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Sunday 13 September 2009

Nokia Messaging: instant messaging beta test from Nokia adds Google Talk

Nokia Messaging IM Beta
If you want to have text chats on your mobile phone, there are plenty of free Symbian instant messaging programs to choose from. Nimbuzz, fring, Palringo, Slick, and more.

Nokia Messaging is an email client, Facebook application, and instant messenger combined. For more about its email features, check this review.

The instant messenger part of Nokia Messaging is no match for the competition. Nokia Messaging only connects to Yahoo and Nokia's Ovi chat network, and since the latest update it does Google Talk too.

Since Nokia likes to make things as confusing as possible, Nokia Messaging comes in two flavors. There's Nokia Messaging IM Beta, which only works on the Nokia E63, E71, and E75. Nokia Messaging Social Messaging Beta (UPDATE: This link is dead. And so is Symbian.) works on the Nokia 6700 Classic and the N97. And then there's a third program which does what Nokia Messaging IM Beta finally learned to do: Ovi Contacts is an instant messenger that connects to Google Talk and other Jabber-based networks.

It looks like there are a couple of teams at Nokia Beta Labs who're programming similar applications with overlapping functions, and who don't have any idea what their colleagues are doing.

All these chat and mail programs will probably be merged into a single product. Maybe Nokia Messaging will turn into something useful, but in their present state Ovi Contacts and both flavors of Nokia Messaging are so close to useless that you better stick with the competition for the time being.

Nokia Messaging IM Beta from Nokia Beta Labs UPDATE: This link is dead. And so is Symbian.


2 comments:

Ananya said...

Goes to prove that Nokia is run by a bunch of morons out of touch with reality and what the markets want - with the biggest asshole at the top (ollipekka-whatever-the-fuck he calls himself) and the jackasses that built, approved and hyped the N97 piece of shit.

One thing they are good at is digging a grave for themselves. BTW, what the fuck were they thinking by releasing a GSM device N900 WITHOUT a digital compass!? With all that power you can no longer effectively use augumented reality apps on it - douchebags.

Richard said...

I agree that the Nokia apps developers are out of touch. I have an N85. This is a nice phone and has the potential to do all that I need however:
Messaging (now updated to Ver9.7) - the app is naturally integrated with voice commands and manual commands but when one tries to send an email over any connection other than WiFi, it fails. Now the Gmail app from Google works perfectly, all the time, with whatever connection is available. So I use it when on the road.

I'm in France using SFR who have clearly blocked this service for those people unwilling to pay the additional outrageously high charge for full internet access but then again I did not buy my N85 from SFR. Therefore why does Nokia not provide the same functionality as GMail.
The annoyance of course is that saying "John Smith email" brings up the Messager email window, which will not work if I'm on the road.

In addition there was, for a short while, a Nokia labs add-on available called Messaging. This curiously misnamed app provided a vastly superior email interface that again did not integrate with the pre-existing Messager app and as of today is no longer available.

The Nokia people should realise that customer loyalty is better achieved by seemless integration of all the usual apps one needs rather than chasing the iphone.

A Smartphone is only as smart as the software and applications that it runs.

My N85 is only satisfying as a Smartphone because I use Gmail and in consequence have loaded all the Google apps together with Googasync. With the addition of Nimbuzz and a good battery saver application I have something that works. The only problem remaining is that the phone arbitrarily decides to reboot of reasons of memory usage I imagine.

So the Nokia team should ask themselves a lot of questions; why is it, that when I load the recently updated Ovimaps app (now free - I'd be dissapointed if I'd paid for it :-))it never finds a satellite whereas the Googlemaps application quickly does and tells me precisely where I am. Given that the Ovimap app weighs in at 6Mb compared with 1.25 Mb for the Googl app that is in my book a complete disaster.

Top of my wish list is one of the new HTC phones running the Google OS as I suspect that the user experience is a lot better. A shame because I'm perfectly happy with the hardware of the N85, just too many problems with the software. The biggest problem being that the phone arbitrarily decides to reboot from time to time, probably a memory management issue, but again this is a software problem so I'd say Nokia that you need a better software development team.