy going, but no, Nokia did it again today! They launched the Nokia Music Store in India.

The official press release goes like this!

Nokia Music Store can be accessed via your desktop and mobile and gives options to choose from over 3 million tracks. Once the Nokia Music client is installed on your desktop, you can access the entire store, browse through tracks, search by artists and genres, create your wish list and download songs from the store.

Other highlights of the Nokia Music Store include the ability to listen to a 30 second clip of any track on the store before downloading it. You can browse for new music, get recommendations or search for their favorite artists, songs or albums all from the palm of their hand. You can download directly to a mobile device without having to download the same song again on their computer. You will also be able to transfer songs via a PC to compatible Nokia devices.

You also get free tracks of the week which can be downloaded from free. The store comes as a default client with all compatible handsets.

You can access international, Bollywood and regonal sound tracks across all genres. To begin with, the consumers can experience Nokia Music store via inbox vouchers included in all XpressMusic handsets and select Nseries devices and Eseries devices such as N97,  N86 , E71, E63 amongst others. Three new music devices have also been announced – Nokia 5630, Nokia 5530 and Nokia 5230.

To deliver the most updated content Nokia has tied up with leading international music labels such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music, EMI and Warner and major independent Indian record labels including Tseries, Yashraj Music, Saregama, BIG Music, Venus and many more. The company has partnered with India’s leading music body, Indian Music Industry (IMI), a consortium of over 150 music companies, to give consumers an opportunity to discover and enjoy their favorite music on the go across genres and languages. Nokia has also signed up with GIRI and Phoneytunes for access to South India and North regional content respectively.
To begin with Nokia Music Store will be available in India on Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia 5130 XpressMusic, Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, Nokia 7210,  N97,  N86, E63 and E71

Nokia also seems to be on the road to launching the 5630 and 5730 soon in India, which means that the portfolio is going to increase big time. The ‘Comes With Music’ edition handsets will also be hitting Indian shores soon, so that black N97 “Comes With Music” will be a reality in India finally! These special handsets come with unlimited music downloads, so the extra price is worth it!

Looks like the giant is finally waking up to competition, but is it too late already! Only time can tell!

Click this link to go to Nokia Music Store India – www.music.nokia.co.in

You can follow the store on twitter too – www.twitter.com/nokiamusicindia

What do you think about this new service Nokia has launched? leave your comments and let us know your views and your experience at Nokia Music Store.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nokia-Music-Store-India/127719247530?ref=search&sid=1375242244.4064549406..1

N97 has widgets! wait… what are widgets?

When the N97 was announced with widget support, all of us bloggers were excited about it and from the promo videos it was clear that they would rock! Finally the N97 was launched and in terms of sales it has done relatively well. A lot of people are buying it. In India it is selling very well to say the least.

So with so many N97 handsets being sold in the market, do people really know what a widget is? The answer is no. Most of the people and store staff do not know what a widget is. This means that not only is the ‘internet’ experience falling short of expectations but also the widget experience which was one of the key pillars for the N97.

To remedy this problem, we have a solution, www.97beeps.com. On 97 beeps you will not only come to know what a widget is, but you can browse through a lot of widgets that are available for the N97 and other Nokia phones.

There is more to it than just widgets. This site is designed to look like the twitter site, only the colours on 97beeps are much more brighter and lively. You can also ‘beep’ about something you want just like twitter! So not only do you learn what widgets are (and also download a few) but you also get to make a lot of friends.

This initiative is an innovative one, designed to make everybody realize that technology and it’s working are not for a few, but it is for everyone.  So don’t waste any time just get onto the website.

So is it just that much? NO.

This is what you need to do! Visit www.97beeps.com

• Just sign up and get started
• Choose widgets of your choice and install them on your phone
• Refer friends to 97 Beeps
• Tell us in 97 characters how you would use widgets

And if you are lucky you could win for yourself a spanking new Nokia N97.  So what are you waiting for???

Ovi Contacts Adds New Active Standby To Feature Pack 2 Phones

Nokia Beta Labs has just released an update for Contacts on Ovi service, mainly for S60 3rd Edition (FP2) devices, and it aims to fix some bugs of the previous version.

For FP2 devices owners, you can download the new client directly from Nokia Beta Labs website or visiting the address http://contacts.ovi.com/dist/app on your phone to get the new applications.

Finally, we can see also that the name has changed once again to “Ovi Contacts”, instead of Contacts on Ovi.

Source: Symbian-Guru
Read this post in portuguese, press the link http://MaisonChaplinMobile.blogspot.com

Nokia updates Maps to V3.0

Yesterday along with the firmware update for the 5800, Nokia, through its Beta Labs launched a new version to the Maps application. The application is now up to V3.00.

The Nokia Maps Beta site states that the update is available for the following devices…

Maps 3.0^Beta works with Nokia devices based on:
S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 (E71, E66, 6110 Navigator, N95, N95 8GB, N82)
S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 (N96, N85, N79, 6650, 6210 Navigator, 6220 Classic, N78 )

The change-log for the Maps application is as follows,

• Start-up sequence takes you to your current position as soon as position is found. If your position is not found in few seconds, you are taken to last known position
• You can rotate the map, so you can for example view 3D landmarks from all directions. Just press 4 and 6 in map view. Pressing 5 takes you back to ‘north up’ view
• In 3D view mode, you can tilt the view by pressing 2 and 8
• 2D/3D mode works with all map modes, i.e. with Map/Satellite/Terrain
• My Favourites menu is cleaned up and History list is moved higher in menu
• My Places has option “Point me to” for any saved place/landmark, you the direction to that place on the map
• In addition to the synchronisation of Favourites and Collections with Ovi Maps and vice versa (use in online mode, enable Internet connection), you can now plan routings on Ovi Maps and synchronise to your device
• Finally, many bugs have now been fixed

The update does not work on the 5800, so do not try to install it on the 5800.

Here is a small video showing the Maps in action:

Nokia N82 takes brilliant photos in the night

We all know of the capabilities of the Nokia N82’s camera. It is the imaging king when it comes to mobile phones. The xenon flash makes it a real capable substitute for a ‘point and shoot’ camera when you need one. Let’s face it Nokia, this by far the best camera module you have had since the N73 and the N93. The Xenon flash makes it an even more potent.

I don’t need to tell you about the quality of photos the n82 clicks in pitch dark, there are many website flush with photos of N82’s imaging capabilities in the dark. What I will show you though is the quality of photos it clicks when a few settings are changed here and there. The pictures clicked were taken from a rooftop restaurant called “The O” which is situated in Koregaon Park, Pune, India. These photographs were clicked in the night where there was very very dim lighting.

It seems hard to believe that the N82 clicked these photographs. The night landscape has been captured really well by this mobile phone. This just proves that the N82 is really an imaging king. Not only does it capture good detail in a dark room, it also captures good detail in the night!

Now let me tell you the changes I made in the settings to effect such images. I am sure some of you could get even better images by tweaking the settings a little bit more.

Scene Mode –> Night
Flash Mode –> (automatically goes off in Night mode)
Colour Tone –> Vivid
Viewfinder Grid –> (this really helped for me)
Exposure Compensation –> 1
Sharpness –> Soft
Contrast –> One notch down

The images are resized version of the original photographs. To see the original ones please click here.
Have you been able to click similar or even better quality images? Leave your comments below and let everybody know.