By Mark Yeong

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone he did it for the purpose of sending voice from one place to another. As technology progresses, the simple phone has become wireless and mobile. Mobile devices these days pack lots of processing power into a small form factor, making crummy old desktop computers look slow and cumbersome. With that in place, vendors continue to push the envelope of innovation and develop phone operating systems that are more complex yet intuitive for users.

With better operating systems, mobile devices allow developers to create better applications for today’s mobile devices to extend the functionality of the phone. Various phone manufacturers have already noticed the increasing popularity of applications and have developed online distribution channels to provide developers with an avenue to put their applications up for distribution and even sale.

Ovi Store

Ovi Store is Nokia’s implementation for online application distribution. A large catalogue of applications can be browsed via the PC or mobile phone and applications will be downloaded via the mobile phone.

Ovi Store is pre-installed in most of the newer Nokia handsets and allow users to browse various applications via the mobile phone screen. To access the store via the handset, launch the application from the Home Screen. Ovi Store is depicted by a shopping bag with the words OVI on it.

Launching the application brings up the main store interface with main application categories being displayed on the top display panel and you can navigate the categories easily by selecting the desired category.

Bringing up the options menu will provide the option of filtering down the category further by applying the following selection. This includes:

•    Suggested for me (*)
•    Most popular
•    Most recent
•    Show free only
•    Show paid only
•    Show all (*)

Upon selecting the desired application, you will be presented with a detailed write up on the application, which includes description and screen shots. Users can also place a rating for the application to help others make a better decision to download the application, especially if it’s a paid application.

To see get a bigger picture, you can head on to https://store.ovi.com/ where you can browse for apps on your PC. Of course having a bigger screen means having a couple of ads for some of the recommended applications. Applications on Ovi store are sectioned into 4 top level categories (Applications, Games, Audio & Video and Personalisation).

You can also do a search to find applications that you need and a list of relevant applications will be presented to you after the search. Search can also be done via your Nokia device’s Ovi Store.

Selecting an application will be very much like doing it on the phone with a detailed description and lets you send the said app to your Nokia device or sharing it with a friend via e-mail. Furthermore, you also pointed towards related applications and reviews.

Downloading that application

So you found the application you really like and already selected what you want. There are currently 2 ways to download the application. One is from Ovi Store via the mobile phone and the other is to prompt Ovi Store to send a personalized link to your handset and initiate the download.

Either way the application will still require downloads to be done via the phone. The good part about this is that application management becomes easier as you would have everything done via a single device. The disadvantage is apparent when it comes to changing a handset. With no existing backup on the PC, you can’t sync the application onto the new phone.

Some nice applications

SMS preview

You get a new message, but you’re only notified that there’s a new message. SMS preview goes one step further and shows you the content of the message on the home screen. Thus, you can now see what your friend sent you without actually having to open up the messaging application. The app is still limited to the point of viewing the message only without follow up capabilities (e.g. reply and close buttons).

Shazam

Sometimes, we hear a familiar tune, but can’t place the song title in our mind. While you might want to ask around and hope someone is able to identify the song, you can also turn to the app known as Shazam. This app records the tune and searches its extensive database to return you the title of the song. What’s better, once a match is found, you can purchase the said track from the Nokia Music Store.

And the great thing about this app? While there is an iPhone version for this app, it’s not available on the Apple Store for the Singapore market. Score one for Nokia users in this region.