Updated Ovi Store App on the Nokia N97 Works Great! Accurate Search, more content, improved navigation and stability!

Last September, I ranted about my frustrations on the Ovi Store App on the N97 with the post,

“Ovi Store Rant: 7 things wrong with the Ovi Store”

These annoyances consisted of:

7. Inability to update Ovi Store app from the client itself [Ovi Store App updates itself now]

There’s been at least three updates I think, straight from the Ovi Store client itself. No more having to manually download. I’ll continue this post mostly as a comparison between Ovi Store app back in September and Ovi Store app right now.

6. Stability Issues [Now very stable]

I haven’t used it all that long, but I haven’t encountered annoying errors of “you are not signed in”.

5. Poor Searching [Search is now super accurate and fast!]

Hurray – Ovi Store Searching works a treat. Either asking for the app type or app name, it now gets it instantly whereas before it was completely clueless and google searching was the only way to find apps.

Searching apps is now finally fast, and accurate.

It also seems to be much, much faster.

4. Poor Inconsistent Previews

Still same as before. More of a developer thing than an Ovi Store thing. Like Wwigo still uses a non existent mock up phone in its thumbnail.

3. Poor Navigation [Improved navigation with ranking tabs]

Ovi Store app is so much better to navigate.

• From recommended main page, you get an additional search (as before)
• But from Apps/Games/Audio&Video and  Personalisation you now get three quick tabs to sort apps from the
  • TOP FREE
  • BEST SELLERS (TOP PAID)
  • NEWEST
• Switching between categories is much faster. And you can search TOP FREE/BEST SELLERS/NEW within the categories themselves.
• Scrolling seems smoother

2. Lack of Content [More content now available]

• There’s a whole bunch more content on the Ovi Store now
• Content is improving in both quantity and quality

1. Poor Pricing.

• Well, it’s still much higher priced than, say, App Store.
• This again is more of a developer thing, how they choose to mark up the price (they have to make money)
• Though I reckon they could still get higher download rates (so more revenue) were the prices more streamlined with the competition. Even same apps available on other platforms turn out more expensive on Ovi Store.

Good work so far on the Ovi Store. It’s really now very enjoyable to use the Ovi Store App. I wish the N900 had a dedicated App like this instead of being browser based.

Tags: 5th Edition, N97, Nokia, Nokia N97, Ovi Store, S60, S60 5TH EDITION, Symbian

Category: Nokia, Nseries, OVI, S60