SophieLens on the Nokia X

25 Feb 2014Projects3 min read

Nokia announced the Nokia X yesterday, an Android phone from Nokia. We've had SophieLens running on it since November and couldn't say anything until now.

Nokia announced the Nokia X in Barcelona yesterday. A Nokia phone running Android … three of them actually, the X, the X+ and the XL. It’s Android underneath, but with Nokia’s own store, HERE Maps and MixRadio instead of Google’s apps, and a home screen of tiles.

We’ve been building for it since November and couldn’t say a word about it. SophieLens is in the Nokia Store for it.

A bright green Nokia X standing upright on a white table against a blue backdrop, its home screen showing Phone, Messaging and People tiles above Store, Email, Internet, Outlook.com and Skype — Nokia X at MWC, 24 February 2014. Photo: Maurizio Pesce, CC BY 2.0.

We’ve done Symbian, MeeGo, Qt, WRT and Windows Phone for Nokia, and now it’s Android … from Nokia, of all people.

Android, but Nokia

The app itself is normal Android work. The Holo theme, an action bar, 9-patch buttons, drawables at hdpi. The screen is 800 by 480, and the camera runs sideways like it does on the Lumias.

Nokia’s icon guide asks for a 72 by 72 launcher icon, with the glyph inside a 60 by 60 zone and in one colour, so it sits with Nokia’s own icons. It suggests six colours. We used their blue, #0568FF.

SophieLens on the Nokia X in landscape: a snowy field with a clump of trees, a photo thumbnail top left, an up arrow bottom left, and a grey bar on the right with the filter pack button, the shutter and the menu — Camera, November 2013.

The arrow at the bottom opens the filter strip, and the name of the filter goes across the viewfinder in script.

The filter strip open along the bottom, with the black and white Nostalgia filter on the viewfinder and its name written across the middle in script — Filter strip, November 2013.

Packs

The packs are the same ones as on Windows Phone. Standard comes free with five filters, and the rest are locked until you buy them … Vintage, Fashion, Sophia’s Sepia, Lomo, Life in Mono and Light Leak.

There’s an Asha pack in the build as well, ten colours, each one a curve plus a glitter texture.

Cyan glitter texture — Asha pack textures.

Green glitter texture — Asha pack textures.

Settings has one switch, Touch to Capture, so you can tap anywhere on the screen instead of the shutter button.

The SophieLens Asha settings tab with one option, Touch to Capture: tap screen instead of shutter button to capture photos — Settings, November 2013.

Our build is called SophieLens Asha, and the About page calls it “the perfect companion for your Asha device”.