DVLUP, Nokia events and freebie #12: my Lumia tally so far

Guess what got delivered to my home in Delhi yesterday? A Lumia 1320! I’m away right now, so the first photo of it is one my mom clicked and sent me. Posted it on Facebook anyway: “#FreePhone #12 so long lonesome, after so much of time! I present you #Lumia1320!”

I ordered it on 20 June for 5,800 XP on DVLUP, Nokia’s rewards programme for developers, so it took a little over two months to reach Delhi. That makes it number 12 in a count I’ve been keeping on Facebook since January under #dvlup and #freekaLumia. So here’s the whole story: the Nokia and Microsoft events I got into as a student, what DVLUP actually is, and the full tally.

(Two nights ago I also traded 3,000 XP for Flipkart gift vouchers, and guess what, none of them work! That one gets its own post once it has an ending.)

May 2013: an exam, an MSP letter and Elop on stage

On 4 May 2013 I cleared Microsoft exam 070-480, Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3. Score 850, pass mark 700. Around the same time a letter came from Microsoft India: I had been selected as a Microsoft Student Partner at GGSIPU, Delhi. The MSP kit (T-shirt, lanyard, welcome letter) reached me on 16 May, and I posted: “Got the MSP kit finally…now waiting for muft ka Nokia Asha with lot of asha #hope”. (“Muft ka” means free, and the pun is on asha, which is Hindi for hope.)

The MSP selection letter, May 2013.

I had applied back in August 2012 with a video. Mine was on the new features in IE 10:

On 9 May, just five days after the exam, I was at the Taj in New Delhi for the launch of the Nokia Asha 501. Nokia picked New Delhi to unveil it globally: a $99 touchscreen phone on a new Asha software platform, somewhere between a feature phone and a smartphone (Engadget’s hands-on from that day). It was due to ship in June. And who gave the keynote? Stephen Elop himself, Nokia’s CEO! I posted a photo of him on stage from the audience. Facebook’s Vaughan Smith, who looks after their mobile partnerships, spoke too.

For developers there was real news under the launch: an Asha SDK 1.0 for Java apps, new web app tools, Nokia In-App Payment with operator billing, and the Nokia Ad Exchange (MediaNama’s lowdown has the details). The room itself was a packed ballroom with a giant red Asha 501 on the stage screens, a wall of cyan, yellow, red and green, and a crowded hands-on area.

I got in as a developer, through Nokia Developer.

My favourite photo from that evening is of a table card. It says the Asha 501 “can stay on standby for over a month”, but Nokia figures you might like a seat and a bite to eat. Haha, nice one Nokia :)

June 2013: a free Asha 310 and MSP Bootcamp

The free Asha I was hoping for did show up, a month later. On 14 June a DHL parcel brought me a Nokia Asha 310, and my post that day said “#Nokia Premium Developer…bleeh its Free ka #Asha310”. It came before DVLUP and before I started counting, so it isn’t one of the twelve.

Two days later we drove out in the rain for the Microsoft Student Partners Boot Camp 2013, held on 17 and 18 June at G.L. Bajaj Institute of Technology & Management in Greater Noida. Over 300 student partners were there, and ours was the first stop of a four-city tour: Greater Noida, then Chennai, Lonavala and Tadepalligudem. Microsoft also inaugurated a Microsoft Innovation Center at the college. I came back with a certificate of participation.

The photos are mostly a room full of student partners in matching “Microsoft Student Partners” T-shirts. There’s also a Windows 8 “Device Bar” with a sign saying “Have a shot at our technology right here”, superhero cut-outs to pose with, and a big “I was at Bootcamp” wall covered in everyone’s signatures. Day one ended with a party, and at 18 minutes past midnight people were letting sky lanterns go. What a night!

In July I went all the way to Chennai for EHACK 2013, a free 24-hour information security workshop and capture-the-flag contest run by infySEC at SRM University on 27 and 28 July. It was a record attempt: the mark to beat was the 2,567 people at Microsoft’s Windows AppFest in Bangalore last year. On the 27th I was in the T.P. Ganesan Auditorium with, as I put it that day, “9000+ developers under roof”, and in the same post I told Microsoft its record looked puny next to that. The clock started a minute before ten in the morning, and the capture-the-flag ran through the night. There’s an EHACK 2013 certificate in my folder to show for it.

Late 2013: learning the platform, and a Lumia I didn’t win

To learn Windows Phone I leaned on Nokia’s Lumia App Labs, a series of webinars from Nokia’s developer team. I downloaded episodes #1 to #17 into a folder on my desktop: the Nokia Imaging SDK, NFC, HERE Maps launchers, remote device access, Telerik controls, layouts for big screens. Funny how those topics line up so well with what I built that winter ;)

The first Lumia I went after, I didn’t get. On 31 October DVLUP India ran a promo, “Update your App and take home a Lumia 520”. I sent in an updated app on 15 November, and ten days later DVLUP told me it didn’t follow the Windows Phone UI guidelines. So no 520 for me. Fair enough.

By the end of December I still didn’t have a Windows Phone 8 handset of my own. On 26 December I asked Nokia on Twitter whether I should get a 1020 or a 1520, and on the 28th I tweeted that I was “yet to get my #Wp8 smartphone” and hoping to order one soon on DVLUP.

So what is DVLUP?

DVLUP is Nokia’s rewards programme for developers. You join, take on app challenges, earn XP, and redeem it for rewards, which also include promotional placements for your own apps. And it is gamified to the hilt! The homepage brags that DVLUP has “more badges than the lost & found at a police convention”, and even the 404 page hands you a badge. Land on a challenge that doesn’t exist, like challenge 270, and it congratulates you on earning the “Ancient Mystery of 404 Badge”. LOL.

Apart from app challenges there are quizzes on Nokia’s SDKs and docs, anywhere from four to ten questions each. And I did a LOT of quizzes.

In December I pasted all my answers into one image, dvlup answers.jpg, which is still sitting on my desktop. It covers thirteen quizzes, including:

• “How to make money”, plus a separate Vserv SDK quiz: the Vserv ad SDK and its AppWrapper tool
• “For your apps Big n bold”: Windows Phone 8 Update 3 and 1080p screens (“scale tiles by 2.25 and body by 1.8”)
• “What can you do with 41 MP”: the Lumia 1020. The answers include “5 MP, 33.6 MP in 16:9 mode, and 38.2 MP in 4:3 mode” and “Oversampling”
• “Windows phone design tips from the master”: pivots can only have 7 panes
• “Launch your app into a location world”: the HERE Maps, Drive and Transit launchers
• “Get in the picture!”: ChromaKey and gradients in the Imaging SDK
• A handful about Nokia Asha: the new SDK, game UX for Asha, image sizes (320x240), and “Nothing lightweight about this UI”
• “DVLUP DAY” (challenge 270), whose answers mention a one-year Telerik RadControls and Infragistics NetAdvantage subscription, Microsoft App Studio and a DVLUP USB car charger

dvlup answers.jpg, December 2013.

A lot of that list ended up in my apps: the Imaging SDK for photo filters, the HERE launchers, App Studio. Basically DVLUP was teaching me the platform one quiz at a time, and paying me for it. Not bad, right?

January to March 2014: the Lumias start arriving

On New Year’s Day I tweeted at DVLUP that the India store was out of stock for all devices. It came back soon enough, and in the first week of January I ordered a Lumia 625 for 4,000 XP. It reached me by Blue Dart on 18 January, with a “To whomsoever it may concern” cover letter from Nokia’s PR agency. Freebie #1! “So that’s how the feeling is when you win a Lumia #dvlup #lumia625 #freekaLumia”.

Freebie #1: the Lumia 625 and its cover letter, 18 January 2014.

In late January I went big and ordered the Lumia 1520 for 19,000 XP. At the end of the month my pending orders were rolled into one: a Lumia 620, another Lumia 625 and the 1520, 26,000 XP in one go. For comparison, the Wayback Machine has 1520 reward pages from DVLUP stores around the world in late 2013 at 11,900 to 14,000 points (here’s one). Mine cost more. Hmm.

On 12 February Nokia hosted the first ever DVLUP Community Meetup in India, at the Nokia India office in SP Infocity, Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon, from noon to three. It was invite-only, for the top DVLUP developers, with limited seats and an ID check at the gate. The agenda fit on four lines:

• 12:00: welcome, and meeting Nokia India’s developer outreach team
• 12:30: the DVLUP global team, including Chanse Arrington, the creator of DVLUP
• 1:00: lunch and Q&A from the community
• 2:00: one-to-one time between developers and the DVLUP team

I got a seat, and the next day I tweeted that it was “a FABULOUS experience” and that the Delhi-NCR meetup should happen once a month. Nokia’s follow-up mail promised to be back soon with day-long technical sessions on Windows Phone design, Nokia APIs and tools. At the meetup I was told orders usually get processed in a week. By 24 February mine had been pending for almost a month, so I mailed Nokia India about it.

The 620 and the second 625 finally turned up together by DTDC at the end of February. Freebies #2 and #3: “well well well 2 more free lumias for me…well not free.. just earned em … looks like its raining phones”. Total tally 3, pending 3, and still no 1520 :(

Freebies #2 and #3, as tweeted on 28 February 2014.

The 1520 needed a trip. After weeks of follow-up mails, a few of us student devs with pending orders were asked to come to Nokia’s Gurgaon office on 14 March with ID and collect our phones in person. Six weeks after ordering, I walked out with a Lumia 1520! Freebie #4, total 4, pending 2. DVLUP replied to my tweet with “Enjoy your new #Lumia1520”.

The photo I tweeted that night: “just got this gorgeous machine!”

The first photo it ever took is of its own retail box, on my bed, that evening. Six inches, 1080p and a 20 MP PureView camera. What a beast! It has been my main phone since that day.

The 1520’s first photo: its own box, 14 March 2014.

On 31 March I tweeted at Nokia about a Lumia 1020 I had just got: the app voucher card in its box had expired on 10 February. Classic.

Nokia X: Go Port

Nokia announced the Nokia X, its Android phone (yes, Android!), at MWC in February, and it went on sale in India on 10 March (FoneArena). In February DVLUP put up Nokia X challenges, and I tweeted that I had two entertainment apps to tune for the Nokia X and asked Nokia Developer whether there would be an SDK or a plain APK would do.

I registered for Digit’s Nokia X events. “Nokia X: Go Port!” was a nine-city tour run by Nokia with Digit: Bangalore on 26 March, Noida on the 28th, then Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Indore, Pune, Gurgaon and Jaipur, one a week till mid-May. I was at the Noida one, at the Radisson Blu. You were told to bring a laptop, an internet dongle and between one and ten of your own APKs to port, with the Nokia X SDK already installed.

The pitch to developers was printed right on my badge: “Same code base. New user base.” Port your Android app and get it in front of Nokia’s buyers. Nokia X is built on the Android Open Source Project (version 4.1.2, API level 16), and Nokia’s line is that about 75% of Android apps run on it without any changes. The rest need work only where they use Google’s services for push notifications, maps or in-app payments, which get swapped for Nokia Notifications, HERE Maps and Nokia In-App Payment. The promise was an app ported and published in about 20 minutes. By my count I was 200 minutes in. So much for 20 minutes :P

The whole hall was lit green, so most of my photos from that evening look like they were shot through a bottle of Sprite. On my table: the “Delegate” badge, a teacup and a Radisson notepad. There was Vserv “Maximize Mobile” swag going around too.

The Gurgaon stop of the tour followed on Saturday 10 May at the Nokia India office, and on 12 June Digit mailed out a porting contest: port 2, 5, 10 or 20 Android apps to the Nokia X between 12 and 22 June and get an assured gift at each level, from a Victorinox knife up to shopping vouchers.

In between, on 3 April, I watched the Build 2014 keynote stream on my laptop. I have a photo of my screen to prove it: Microsoft’s new CEO on stage, three and a half hours into a stream that ran close to five hours. That week brought Windows Phone 8.1 and Cortana, and I posted “Please Nokia give me the Update”.

April to August: 520s, accessories and the 1320

On 1 April I finally got to tweet “Rewards are in for India store guyz!!”, and the next two months were busy at the door:

• 17 April: a Lumia 520 by India Post, “pleasant surprise”. Freebie #5.
• 25 April: two more Lumia 520s. “Time for some Lumia wars!” Freebies #6 and #7, pending 1.
• 5 May: a Nokia HF-210 Bluetooth speakerphone for the car. Freebie #8.
• 28 May: a green Nokia X Dual SIM. Freebie #9.
• 31 May: a Nokia wireless charging plate for the 1520. Freebie #10, or as I put it, “IT’S A TEN!”

Freebie #5, the 17 April Lumia 520.

I also spent 300 XP in May on a slot in DVLUP’s App Social Spotlight for India, one of those promotional placements for my own apps.

On 1 May the Nokia X, Lumia 525, 720 and 1320 showed up on DVLUP’s reward list, and on 20 June I spent 5,800 XP on the 1320. A week later Nokia’s developer newsletter announced that DVLUP had gone global.

The tally

Twelve is my own running count, and it includes accessories. Here it is in one place:

#	What	Arrived	XP
before DVLUP	Nokia Asha 310	June 2013	free, Nokia Premium Developer
1	Nokia Lumia 625	18 Jan 2014	4,000
2, 3	Nokia Lumia 620 + Lumia 625	end of Feb 2014	part of the 26,000 XP order
4	Nokia Lumia 1520	14 Mar 2014	19,000 (same order)
5	Nokia Lumia 520	17 Apr 2014	2,100
6, 7	Nokia Lumia 520 x2	25 Apr 2014	2,100, and one order mail came through blank
8	Nokia HF-210 speakerphone	5 May 2014	950
9	Nokia X Dual SIM	28 May 2014	2,050
10	Nokia Wireless Charging Plate DT-900	31 May 2014	1,600
12	Nokia Lumia 1320	27 Aug 2014	5,800
not counted	Nokia Lumia 1020	by 31 Mar 2014

Two of my 520 order mails say 2,100 XP, and the third came through with an empty item list, so I can’t match every 520 to an order. Number 11 isn’t in any of my #freekaLumia posts, so it’s missing from the table. Of the other eleven, nine are phones (eight Lumias and the Nokia X) and two are accessories.

EventShare.in

Since January I’ve also had a side project going: EventShare.in, “Sharing Tech Events, Seminars & Conferences!”, with its own Twitter account, @eventsharein. It’s a WordPress site that lists tech events in and around Delhi, sorted into events, webinars, workshops, seminars, conferences and hirings. My desktop has its logo, a Facebook banner and about 40 event posters: Microsoft’s Cloud OS Roadshow, Nokia’s “Your Wish Is My App”, a GDG hackathon, DevFest at IIT Delhi, the C# Corner conference, a BlackBerry developer meetup, Intel AppFest. Do check it out!

Fifteen months back I had an exam score, a selection letter and a seat at a Nokia launch. Now there’s a bootcamp certificate in the same folder, a Lumia 1520 in my pocket and a Lumia 1320 waiting for me at home, all paid for with quiz answers and app challenges. Not bad, eh? :)