Convertor Touch is a great looking take on one of the old standards of the mobile app world - the unit converter. What's more, with its touch-sensitive interface, it's perfect for the likes of the Nokia N97, Nokia N97 Mini and even the Nokia 5800. Find out how we got on with it in our Ovi Store: Converter Touch review...
Apps to convert between imperial and metric units, or just between different scales (e.g. kilometres to millimetres) are fairly common, but Converter Touch tries to make the best use of the S60 Series 5 environment and present an attractive user interface that lives up to its 'Touch' name.
It does a pretty decent job of it, too. The app has a nice, clean look, with a sliding ribbon of icons representing different types of measurement (a lightening bolt for energy units, a clock for time etc.) a simple numeric keypad and a 'speechbubble' containing the units being converted to and from. The whole thing is presented in a well-drawn 'graphite' style.
Sadly, the looks are he best thing about the app. Although it will convert accurately (it's just maths, after all) the design does get in the way of usability somewhat. It is not always obvious what each category icon is meant to represent - that lightening bolt looks like it should be for electrical units (no, try the thing that looks a bit like a battery) and the different length lines that must be distances? No, those are for speed, silly.
Even within the categories things could be clearer. You select the 'to' and 'from' units with a tap that brings up a lists of unit abbreviations, e.g. 'km/h', 'kg', etc. Some of these seem a little obscure, though, and there is no explanation as to what they mean. For example, in the 'Time' category you can convert between s, min, h, d, wk, mo & a. That's second, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and, er, years. There are a few other oddities - nanometers are listed as 'NM' rather than the standard 'nm'. Not a huge deal, but if you are making a distance converter it seems like a bit of a schoolboy error.
The icon ribbon is a bit temperamental too - you can't tap an icon, but must slide the ribbon around until it is highlighted - a bit fiddly on a resistive touchscreen. A more annoying niggle was the was that the ribbon would reset to 'Energy' 90% of the time (but not EVERY time, which would have been marginally less annoying) when you return from a screen lock.
For a free app, Converter Touch looks great and performs it's simple task quite well. A little more thought into usability and function over form would have made this a must-have.
Version: 1.0
Price: Free
Check out our Ovi Store: Converter Touch review image gallery:
