Nokia has just published a document with 10 examples of what they consider good mobile design. It is a mix of applications and mobile web sites. Many of the usual suspects, but also a couple of lesser knowns.
I do not necessarily agree with everything. (Surprise, right? :-)) One of the criteria is “Visual WOW” and Jaiku Mobile is considered “stylish”. To me Jaiku Mobile looks like its designed by a MySpace user high on banana peel and bad Klingon poetry. The application runs on top of whatever Theme the user has chosen for their phone, so maybe its unfair to criticize it. Anyway, “lively” was probably a design objective. Jaiku was acquired by Google last year and they closed new sign-up. So unless you know an existing Jaiku user, you won’t be able to check it out.
Fring is another of the examples. I tried it quite a while ago, but I just couldn’t figure it out. Setup required me to configure my “IP telephony signaling protocol”, so I backed out, thinking “maybe next version”. Fring makes calls and messaging over WiFi and is a way cool concept. Maybe it’s time to give Fring another try.
Good examples and interesting evaluations. Definitely worth having a look, as the examples are some of the most used 3rd party mobile applications out there today. You can find the document here.
June 29th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Hi mhjerd,
Thanks for the feedback! always appreciate it (even when feedback is less than WOW…lol).
I am not sure which version you played with (from what is gather it feels like quite old), yet I would love getting your inputs on our latest version (inc. improved quality, WIFI/GSM auto-romaing, many new IM services, 3rd party add-ons, file transfer, etc. )
10x again
Roy