Nokia Gig Finder is the latest release from the clever chaps over at Nokia's Beta Labs. As a departure from the recent Beta Labs output of contact managers and social networking tools, Gig Finder aims to help you get you out to hear some live music in your area. Find out how we got on with our Nokia Gig Finder review...
Gig Finder runs on any S60 5th Edition phone - i.e. the recent touchscreen phones like the Nokia N97 Mini, Nokia 5800 and Nokia X6. The look and feel of the app is fairly consistent with the S60 5th Ed style although it did seem a little more cluttered than we expected, with a row of icons at the bottom, and one of those '3 horizontal line' option menus and a close icon at the top, bordering the various controls and content in the middle.
The three icons at the bottom switch you between screens marked 'My Gigs' (bookmarked gigs, basically), 'Recommended' and 'Search'. The Recommended screen has three tabs - the first is a list of suggested gigs, the second a list of venues and the third a list of gigs 'here'. The app is GPS aware, and will try to figure out appropriately nearby things with which to fill out the latter two tabs. Suggested gigs are fairly generic at first, but will begin to reflect your tastes and interests the more you use the app, Nokia claim.
You can also search using the third icon, with search parameters including dates, venue (or city) and artist/genre. If you see a gig that tickles your fancy, tap on it and you will be shown more info and can usually book tickets directly from your phone. A nice touch is a 'show on map' button that fires up Ovi Maps and pinpoints the venue so you can see how practical it is to get there. You can also easily share details of the gig via SMS, email or Facebook.
Although we have a couple of reservations about the interface, which is understandably cluttered given the amount of information it is trying to squeeze in, this is a pretty well thought out app. Searching for gigs is easy and intuitive, and thanks to the location-awareness your phone can do a lot of the work for you. If we have one niggle it is a lack of transparency about the sources of the gig data - we were sometimes left wondering if there were some gigs we weren't being told about because they didn't fit Nokia's criteria.
It will be interesting to see where Nokia go with this. Gig finder fits ion well with other products like Comes With Music and Maps, so we wouldn't be surprised if Gig Finder stopped being a standalone app at some point and just became part of another product. Until then, if you like live music you should give this a try.
Details
Size: 0.217 MB
Price: Free
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