The Symbian Anna update for Nokia smartphones has gone live in the US for the C6-01, E7 and N8 smartphones. This was confirmed by Yvonne from Nokia via an e-mail to My Nokia Blog. The update, 025.007, brings with it a number of improvements, including a new interface that includes fresh icons and wallpapers.
German market research firm research2guidance has found out that the average app on Nokia's Ovi Store was downloaded more than twice as frequently, at 160 percent, of a similar one on Apple's more popular App Store during the second quarter of 2011. In a study, the firm concluded that the average app has a better chance to generate downloads on less popular platforms. The numbers are based on daily downloads.
Nokia just announced that its Ovi Store for mobile apps is powered by Nokia Drop. As such, it now allows users to send any new apps, themes, ringtones and more directly to their phone from the desktop, just like in Android Market. Users don't need to wait for an SMS before installing an app, and the browser extension plug-in is no longer needed.
Nokia celebrated itself on Tuesday by announcing that its Ovi Store is now seeing about five million downloads per day. It has grown eight-fold over the past year as Symbian-powered smartphone owners downloading the offerings from the online storefront. The milestone is significant, as the company has more than doubled the three million downloads per day it saw in November.
Nokia on Thursday unveiled live TV adapter for its flagship N8 smartphone. The Nokia Mobile TV Headset picks up DVB-H broadcasts and lets users watch sports, news and TV shows sent over the air with the standard. It touts the feature as a possible edge since, unlike streaming online content, it consumes less battery and is more likely to work.
Microsoft's alternative to Adobe's Flash, Silverlight, has now exited the beta stage and is available for Nokia's Symbian^1 (S60 5th edition) devices. The software can now be downloaded from Nokia’s Ovi Store or directly from Microsoft. Users can see Silverlight sites in Symbian^1's integrated browser and install Symbian^1 apps developed in Silverlight.
Nokia has launched an Ovi App Wizard that lets users with no programming skills to create an app accessible to all Ovi Store subscribers that will showcase the content of the sites they watch that use Atom or RSS feeds. The service is free as well, and apps take just minutes to create after users subscribe for free. It lets users bring Atom or RSS feeds from their websites to Nokia devices as well as feeds from YouTube, Twitter, a blog or wherever else updates are made.
The world's largest cellphone maker, Nokia, has quietly and unofficially launched its application, music, video, widget and ringtone marketplace called the Ovi Store on Monday in Australia, along with Ireland and Singapore, with more markets expected to be announced in the short-term. According to a Monday report, the Ovi Store is accessible from web-enabled Nokia handsets running on Symbian S40 and S60 operating systems and needs to first be downloaded from the Extras category or home page of the Download section, once it's refreshed.
Nokia's new markets executive VP Anssi Vankoji in an interview at the Web 2.0 Expo provided a surprise statement that his company's phones are lagging behind Apple's iPhone in software. He tells VentureBeat that while Nokia currently has technically superior hardware, the accessibility of its features and the overall ease of the use of the devices still have to take "quantum leaps" to reach Apple's current level, which relies on simple gestures and icons for control. Interface changes, along with a better app catalog with the launch of the Ovi Store in June, are considered key by Vankoji to matching Apple's expertise in mobile OS design.
