In a nutshell…

Keeping up to date with news, tapping into e-mail, finding your way to a location or just flicking through a few photos has never been more integrated, or well connected, than with Yahoo! Go.

Judgement time…

Setting up Yahoo! Go is a hit and miss affair. We tried several times, only to be confronted with ‘certificate errors’ which mysteriously disappeared on the third or fourth attempt. It’s worth persevering though, as the end result is a feat of mobile integration.

Unfortunately, it’s a feat that’s only been partially realised. Once the battle to install the software is over, and a patronising ‘tutorial’ had been duly sat through, the software proceeded to bombard us with ‘connection errors’.

Strangely, these only cropped up when using Yahoo!’s own news services. Browsing Flickr was a breeze, and downloading maps was speedy and reliable. Yahoo! Go even locked onto a GPS signal in under a minute. On an N95, that’s impressive.

Connection errors were frequent on both a 3G and Wi-Fi connection, although when the service works, it’s amazing.

Yahoo! have crammed in almost every aspect of the desktop experience, and with more pizzazz than can usually be found in mobile phone software.

The interface is sharp, responsive, and extremely well designed. If you just want an overview of the day’s news, entertainment, weather or traffic, you can simply skim across a row of icons. Flick up into any of them, and you’ll get a more detailed breakdown. The software will even update its content in the background, and lets you specify when it should stop doing so – in the middle of the night, say, to avoid racking up a large data bill.

Overall this is one of the best designed pieces of mobile software available, and an absolute must if you’re even remotely interested in staying connected. It’s just a shame Yahoo! Go’s still lacking that final polish where its own connections are concerned.