At MWC, Nokia’s ex-CEO Elop spent quite sometime on driving the point home that the Nokia X‘s UI will be the first interaction of many new smartphones owners to the actual Windows Phone UI.
But, while Nokia has borrowed UI elements like tiles from Windows Phone to Nokia X, the apps will still sport “Android like UI” if apps development guidelines at Nokia Developer page are any indication. Nokia discourages developers from mimicking even Windows Phone’s panoramic UI style for apps and suggests them to read “Pure Android” style guidelines. Some tidbits from Nokia Developer page,
- We recommend to keep the file size under 512 MB. The risk of huge download sizes is that the phone runs out of free space for your app, or there might be a network timeout.
- Do not mimic different platforms. People are not used to the interaction paradigms of the other platform; for example, they might consider the Windows Phone panoramic view as uneffective since it does not work satisfyingly in landscape orientation.
- Read more about Android style.
I know, it sounds bit surprising to discourage metro style UI for apps. Knowing Nokia, I can bet, they will never compromise on app’s user experience and that may be the driving factor here.
Thanks JLIT99 for the tip. Cheers!!
