Last week at Nokia World 2008, I had the extreme good luck to bump into Zeemote’s VP of Sales and Business Development, and was able to get a great video demo of their Zeemote JS1 Bluetooth Controller, which we’ve talked about here at Symbian-Guru before. Upon discovering that I did not have a JS1 to review, he was kind enough to pull a JS1 out of his briefcase and offer it to me! Sweet. Unfortunately, the video footage did not turn out well, but I’ve put together a review for you, along with a video demo of the Zeemote JS1 in action, paired with my Nokia N95-3.
The Zeemote JS1 Bluetooth Controller is roughly the size of a cigarette lighter, though slightly bigger. It’s contoured to fit your hand, and is covered in a slightly rubberized material, for easy grip. There are 5 buttons, including the 4-way d-pad. At the front of the JS1, you’ll find 2 buttons, labeled A and B. Underneath, inside the contour, you’ll find another button, labeled C, in the place you’d expect to find a trigger button. On top of the device, directly below the d-pad, there is a power button, which pulls double-duty as a D button. Each of these buttons, A, B, C, and D can be programmed easily, thanks to the Zeekey application for S60v3 smartphones.
The Zeekey application, available for download directly from Nokia Germany, allows the JS1 to emulate any button on the phone. This allows you to easily navigate through your phone’s menus, to launch and exit applications, and also allows you to use the JS1 to control N-Gage games. The Zeekey application is simple, with only 2 options – Connect a JS1, and the keymapping area.
The Keymapping feature begins with a standard keymap, telling the phone what action to take when you press a given key on your JS1 Bluetooth controller. You can also create your own profiles, which is extremely handy, and can then be used for other things, other than gaming. For instance, in the video demo below, I needed to map the 5 key, so that I could fire the cannon on my tank. I was able to quickly do this, with the ‘A’ button emulating the 5 key.
You can create as many keymap profiles as you wish, and create custom names for them. Thus, if you had a certain one for the music player, another for the My Little Tank game, and another for N-Gage, you could store these, so that you don’t have to recreate them each time you want to play.
Overall, the Zeemote JS1 is a well built little controller. It feels rather lightweight, and I would not be against a bit of false weight inside, simply to give it some added heft. The JS1 controller runs on 2 AAA-size batteries, and I’m told that these will last roughly 2-4 weeks, depending on the amount of usage. The JS1 will also automatically power itself off if there is no movement for 3 minutes, to conserve battery. You could also use rechargeable AAA batteries, if you wanted.
So, the Zeemote JS1 Bluetooth controller works great throughout the entire menu of Nokia’s S60v3-powered smartphones, including N-Gage and other non-Zeemote-compatible games, thanks to the Zeekey application. Unfortunately, there is a bit of sad news – after speaking with Zeemote on several occasions, I’ve been unable to convince them to offer the Zeemote JS1 as a stand alone retail product. Instead, they’re focusing on bundling the controller with handsets such as the Nokia N85 in Germany, and other regional agreements, to be announced soon.
Personally, I’d easily pay $20, maybe $25 for the Zeemote, as it’s great for gaming, but also has other great functions, such as a media remote control. What about you? Would you be willing to purchase the Zeemote JS1 as a stand alone retail product, and if so, how much would you be willing to spend? If there’s enough interest, perhaps I could convince the team at Zeemote to put together a special Symbian-Guru retail package, just for our readers.
Video of the Zeemote JS1 Bluetooth Controller with my N95-3 and Astraware’s My Little Tank over TV-Out:
