Ok, so you know that Nokia has given away navigation for life for Ovi Maps, right? Nokia also released a new version of Ovi Maps which makes location sharing that much easier.
So what makes Ovi Maps interesting now? Well, the “Share location” icon is your key to more dynamic location-based social activity. Ovi Maps connects to your Facebook account (I’d like to see Nokia connect to a range of services and let users pick which ones to update but for now its all about Facebook) and you can publish status updates coupled with location information on the go (you can also add photos to your postings). I went out for breakfast this morning:
If you click on that link in that post, it takes you to an Ovi Maps application in Facebook:
What means for you is that you can start sharing not only what you are doing but where you are too. There are lots of ways this could be useful. Nokia calls this Lifecasting:
Simon Dingle wrote a bit about some of the other features in Ovi Maps that are really useful for travellers. I think there is a fair amount of potential for local tourism too so if you are curious about what is going on in your own city, take a look at the Events and Lonely Planet guides too!
I’ve mentioned that I’ve had difficulty getting Ovi Maps to lock onto my location in anything under a few minutes (or sometimes at all). It turns out that there is a bug or some technical issue with SIM cards issued by MTN (this doesn’t surprise me) which have 14 digits serial numbers (there is a technical term for the serial number). The bug/issue interferes with A-GPS which is meant to speed up location tracking. I tested out a patch which will find its way into a future firmware update which fixes this issue and Ovi Maps now locks onto my position in seconds. Makes a big difference.
I posted this one a little too soon so I have edited it a little. The edits are in italics or strikethrough. Sorry about the premature posting!
Ovi.com is Nokia’s answer to MobileMe (formerly .Mac) and a collection of similar services operated by the likes of Google. At least, that is how I see Ovi.com.
Ovi.com is a gateway or portal to a range of services Nokia has created. These services include Share (photo and video sharing), Contacts, Maps, N-gage, Music (a portal to Nokia Music), Files and Calendar. The range of services on offer is, at first glance, impressive and you can easily imagine shifting most, if not all, of your computer-based activities into the cloud. One big advantage of Ovi.com is that many of its services are designed to interact with Nokia devices and enable you to synchronise your device with the Ovi cloud. Unfortunately Ovi.com is still something of a disappointment, at least to me.
Ovi.com is a mixed bag. Each service on the site has its own design and although they share some common design elements, there isn’t a consistent look and feel throughout. Ovi Contacts looks cluttered whereas Ovi Share has a clean look and the swish fishbowl widget displaying media from your library. Opening Ovi Maps or Music will take you out of a consistent Ovi environment and into a separate Maps or Music site. The Ovi.com portal isn’t really a portal but a loose association of services. I was going to say that other portal sites are more consistent in terms of their look and feel but Yahoo!, one of the oldest, has different designs for each sub-site too. I could be a little too critical here but there is something about the inconsistency in the Ovi.com design across the various services that puts me off and suggests it was all put together a little haphazardly.
To add to this the urls for the services are not consistent either. To get to Contacts you click through to http://www.ovi.com/services/contacts?lid=ContactsBridge whereas to visit most of the other services the url convention is servicename.ovi.com (with the exception of N-gage which directs to its own url).
There are also a number of features which should be available and which are simply not. I don’t know if this is because they weren’t deemed important or if the developers simply didn’t have any regard to other services and draw on those services for inspiration and examples of best practices. Examples of these deficiencies include RSS feeds for content shared on Share Online; the ability to scan my contacts lists on other services like Google, Twitter and Facebook and find friends also using Ovi; the ability to replace my synchronised contacts on Ovi Contacts with an up to date version and more.
Of course there is also the perennial compatibility issue. Ovi Maps is not available to people not running a Windows machine. The Nokia Music Store is only accessible to Windows users. This is one of the reasons I am still a little ambivalent about Nokia services. Despite its emphasis on open source and developing cross platform applications, important software like Nokia Software Updater and even PC Suite are not available for non-Windows users. This shouldn’t be an issue any longer and yet I have to bastardisemutilate my wife’s Mac to install Windows for the purpose of running PC Suite.
I don’t accept that services and software can’t be written for multiple platforms. I do understand that Windows is, by far, the dominant platform of choice but there are increasing numbers of Mac and Linux users who would like to take advantage of Nokia’s desktop software and even update their software (that being said, many higher end devices will soon be able to update their software over the air). I don’t like feeling like something of a second class citizen because I chose a Mac and not a Windows machine. Nokia needs to address this sooner rather than later.
Returning to Ovi.com, I believe that the portal/platform has tremendous potential despite its failings. The Ovi Store has come under fire lately and I believe that its initial troubles belie its potential as a significant player in the mobile services business. The rest of the services on Ovi.com are decent enough for most and at the same time disappointing for a vocal few.
I’ve been thinking about comments people (including me) have made about the Symbian operating system as it has been implemented in Nokia devices. For my part I have regarded S60 implementation as looking outdated, quaint even. Nokia’s people in SA have said that the interface is intentionally very familiar for various reasons and I haven’t been sold on that. Comparing S60 to the iPhone inevitably leads to conclusions being drawn about the iPhone’s obvious superiority over S60 and Symbian generally. I have often said in conversations about the iPhone that while its hardware specifications are verydisappointing, its software is clearly superior.
What is clear is that the iPhone’s operating system (a derivative of the same operating system I have running my MacBook) is fantastic. It works well and it looks amazing. The iTunes application store is well stocked with loads of useful, appealing and groundbreaking applications designed for such a powerful mobile platform. I am sure Apple will eventually produce a device that doesn’t have sucky hardware, perhaps as soon as next month when many expect an announcement of a new iPhone or even a tablet device.
On the other hand, Nokia’s hardware for its smartphones has been superior to the iPhone since before the iPhone launched. Heck, my much reviled Nokia N73 Music Edition had better hardware than the iPhone in many respects.
My experience with the 5800 Xpress Music recently reminded me of this debate about the software running on the iPhone and Nokia’s smartphones, including the upcoming N97 (if there is a drinking game based on how often I mention “N97″, you’re probably happily drunk by now). The icons in the menus do look pretty retro and the UI hasn’t changed all that much for some time now. I’m not so sure about the need for consistency (especially at the expense of progress) but I am beginning to think that if you look beneath the colour schemes and other, perhaps superficial, interface elements it seems to me that Nokia devices have a pretty robust operating system. I’ve been installing a number of applications on my E71 the last day or two and they continue to surprise me with great looking interfaces and powerful functionality for such a little device. The software isn’t perfect and some of the applications still bug me but on the whole, I believe S60 is too easily underestimated and dismissed by iPhone and other device fans.
Nokia is due to launch its Ovi Store in the near future. As with a couple things Nokia has done, one of my first thoughts was that the Ovi Store is another “me too” initiative built on the heels of the incredibly successful iTunes application store. It seems that every phone manufacturer has a store all of a sudden. It struck me, however, that the similarities of Nokia’s approach to Apple’s aside, the Ovi Store is probably another underestimated service that could well have a dramatic effect on Nokia’s position in the mobile services marketplace. This preview of the Ovi Store shows some real promise and if you look beyond the less appealing menu options, you may agree with me that there is tremendous potential here, especially considering Nokia’s strong position in the global market:
And here is the pitch to developers. Very much a fluff piece but worth watching and considering:
S60 is looking a little dated despite the pastel colours we are seeing in the 5th edition devices like the 5800 Xpress. At the same time it is important to remember that Symbian is going open source and will be developed by a number of high profile companies, each with a vested interest in the operating system. Sure there are other promising operating systems (I am pretty excited about Android too) but this is an operating system with a good many years of testing and development under its belt. There is already a range of applications available through the Download! service (which looks even more antiquated than the S60 UI itself) which is soon to be replaced by the Ovi Store. Nokia’s WidSets (I recently re-discovered this service and I am glad I did – the Facebook application alone is worth using it) is being integrated into the Ovi Store, as is the content and media service. We are probably about to see a halfway decent challenger to Apple’s iTunes store, especially if you take the Nokia Music Store into account (despite its crippling DRM) and that is not something to sneeze at.
While I have little doubt the iPhone will go from strength to strength with its newfound ability to do innovative stuff like send MMS in iPhone 3.0 (among other things – ok, yes, that was very tongue in cheek but I think you get my point) and Android will start to pick up momentum as the range of supporting devices increase, it will be foolish to write Symbian off because its UI isn’t as pretty. It still needs work to address a number of issues, big and small, but it is a pretty solid mobile operating system. It also keeps getting better and feature-poor applications are being upgraded or replaced by a vibrant developer community, both internally and externally (take the introduction of Nokia Email as a standard install on the E75). This is a potent option!
I’ve been thinking about comments people (including me) have made about the 
