Is Nokia Feel a real application? Its hard to say. What it definitely is is a product of Nokia's idea factory, Beta Labs, where engineers from Espoo test wacky new app ideas that may one day end up becoming real products. Nokia Feel is one such brainchild. The idea boils down to this - people are spoilt for choice and don't know how to start getting the best from their smartphones. Why not make an app that can suggest things to do with your phone, based upon your mood? So that's what we did, find out how we got on with our Nokia Feel review.
You may be wondering how your phone manages to ascertain your emotional state - does it use some kind of lie detector-like sensor? Sadly, no. You have to tell it - by tapping one of the colourfully illustrated buttons labelled with a 'feeling' like 'Hungry', 'Lost' or 'Bored'. The app will then present you with some ideas of things to do - e.g. if you are 'Hungry it might suggest using Ovi Maps to search for a local restaurant, or using Contacts to call a friend to join you.
You get four 'moods' presented to you at a time - if none are particularly you you can tap the Nokia Feel icon in the bottom corner and get four new ones to choose from. The app actually works surprisingly well and doesn't feel quite as patronising as we feared it might. The presentation definitely helps, even if it is a touch new agey- all rainbows and colour filtered shots of bamboo forests.
Feel's biggest problem is that it is restricted to just the standard apps that ship with your phone. It would have been good to get a few suggestions of Ovi Store apps that would help with our current mood (maybe if our mood was 'Applicationy', we dunno) or even some awareness of other apps that were installed. For example, if you are feeling Bored then Feel might suggest "Connect to the world via Twitter". Selecting this will drop you into the web browser, pointed at Twitter.com - absolutely and positively the worst possible way to access Twitter from your Nokia, in our humble opinion. If Feel had detected that we had Gravity installed already (or even suggested downloading it) then the new user's experience would be about 100000% better.
As a NokNok regular, you might not need to be told many of the 'things to do' but you might get a few surprises. We will definitely be keeping this app handy for the next time we need to do a bit of Nokia evangelism to any Doubting Thomas iPhone owners we come across. In short then, this is not an essential download, but it is a pleasant diversion and is something that we are fairly sure will become part of the standard suite of apps in future Nokia phones. Its a fun way to kill a bit of time, and you might end up learning something about your phone's hidden talents too.
Details
Price: Free
Size: 2.02MB
