Software: Channels Media Service
By Coops on February 19,
 2008 at 00:00,

In a nutshell:

News, entertainment and other information zapped straight to your phone.

What’s it good for?

Keeping up with news and current affairs without negotiating websites on your phone’s dinky screen.

Judgement time…

Like a suped-up RSS reader, the Channels Media Service sucks stories from the web straight to your phone. It’s fast, and crafted with slick precision.

Tap a button and you’ll see a fast response, with large icons to subscribe to feeds, and tap into them. You can sort feeds by their locality or subject too.

The downside is Channels Media Service’s lack of content. The UK, for instance, only has one feed: The Sun. Similarly, the USA is only catered for by the New York Times.

Still, tap into a feed an you’ll see stories packed with richly formated text and accompanying pictures. There’s also the option to flick between sections in a channel - something that’s used to good effect by The Sun.

It’s clear this software is still in its infancy, and will only improve as more channels are added. It also crashed a couple of times during our tests, despite being installed on a fresh-from-the-box N95 GB.

If Nokia can add new channels, or perhaps the ability to subscribe to standard RSS feeds at the same time, it could be on to a winner here. Definitely worth checking out.