Nokia X7 (5)

It’s still the case that a Symbian powered smartphone comes with a huge number of utility programs on the device. Out of the box there is an impressive collection of PDA-based applications, push email clients, web browsers, MS-Exchange support (although only to one account), turn by turn navigation, social network clients – and the icon count on the X7, just because I do it for every review, is fifty eight.

One thing to point out here is that Symbian Anna has continued the trend from Nokia of deprecating the use of a specific icon to represent a folder of applications. On the X7, icons for folders have the same shape and styling as the built in applications. To get to the count of fifty eight icons out of the box, I had to tap everything just to make sure there wasn’t another screen of icons behind an icon. Confusing for me, mystifying for someone new to the system. It’s not a great start for the human/machine interface.

But the marketplace today is not just focussed on the “out of the box” experience, it’s about the app economy. How well can you extend the functionality of your smartphone? How well can the X7 cope when you think “I want a standalone Foursquare client”, “I want to find a new game to keep me amused in this queue” or “can I get to my Dropbox files?” The X7 is a consumer device, so we must keep consumer perceptions in mind, and that means looking at the X7 with the app-economy filter in place, because that’s how it will be measured at the point of sale, in use, and by the markets in the majority of use cases.

 

So it’s great to see the “Store” icon in the top level of the application launcher, and one of the default icons on the home screen (the others being “Contacts”, “Web” and “Maps”). Hit the icon and you get taken to the Ovi Store (expect that branding to slowly change back to give prominence to Nokia in time!) and the featured applications list.

I like that you’re not automatically asked to sign into an account when the store is launched. You’re given the opportunity to browse, take a look around, and it’s only at the point of purchase/download that you are asked who you are. That’s smart thinking.

Existing users can simply log on with their Nokia account, while others (let’s be honest, my gut feeling is that most people buying the X7 will be new to Nokia) can create their Nokia account on the device over two screens (asking just for an email, password, mobile number and an ‘accept the terms & conditions’ confirmation). Either route should see you logged into the store in under a minute.

 

We can ignore all the problems that the Ovi Store has had in previously lives. What’s on offer here is a well laid out store, with lots of content, that keeps your application version up to date (by checking for later versions whenever it is run) and is fun to use.

The biggest battle the X7 has is not going to be in the volume of content, it’s going to be in two perceptions of the content. The first is the online view that the Ovi store does not have a lot of content, and that there are “no apps” for Nokia. The latter is clearly false, and over the last few months we here at All About Symbian are finding more and more choice every day in applications and games that we should be reviewing. But being clearly false in empirical terms is not the same as the perception, and we come back to how the X7, and Symbian as a whole, is being portrayed in the market.

That also leads into the “dead platform” argument which has been running since Feb 11 this year, and is likely to run through till at least 2016. What is clear is that while many new apps are being released for Symbian, it’s not in the first tier releases of big brands. Those go to iOS and Android, with Symbian popping up as the “third” platform (and sometimes “fourth”) of many major games and utilities. There’s every chance you’ll get the same genres and titles on Symbian, you just might not get them the same days as Android and iPhone users will. Is that something the X7 audience will live with?

The question is more: are you a follower of fashion, or happy to get something that’s similar but unique. The latter viewpoint is far better suited to the Ovi Store and the Symbian App economy. It’s not the same as Android or iOS (which share a huge commonality, if we’re honest), it’s different. Does it deliver the same results? No – that’s the whole point. Am I personally happy with what’s on offer? Yes, but I can see why many people will want each smartphone OS to have exactly the same choice of apps from the same developers.

Okay, we’ve found some apps we want (through direct website links, using the search dialog, or just browsing through categories), we’re signed in, let’s download an application. Passing through the payment screen (if required) we can use credit card payment, or Operator Billing if available. The latter is one of the more impressive points that Nokia has to offer. It’s far better for developers to have the point of payment as frictionless as possible – and “would you like this added to your bill or deducted from your PAYG balance?” is about as frictionless as accounting can get.

 

Once downloaded, you’re given the chance to launch the application right away (another sensible touch) but of course it’s also installed into the phone, and available from the system screen, handily under the “Applications” folder icon (which happily is a folder, and not an app called applications). You can re-organise these at a later date, and the expected action of a long press on an icon will bring up the Edit Applications mode. Old sweats like me can still choose “Edit” from the Options menu to have the same effect.

Probably the only issue I have with the Ovi Store is the delay in switching between screens and scrolling quickly through long lists – even with caching, a lot of information is being pulled over the internet connection from the databases at the Ovi Store end. In action, the delay is similar to that of other operating systems (trust the stopwatch), but subjectively it feels longer.

The Ovi Store is pretty welcoming to new users – from opening with a list of featured applications, to hand-picked collections of applications to help you get the best from your phone (I love the idea of “Apps to impress your friends” but it seems to be full of rather trivial suggestions). Yes there are issues – the maximum of five downloads/updates of an application, as opposed to a title being assigned to your Ovi account in perpetuity, being the main one – but I think that the Store has matured over the last year or so to become a genuine contender in the smartphone ecosystems. Thanks to the Ovi Store, the X7 has a flow of fresh content to users, with fun and functionality in equal measure.

 

Let’s be honest though, Symbian has not been designed for such a free-flowing number of applications.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/13080_Nokia_X7-Part_4_The_Applicatio.php