Blue Bird App for Windows Phone Is Out, Exclusive to Nokia? Not Really

When Nokia held the launch of the Lumia 920 in Jakarta in November, it showed off the long awaited Blue Bird taxi reservation app. The app was finally available on the Windows Phone Store on Saturday, the day Nokia made the Lumia 920 and 820 available for purchase on retail stores, including its own, across Indonesia. Given the maturity of the app on Android, BlackBerry and iOS, there's plenty to expect from the Windows Phone version.

Developed by local developer company Armanovus, the Blue Bird taxi app works exactly as you expect it to. Nearly all of the features available from the Android and iOS versions of the app are available on the Windows Phone version. You can make multiple taxi reservations, place an advance order, save multiple pick up locations, and so on. Only the Twitter section is missing from the app. Currently the app is available to use in Jakarta, Semarang, and Medan.

In our experience in using the app, the position saved when registering a new pick up location and the position shown on the Tracking section are different, which is a cause for concern.

We checked with Armanovus to find out whether the coordinates saved and sent to Blue Bird's booking system are the correct ones and they assured us that they are. However, given the visual discrepancy, it's something that needs to be fixed before more people realize something is not right. Oops, too late, now they have.

Speaking of pick up location, if you wish to delete a saved location, follow these instructions:

1. Tap on the three dots at the bottom of the screen,
2. Select Account, swipe to Address, select the location to be removed
3. Find the Alias field, remove the checkmark, and tap on save.

It's not complicated but it takes far too many steps. It could have been made easier just by providing a drop down menu when you tap and hold the address on the Order screen, but apparently it's to maintain consistency across platforms.

The steps to remove an entry though, are the same in all of the company's apps on other platforms as well. On the bright side, it removes the chance of an accidental removal as you have to follow the lengthy steps to do it. Which is a good thing.

The app, although it has an "Exclusively built for Nokia Lumia" label on the splash screen, is actually downloadable on other Windows Phone devices made by other manufacturers. Strange but true. We've had the app downloaded and installed on an HTC 8X.

Supposedly the app was made at the behest of Nokia to ensure that Lumia owners will be able to conveniently reserve Blue Bird taxis. Kresna Siahaan from Armanovus confirmed to DailySocial that there is a three month exclusivity period with Nokia, hence the label on the splash screen, but if anybody with a Windows Phone can download and use the app, maybe exclusive means something completely different to Nokia. We have reached out to Nokia and Microsoft about this but have yet to receive official comments.

The app works with both Windows Phone 7.5 as well as 8.0 and should work just the same with the upcoming 7.8, which is scheduled to be released publicly in early 2013. With the current version, there's no difference when running the app on a device with either version of Windows Phone.