Game for Windows Phone: Barnstormer review

Anyone who says the UK doesn’t export anything clearly hasn’t been paying attention to Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit films, which have been a smash hit around the world. Now one of the claymation duo’s most popular cohort’s, Shaun the Sheep, is starring in his very own Windows Phone game – but is it a true Barnstormer?

Xbox Live game for Windows Phone: Gerbil Physics review

Barnstormer’s a pretty great name for a video game, but if it you’re imagining lead character Shaun the Sheep as a flying ace performing outrageous MiniSquadron-like acrobatics you’re on the wrong track entirely. The game isn’t quite that interesting, unfortunately.

Rather, it’s a casual platformer comprised of 10 bite-size sprints to the finish. Each stage lasts between 30 and 40 seconds, during which you must tap the screen to make Shaun jump over obstacles. You could say it’s a wooly jumper.

Awful puns aside, you can also collect balloons en route to the finish line, each of which refills your boost bar. Once you have some of this boost banked, you can activate it by holding down the virtual control on the left of the screen.

That’s it, really. There are a couple of nice little gymnastic feats you can pull of, such as a double jump (though we found this a little too erratic to pull off) and a little additional nudge you get when you catch the lip of an object just right. But essentially this is a very straight forward case of getting from A-B ten times.

What we will give Barnstormer credit for is the way it keeps you coming back for repeat plays of these 10 levels. There are medals to aim for and there’s your personal best to try and top. More importantly, though, there’s a weekly world record to beat for every stage. This takes the best time from all Barnstormer players for that week, meaning there’s always something to try and top. It also means that untouchable ninja time is only good for seven days!

Visually, Barnstormer has that daytime kids TV style to it, but it lacks the charm that usually goes hand-in-hand with the W&G universe. It can also be a little tricky to track Shaun’s progress, as background and foreground alike comprise of various shades of brown and green. All suitably bucolic, but not great when the speed really picks up and you run smack into a crate.

Barnstormer is a perfectly serviceable game in pretty much every way, and it’s also relatively good value at 79p on the Windows Phone Marketplace. It just lacks that spark the really sets the good games from the average.

                                                                             VIDEO TO BE INCLUDED SOON ! STAY TUNED FOLKS…..

What we love about the Nokia 701 Nokia Belle phone ?

The Nokia 701 was one of three new Nokia phones launched with latest Nokia Belle update. Of the trio it was, and remains one of the most powerful Nokia Belle smartphones. We’ve cast an eye back to rediscover why we love it so much, and why you might, too.

Nokia 700 and nokia 701 now 30 percent faster with Nokia Belle feature pack

It looks great 

We love the design of the Nokia 701 Nokia Belle phone. It’s smart, yet still sexy, and is sophisticated, without looking like a business phone. The Nokia 701’s stainless steel finish has a smooth feel to it. Its curves give it a nice feel in the hand, and make it easier to slide into pockets.

Nokia’s best screen

The display ain’t bad either. The Nokia 701 has a 3.5-inch display capable of displaying 16 million colours. It’s one of the best displays Nokia has ever made. It’s smart, too. An ambient light sensor detects the lighting conditions in your environment, and adjusts the screens brightness accordingly.

It’s powerful
The 1GHz processor inside the Nokia 701 is one of Nokia’s most powerful. The payoff is that applications run faster, games run smoother and multitasking is less of a chore. Whatever you do with the Nokia 701, you’re sure to notice the difference.

It has a cracking 8-megapixel camera
The Nokia 701 can boast an 8-megapixel camera with touchscreen controls, face tracking software and automatic motion blur reduction. To complement the camera, the photo app can be set to automatically tag images with the locations you took them in, edit them from the phone.

High definition video 
With the Nokia 701 you can record video in quality you’d be proud of showing off on a high definition television. Video records in HD quality at a 720p resolution for playback at 30 frames per second. Video stabilisation helps you take steady shots. And like with photos, you can edit video on the Nokia 701 itself.

Lots of storage
Internal memory clocks in at 8GB. Should need more, simply slot in a microSD memory card to expand that to 32GB.

These are just some of the reasons why we love the Nokia 701. And we haven’t even got to the Nokia Belle operating system inside it. Nokia Belle has been giving handsets such as the Nokia C7 and Nokia N8 a new lease of life, adding customisable homescreens (up to six), better navigation and an overall better user experience.

Do you own a Nokia 701 Nokia Belle phone? Let us know how you’re getting on with it in the comments below.

Why the Nokia Lumia 900 will be the fastest phone on the market ? (Reason’s explained) !

With a 1.4GHz processor and Windows Phone 7.5, we know that the Nokia Lumia 900 will be fast. But there’s something else that makes it quicker than not only the rest of the Nokia Lumia range, but pretty much every other smartphone on the UK market. Read on to find out more.

What’s so special about the Nokia Lumia 900 screen?

The Nokia Lumia 900′s impressive speed gains will come not from fancy multi-core processor technology, but from fancy multi-connection network technology!

What are we talking about? The Nokia Lumia 900 will support an advanced form of 3G network technology when it launches over the coming weeks. Some call it DC-HSDPA, while Nokia seems to be calling it ‘HSDPA+ Dual Carrier’. All we know is it should make your Lumia 900 fly like no other phone we’ve seen in this country.

Perhaps a little background information is in order. A huge proportion of what we do on our smartphones involves connecting to the internet for data – from emailing and surfing the web to background Facebook updates and YouTube videos. Downloading apps over a mobile network demands a very strong network connection if you want speedy results.

It’s because of this that we reckon a lot of Nokia’s rivals up to now have been focusing their attentions in the wrong place. You can have all the processor cores and RAM you like – if you don’t have a good network connection your phone will always chug in certain situations. Of course, widespread Wi-Fi has gone some way to mitigating this thirst for mobile bandwidth, but we still need solid network connections to fill in the sizeable gaps.

Over in the US 4G networks are on the ascendancy. This network technology can – in optimal conditions – lead to speeds that are in advance of the average UK broadband speeds. The US Nokia Lumia 900 is one such device that takes advantage of this 4G network.

We don’t have 4G in the UK yet, though the 4G spectrum is due to be auctioned off to UK operators at the end of 2012. What we do have is a reasonably strong 3G network, and there’s plenty that can be done to improve that. One of these improvements is the aforementioned HSDPA+ Dual Carrier approach. This essentially allows a phone to make two simultaneous 3G connections, increasing the speed of downloads to a theoretical 42Mbps – double the capacity of current HSDPA+ technology.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely that such speeds will be reached in real world usage, but that doesn’t matter – the point is that performance will increase dramatically relative to what we have now!

The good news is that at least one UK operator (3) is set to roll out this DC-HSDPA solution this summer. Hopefully the others will fall in line once they see what the Nokia Lumia 900 is the fastest phone in the UK because of it!

NOKIA 808 PUREVIEW HANDS-ON VIDEO -TORCH MODE, NOKIA MAPS & WEB BROWSER (+flashlight mode) DEMOED

Here is another hands-on video of Nokia 808 PureView – the video demonstrate different features of the device, such as the Torch Mode with flash light which get activated while holding the screen lock button, Nokia Maps and a closer look to improved version of Web Browser on Nokia Belle FP1. Check out the video after break.

Video Notes:

• The flash can be used as a flashlight, you must press the unlock button down and hold (in the video I’m wrong) is that the LED lights (thx focu s) (see video below)
• There is more than 2mm harbor for loading, 100% micro USB
• There is no burst mode itself (from what I saw), but you can configure a sport mode and take pictures fairly quickly, within about 1 second between each shot, still pressing button (I know, this is not the same thing), I demonstrate this in the video below
• There is an option timelapse native
• Nokia Big Screen is pre-installed
• It does not seem possible to go beyond 30fps, by cons you can change the number of frames per second in the parameters, if necessary to descend (30, 25, 15 …).
• The continuous autofocus operates from 15/20 inches, not below (hence, also, the difficulty to focus on my video sample published at the MWC)
• On the Web, the browser is much smoother than on the N8, it is not yet at a terminal Windows Phone, Android or IOS, but it is much better (see in the video)
• Nokia Maps / Maps also works great on the 808 PV, more fluid than the N8, including zoom / zoom out (see video)
• I was not necessarily in excellent conditions for this, but I tested the speaker quickly and it seemed more powerful than the N8, it remains to be verified in a test

Windows Phone Marketplace apps and games we want on Nokia Belle

Nokia’s partnership with Windows means that the latest Windows Marketplace apps can now be downloaded to Nokia Lumia handsets. But what about other Nokia Belle phones? Here are some Windows Marketplace apps we want to see reach the Nokia Store.

Xbox Live for Windows Phone: Gerbil Physics review

Twitter

Size: 1MB
Cost: Free
An official Twitter app has yet to make it to the Nokia Store, so it’s one of the many apps we’d love to see on our Nokia Belle smartphones with clear, bright, easy to use menus,  trending topics, real-time search and all those other Twitter features we love.

Flickr

Size: 1MB
Cost: Free
Just like Twitter, we’ve yet to see an official Flickr app hit the Nokia Store. Flickr from Windows Marketplace lets you share photos in app from your phone’s camera, edit descriptions and browse photos from the Flickr community.

Xbox LIVE 

Size: 1MB
Cost: Free
If you love playing games we can bet you own an Xbox 360. If so then check out the Xbox LIVE app. It lets you check in on your Xbox LIVE profile from your Nokia phone. More of this for Nokia Belle would be great.

Plants vs. Zombies
size: 81MB
Cost: £3.99
Plants vs. Zombies is one of the best, most addictive games ever from PopCap Games – one of the best mobile game publishers around. It features 50 levels of zombie smashing attacking action, a handful of game modes and 20 mini-games.

Netflix

Size: 1MB

Cost: Free
The Netflix app might be U.S-only for now but with the Netflix service now having arrived in the UK there’s no reason why we cant see it hit the UK, giving access to lots of on-demand movies new and old to watch on your Nokia Belle phone.

Super Monkey Ball

Size: 41MB
Cost: £2.29
Super Monkey Ball has players navigating a monkey in a ball (who’d have thought) past obstacles using your phone’s accelerometer. It would work perfectly on Nokia Belle phones. It’s fun, cute, and addictive, and the perfect game to waste a few minutes on the train.

Ocado On The Go

Size: 4MB
Cost: Free
Ocado is a service that lets you order groceries online for delivery without setting foot in a supermarket. Ocado On The Go lets you do just that from your Nokia Windows Phone. We’re sure Nokia Belle users would love the same convenience.

Any more apps from Windows Marketplace that you’d love to see on the Nokia Store? Let us know!