If you have used the Ovi Store in the last week or so, it probably made you download an update to the Ovi mobile app. If it didn't, get back on there now and give it a whirl. Version 1.07 of the Ovi Store app launched last week, and we decided to give it a try. Nokia has been promising big changes to the Ovi experience and improving the Ovi Store app has to be on that agenda. read on to chek out our Ovi Store Update v1.07(12) review
The most significant improvement is search. The previous Ovi Store update made some improvements to search but finally Ovi seem to have cracked it. Typing a search term no longer just scans some keyword metadata but also delves into the title and description text of each app. The result is much more accurate and finding half-remembered apps becomes a lot easier.
Channels have been expanded and are slowly turning into useful groupings of related apps - for example the 'Football' channel has a host of footie and world cup apps that will get you through to the final. We hope Ovi continues to curate these lists as they are really useful and offer something we haven't seen on the Apple or Android stores.
Navigating long lists of apps is now made easier by adding a 'More..' button that simply extends the page with more titles rather than switching to an entirely new page. This makes backtracking and comparing app ratings much easier and is a great improvement, especially on a slow connection.
For developers, Ovi now lets you specify more metadata, including mood tags which may feed into recommendation engines like Nokia Feel and will generally improve the ability of users to find your app.
We haven't benchmarked it, but the new release certainy feels a bit bit snappier and more responsive, especially switching between categories. On the downside, the silly scrolling list of tabs is still there, and is as tricky to navigate as ever. Just making the list wider would help, or using shorter headings.. anything really. On a small screen the tab bar is just too small to fit in the current tab and enough of those to either sie of it and still remain useful. A bit of a rethink is required, we reckon.
The is also still no mechanism for updating apps built in to the client. This is something we would love to see, provided developers will get on board with it.
Ovi Store 1.07 isn't the radical new app we were hoping for (and sort of feel we were promised, if we are being honest) but it is still a significant bump from v1.06 and should help make for some Ovi Store happy shoppers.
Details
Price: Free
Size: 0.79 MB
DOWNLOAD: Ovi Store Update v1.07
Check out our Ovi Store Update v1.07 review photo gallery:
