Ovi Store. I’m loving Angry Birds

When the Ovi store opened yesterday I went and checked it out. The N900 apps were about as underwhelming as I had expected.

There seem to be a bunch of apps from Nokia that shipped with the N900 originally (Qik, Facebook, Evernote, etc), then there are a massive number of what look like coding by numbers apps and games all with the word “Touch” in the name from a company called Offscreen. It looks like Nokia gave them some cash to produce a bunch of novelty apps in order to try and fill out the store.

There is one gem in store though, that’s a game called Angry Birds by Rovio. The concept is simple, you have a bunch of birds and you need to fling them at pigs using a slingshot. There are obstacles in the way which you must break through or go over. There are 5 different types of bird, ranging from standard birds, to cluster birds and egg bomber birds. The first 21 levels are free then you can pay 3 quid for the next 42. Admittedly the same game is only 59p on the iPhone store, but I enjoyed it so much I was happy to part with the 3 pounds.

There really is little on the store at the moment and Angry Birds is by far the best of the bunch. If you’re after apps then you’ll find many more useful apps in the Maemo Extras and Extras-Testing repositories through the built in Application Manager.

Hopefully the store will grow over the coming months, but i expect the apps in the maemo repositories to be where most of the good stuff is.