the next door (so called) geek @rakkimk | your next door geek | friend | blogs mostly on technology, and gadgets.

Nokia Lumia 820 – Apps, and more

When I wrote my first post about Nokia Lumia 820, I didn’t have much time to play with the apps to understand if this phone feels complete as an end user. Firstly, I got to admit that this phone has minimized my usage of wife’s iPad2. Before talking about this phone, let me cover my use cases with iPad2, a few apps that I typically use in iPad for, Twitter – especially to read all the tamil tweets, Facebook – my social world, Flipboard – connected to my twitter, facebook, google reader account – the source for all my technical blog reading stuff, Times of India App – source of all news around India, Dinamalar, Malaimalar – Tamil news sites apps, and Skype – for video chat with my friends, and family.

I can’t think of any other apps that I frequently use in my wife’s iPad. Perhaps Youtube too, but not that much, so I didn’t even bother to list that in the above list. For my use case, I’m trying to compare the Apps that I’m using in my Nokia Lumia 820:

Rowi

Rowi, perhaps is the best twitter client out there for Windows Phone. This also supports multiple accounts. With WP8 supporting Tamil fonts, I pretty much follow my timeline on my mobile. You can get the app here. Apart from the multiple user support, even the free version includes the ability to include the location in the tweet, and also to add #nowplaying that adds the currently playing song from the Music hub. I do many #CommuteTweets, and #CommuteMusic tweets from this app, and I absolutely love it. I should say that, since I’m now able to read Tamil in my WP8, this app has stopped taking iPad to use the Twitter app (which is one great app, by the way!).

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Facebook

Facebook on iPad is definitely superior, considering my new phone, but that’s mostly due to the large screen. I know it’s a very blind comparison of a tablet with a phone, but I’m trying to compare based on my usage stats. Of course, with my phone’s ‘Me’ tile, I do not miss any notifications, and I’ve also pinned the ‘Facebook’ app for Windows Phone to my start screen, that gives me toast notifications that keeps me always connected to my facebook world.

Flipboard, and other news apps – replaced by NextGen Reader to a larger extent

As I mentioned earlier, Flipboard gives an absolutely fantastic magazine style reading experience in the bigger screen iPad. I’m sure there is no matching Windows Phone app, yet. However, for my use case, I have the NextGen Reader – a google reader app for Windows Phone. This app is one of the superior google reader client, and also has an Windows 8 Store app as well. Other news apps like TimesofIndia, etc has apps even on Windows Phone platform, also on the Windows 8 store.

Here are a few screenshots of this app, you should use it to believe the superior experience I’m talking about. This also has a Live Tile, and can post a detailed status right on the lockscreen, which is awesome! You don’t even need to unlock your phone to see the latest in your subscriptions.

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Great Apps from Nokia

One of the many reasons why I chose Nokia Lumia 820 is for it’s exclusive apps. To name a few that I use it frequently, Nokia Drive (Beta), Nokia City Lens, Nokia Music, and the PhotoBeamer app.

I think the web has many reviews for all these apps already, and I don’t want to repeat how awesome they all are! Nokia Drive has even ‘Tamil’ turn by turn navigation, and that’s just awesome! Also don’t forget to try the ‘Surfer Dude’ for some fun while driving.

Nokia Music is worth mentioning, which offers FREE MP3 downloads to your phone. They have almost all the top albums available, and it’s a bliss that you hit the download button (while connected to WiFi), and start listening to your favorite songs in minutes. This is a must have app for music lovers, and comes exclusively for the Nokia Lumia, and for free. What more you can ask for!

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PhotoBeamer

You see it yourself in the below video by PocketNow. It is a great app to be used to project some photos on any screen. Imagine you are on the stage, and you want to show off some photos from your phone that you recently took. This is an amazing app, and I’m sure other phone owners would be jealous since it’s exclusive to Nokia Lumia phones.

Credits : PocketNow

That’s it for now, but I’ll write more if time permits Smile

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