Nokia's boasting to have new exciting things in store for us in the next 24hrs and it's got everything to do with Ovi.
Update/follow-up on this story (10:30AM, 21.1.2010)
It appears that Nokia's big announcement was to do with Ovi Maps, as Nokia will begin providing free turn-by turn navigation to mobiles the world over. Google Navigation just got itself a lot of competition, not to mention Garmin and TomTom, originally car GPS device manufacturers who've attempted to break-in to the mobile navigation game.
Let's see the advantages and disadvantages of Ovi Maps to the competition:
+ Ovi Maps doesn't require a data connection, so you can use your phone abroad to navigate your surroundings without fear of additional costs. Google Maps and even Google Navigation rely on pulling the map down from the internet to your device as you move around on it.
+ Broader language support. Ovi Maps is translated into every language where original Nokia products are sold + a few languages. Google Maps has many translations, but not this many.
+ Ovi Maps is preloaded on all Nokia devices. This means that there's no getting it from an app store or you having to go over to your mom's house to enable it for her. It's just there.
- To me, some versions of Ovi Maps have been quite rubbish, and especially the first versin of Ovi Maps on the N900 was pretty terrible. The update did a lot though, so this isn't really an issue anymore.
I think this is definitely a great move from Nokia. Ovi Maps is generally very liked, so people will certainly jump on this opportunity to use this. And naturally if it's free, it wins.
Now how do I enable my free navigation...?
The original post from 20.1.2010 is below:
Nokia will have a press event on Thursday the 21st at the Paramount Club, Centre Point in California. The Ovi store and general Ovi ecosystem concept has been widely criticised as feeling incomplete even still, a year after launch. If you ask most people, they would say that Nokia has a lot to fix and even more stuff to catch up with, but below is my personal wishlist for the event:
* The N900 will (finally) be recognized as a Nokia product
Well this one's probably a given, support to the Ovi store is in beta for the device, so its definitely coming. What I want in addition is the ability to sync calendar entries and contacts with the Ovi services online. I like to keep a backup online of my things in addition to the one I have on my memory card.
I also want the Ovi and Nokia PC Suite to sync perfectly with my N900, which it doesn't at the moment. Same calendar and contacts syncing functions are missing like in the online "counterpart".
* The Ovi services be (finally) finalized
The different parts of the Ovi service feel indeed like they would still be in beta and in truly feel like they are seperate parts. I'd like for the promise of seamless integration with eachother to come true and the best way to do this would be to allow me to use all the services with a single login! For some reason most of the services require me to log in seperately eventhough it naturally needs only one account.
* Something completely new
We've seen the (IMHO BS) videos from Nokia of implemented realities and odd cellphone goggles and ... movie poster readers and all that stuff. Look, I'm not interested. What we need is stuff we can use Now. Give me a reason to boast that I've stuck with Nokia all this time. Take the idea further, that I can upload images directly from my N900 to Ovi (and Facebook etc. of course). Give me a twist on this that will blow me away.
My wishlist is short and may not be impossible at all to accomplish. Most of all I just ask for current services to be perfected. There's the common gripe of "the apps in the store suck", but that I believe is something that Nokia can't really affect. Oh no, wait yes they can. By launching a device based on open software from the ground up. Like they did with the N900.
I will do a follow-up once the event actually has taken place.
© Christopher Peake 2010
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