Nokia Store for the Nokia X Design Overhauled, Games Given Spotlight

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Nokia X Store

Nokia X StoreNokia believes that the Nokia X will be a success in what it calls bridging the gap between the Asha devices and the higher end Lumia windows phone. I have my reservations about that some way, and it’s not that Nokia X won’t be successful, just that it’s not going to be a bridge but a replacement in the long term. Story for another day. The long term mobile phones legend keeps working to ensure they better the experience of the devices they roll out, credit where it’s due.

It’s along these lines that they have reworked the Nokia Store app on the Nokia X to stop looking like it has always been for the Asha phones. It gets a life of it’s own, and it’s beautiful. I am yet to look at the Asha Store and see whether the change is cross platform (will update on this later).

Top among the new changes are beautiful design and much focus on games. At the top we still have the search bar and right below it we have three tabs; Featured Apps, Top Apps and Top Games. There are no paid apps yet on the store as Nokia first concentrates on populating the store and have it as close as possible to the rival store Google’s Play Store.

Nokia X Third Party AppsNow another thing you will notice is the apps layout that is more of boxed cards layout that shows the app icon, name below it, star rating and the download icon right next to rating. If you have downloaded the app it shows a green tick. On the featured apps area there is the “Our Picks” section that has apps Nokia recommends that is region specific.

Right below that section there is third party App stores, now the number is 4. At launch, Nokia X had three third party app stores but this is now at 4 and they are featured there to increase the apps count chances for users. Right at the bottom there is the notice board. When popular apps “finally” get to the Nokia App store, they are listed there, the current one is InstagramNokia X New apps

Unlike on Google Play which has them below the download button, Nokia X App details section has app screenshots above the icon and app name. There are people actually reviewing apps unlike on Windows Phone which has very few reviewing apps. I don’t know the difference in chemistry here. Nokia X2 gets launched next week and of course, just like other second devices in a Nokia platform, we expect changes and improvements in the way things are done. Fortunately there is no system architecture change as we saw in both Windows Phone 7 to 8 migration and Asha series 40 to Asha Platform migration previously. If there is an OS or general software update you can expect that most probably Nokia X will get it.