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Ovi Store - first pictures!
By Mike Browne on May 26,
 2009 at 00:00,

Ovi Store just made an appearance on our Nokia 5800 smartphone so it only seemed right and proper to give the service a check out and see what the store looks like on the first day of business. Getting the icon onto the Nokia 5800 simply requires for you to refresh the Download! section on your device. You can then install Ovi Store, which takes less than a minute. Check out our first experience of Ovi Store...

The doors of Ovi Store have been officially flung open and the first thing you'll notice when you download it is how relatively quick it is to get about inside. The header is quite simple and allows you to scroll between FIVE different sections – Recommended, Applications, Games, Audio & Video and Personalisation.

You'll need to be signed in to Ovi before you can download anything but this is buried away at the foot of the screen and isn't immediately noticeable, so may confuse a few first time users when they try to download apps and find they immediately can't.

As you can see from our screenshots below, there is room on the Nokia 5800 screen for five apps to be shown at any one time and along with name and price, you'll also see the star rating of the app, which gives you a reasonable indication of whether it's worth downloading.

Below the category section is a Search button that allows you to type in keywords or even app names and it'll take you there. We found this a quick way of getting around and in our brief test was responsive and threw up some varied content.

You can prioritise each section from the Options menu, choosing either to just look for Free Only, Paid Only, Most Popular, or just Most Recent. It's a fairly basic breakdown but it feels enough to get you around the store. We like that there are plenty of free apps to get you started and the choice is certainly varied enough to keep you coming back for more.

It's early days for the Ovi Store but it's looking pretty impressive so far. Over the next few weeks we'll be getting to grips with Ovi Store, seeing what happens once user feedback really kicks in.

VISIT OVI STORE

Check out our Ovi Store 'Open Doors' image gallery:

Ovi Store opens its doors!Ovi Store opens its doors!Ovi Store opens its doors!Ovi Store opens its doors!Ovi Store opens its doors!Nokia Ovi Store Major Revamp for 2010
Tags: Ovi Store Services
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  • testuser

    ovi store app is horrible… only 3 star rating for items…. I tried to download the very first entry (star trek ringtone). The app downloaded it (wi-fi) and it tried to install it and it seems like it successfully did. Then I clicked ‘set ringtone’ and it said some error occurred… it wouldn;t explain what error it was… I tried to rate the app and submit a review which also got the same error… I tried other apps which installed fine, but slowed down the phone a lot and crashed (Earthcomber).

    Trapster — horrible app… i just don’t know how it made app store. it has a horrible app icon in the menau and worse — doesn’t even support 5800 touch… i tried to use it and it had a horrible UI.

    Then I downloaded AP News app which also was slow and eventually hung…

    overall, ovi store pretty much sucks right now.

  • Mikey Bee

    First day teething troubles for some, it seems – how is everyone else finding it?

  • http://www.remembertoblink.co.uk Robin Parker

    Haven’t been able to download the Ovi Store app yet, at least not on 3G – maybe I need to try it over a wi-fi connection

  • nokia5800

    nokia app store usability is horrible… (other than being painfully slow)

    1. no search functionality in the app. (only available in ovi store website. using ovi store website in s60 browser kept logging me out when i tried to download application.)

    2. In each category, there is no ways to find out how many items have been filtered and we have no idea how many pages of items exists… you have to click next … next… multiple times…

    3. Ratings for some items have disappeared. Mainly, there is no way to find out how many ppl rated an item. without that the rating is useless…. if only one person rated an item wih 3 stars i’ll be suspicious… i’ll be more likely to buy it if 10 ppl rated it 3.

    hope nokia fixes these problems soon… these are pretty basic things in an app store and I wonder how they missed these features.

  • olivier

    works really well if a bit sluggish on my E71. One observation though, it doesn’t cache enough data so going to the next page or category can result in too many annoying waits on 3G.

    Installed one app – ap news – and it looks good although it visibly assumes a N97 or 5800 screen, which is understandable. Lots of scrolling on the E71 though.

    A bit shocked by the absence of opera and google apps but don’t know who’s to blame.

  • olivier

    in response to another comment, there is search facility in the ovi store i’ve installed.

  • nokia5800

    @oliver,
    you are right… The ovi store app does have the search button. I missed it somehow… I was looking for it in the menu. It’s strange they don’t have a shortcut to ‘search’ in the menu. However my other concerns still apply.

    More issues:
    * Each download item is missing the download count (not a big deal).
    * Each item needs a larger preview picture. The tiny ones don’t cut it…
    * Each item needs proper description… The description in some of them is very lacking.
    * This one is the worst of all –> The applications are not tagged whether it’s a java app or native app or a widget… This is very important for me because most of the java apps suck and is not tailored for nokia 5800. The widgets are slow most of the time….

    Hope ovi store 2.0 will fix these issues.