Rating: 
Review Conditions
Paint Studio 1.0.0 from Impetus Technologies was installed on a Nokia 5800 XPressMusic, an S60 5th edition device with Symbian OS version 9.4.
Installation
Installation is using the Nokia Application Installer. Its available in the Ovi store and you can get a URL via SMS to download it.
First View
Touch screen devices enable developers to offer exciting tools to draw, doodle and color on the screen using the finger or a stylus. An MS Paint like application on the iPhone was a huge success. The devices running s60 5th edition won’t be left behind. Paint Studio is one such drawing tool that leverages the touch interface quite effectively. Read on.
Main Review
Paint Studio is more than just a plain drawing tool. The basic features of any drawing tool like MS Paint are available in addition to good integration with other features of the mobile, like the camera, wallpaper and web sharing.
All the basic tools for drawing, i.e. the pencil, drawing straight lines, ellipses, squares, a paint bucket and an eraser are available. The pencil and the eraser have 3 levels of thickness. Paint Studio offers a 16-M-color palette. You can also redo operation and undo operations all the way to until you get a clean slate, which is very useful.
On the bottom left corner, the operation selected is displayed. In the image above, the eraser is selected. The border around this icon indicates the color that will be used. If the pencil is selected, the color of the pencil can be known by looking at the border of this icon.
Paint Studio carries clip arts for many categories and these make the drawing tool more interesting. The clip art categories are Greetings, Invites, Love, Frames, Vehicles, Animals, Homes and Objects. Pictures and frames aid in creating a finer canvas for the wall paper.
The most interesting feature of Paint Studio is that lets you edit images you have shot with the camera on the mobile. You can also pick an image from the photo gallery on the mobile and edit it.
Paint Studio also connects to the ‘Share’ function of Symbian to let you send pictures via text, email, Bluetooth or upload it to any Web 2.0 photo site.
Handling
Pictures are saved as .png files. The file sizes are small and are meant to be used only on the mobile. But they are only saved on the phone memory. I would like the option to save them on the external memory card too.
I had a real hard time exiting the application. The “x” menu option in the top right corner is probably less sensitive to touch but I could never successfully exit the application by pressing the exit button. I had to ‘close’ the application from the task manager all the time.
At 0.5 mega bytes, Paint Studio is a tiny application but takes up nearly 19.5 mega bytes of RAM at runtime.
The product guide and help file for Paint Studio is available at the site but the application is very intuitive and needs not guidance for use.
Weaknesses
I didn’t find any weaknesses in the application. Its actually fun to use.
Conclusion
My daughter of 5 years thoroughly enjoyed playing with Paint Studio. The ease with with she got familiar with the application and spent hours this weekend drawing various pictures demonstrated how well designed Paint Studio is. Its was a big draw among her friends too.
But I was surprised that there is no way to trial the application, even for a day. The only option is to purchase it.
Paint Studio is very good stuff and I will give it 4 of 5. Paint Studio is at the moment compatible for S60 5th edition devices and works great on the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music. It can be purchased at the Ovi store for $5.
Note: The link to the Ovi store will work only if you are logged in and the selected mobile device is either Nokia 5800 XPress Music or Nokia N97.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
i want to ask:
how to get this software ( Paint studio for mobile )???
thanks
PaintStudio can be purchased from the Ovi Store.
Are you kidding me? how many peoples in India allows there childs to play with Nokia 5800???
Rakesh, One cannot generalize the way an entire country would think, about letting their children use a phone. Some may allow their children to use the phone, with close supervision.
And in this context, “play” is used to convey that PaintStudio is a pleasurable application and children will enjoy using it.
Finally, we have no reason to exaggerate our experiences during a review to convince our readers.
I have used this application and find it really cool. My 4-year old is busy painting and coloring while on the move, and the options this application offers keeps her busy. In fact, I myself quite enjoy scribbling on this, and saving the drawings to share with friends..A real cool feature of this app is the clip arts provided – they are such simple and neat drawings – but i hope the next version has more of these.
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