With the storm of controversy over Nokia’s Ovi Store slowly starting to settle the nitty gritty of the store’s features are starting to become clear. In this article I will present what I found to be the best content on offer and also some of the worst. All prices have been listed in Australian Dollars. As we usually pay a high price for most products in this country you’ll probably find most things are half the price in Euros or US Dollars.
Just a note: One of the most glaringly obvious problems with the Ovi Store is that most of the apps available on your phone are not available on the website. So don’t be surprised if you can’t find some of these programs on the website.
The Good
There really are too many great apps and games to list but here’s some of the ones I find to be invaluable.
All of the City Guides ( $8 – $26.99 )
The Ovi Store is chocked full of mobile travel guides from DK and Lonely Planet. I have used these before and believe me, when you’re on holidays and traveling around 10+ European cities in a month you don’t want to drag around 10 different guide books. For the same price as a paper city guide I’d buy 10 of the mobile versions instead.
Fring (FREE)
Fring is quite simply the best instant messaging client out there. It supports all the major IM networks (AOL,ICQ,GTalk,MSN,Yahoo etc) and on top of that you can do some basic management of your social networks like Twitter, Facebook and so on. I still can’t believe this application is free. I would pay top dollar for the time it saves me and the mobility it affords.
Joikuspot Mobile Wifi Hotspot ($19.99)
This application turns your mobile phone into a mobile hotspot. What this means is that without any special software on your laptop use your phone for internet access. With all you can eat and high gigabyte allowances these days its a great way to be able to jump on the Internet anywhere you want. The best bit is, you
can share it with your friends.
PDF+ Basic ($6.60)
The E series of Nokia phones already come with a PDF reader which I find invaluable. If you find something interesting on the web or need to catchup on an important document before that meeting tomorrow you can print the doc to PDF on your computer and save it for later reading on your mobile. So if your phone doesn’t have a PDF reader already then I recommend picking up this one.
Powerboot (FREE)
Powerboot allows you to specify which apps you’d like to load when your phone is turned on or reset. If you want your phone to automatically check your email or load up your most used applications then you can’t go past this one. Best of all, it’s FREE!
Psiloc Wireless Presenter (FREE)
This app allows you to control your powerpoint presentations from your mobile phone. It works over bluetooth and even shows notes from the presentation on the phone’s screen in case you need some help along the way. I’ve found this one invaluable when giving presentations to large audiences. Note: If you own an E-series phone it’s probably already installed.
Bubble Bash ($6.60)
Frozen Bubble was one of my favourite games on my Nokia E65 but sadly on my E71 the game doesn’t make use of the screen space
available. So with that in mind I’m recommending Bubble Bash as it’s a fine Puzzle Bubble clone.
The Bad
It looks as if the Ovi Store is trying to one up Apple’s iPhone App store in terms of 99 cent junk applications. While there’s nothing for 99 cents (the cheapest is $2) the quality and usefulness of some of the cheapest apps is questionable.
The Noise Machine ( $2 )
Not quite as useless as the iPhone fart applications but its pretty close. For your $2 you get an app that makes a variety of noises from crowds cheering to a drum roll.
Mysterious Fortune Ball ( $2 )
“Ask a question and the Mysterious Fortune Ball will give you an answer from beyond!” – Enough said really, a waste of 99kb of solid state storage space.
Every single paid wallpaper and ringtone ($2 – $8)
Why anyone would think I would pay $8 for a an MP3 ringtone of some Rihanna song is beyond me. For about $2 I could download the full song from the Nokia store, iTunes or for a few bucks more I could buy the whole album at a record store.
The Ugly
Here’s a list of applications that just can’t justify their asking price.
Happy Wakeup ( $68.99 )
This has to be the most expensive alarm clock I have ever come across. For almost seventy dollars I could go out and buy about 5 real alarm clocks. Is this
really a joke like the $999 I’m Rich iPhone app or is it someone trying to milk as much as they can out of the Ovi Store.
Security Shield Pro Edition ( $68.99 )
“Our patented scanning technologies are not ‘reworks’ of PC methodologies.” – I guess that’s what makes it worth seventy dollars. The app claims to be some sort of all in one security, privacy and anti spam software. Why you’d really need all this on a phone is beyond me.
MOT Finnish-English ($54.99)
A Finnish/English dictionary translator application. Why would I pay that much when I can buy a book for about $15 that will do the same thing. Even more ridiculous is
the fact that the rest of the MOT series of apps are all $16. Right about what I’d be prepared to pay. Is Finnish that hard to translate?
Summary
In summary there’s a lot of good applications and games on the store. Many of the most useful apps are available for free. However, like the iPhone store the Ovi Store is at risk from being plagued by an onslaught of “junk” applications. Nokia may have circumvented this somewhat by charging higher setup fees than apple does. Some see this increased barrier to entry as a bad thing but the way I see it is that unless you write an app or game that people will seriously want then the Ovi Store is not for you.
