If you care to go into Download! on your S60 phone and use 'Refresh', you'll see a maintenance note from Nokia saying that the system will be down all weekend. A sign that a major overhaul is afoot? Let's hope so. Comments welcome if you know any more info on this....
Read on in the full article.
That's great news!!! I opened Download! just now and got the notification.
Looking forward to seeing some real improvement....
Also got a couple of new free applications in the Others folder -
Smart Assistant (seems to be an answering machine on the lines of MobiGenie) and an SMS Scheduler.
Both are from a company called Aims Migital Technovations Pvt Ltd. Haven't heard of them before, but it never hurts to have more free software.
it being updated, since there was a research on it and now they invited me to comment on a forum and I'll get paid $30, it started today and it ends tomorrow. check your email guys.
Nokia seem to have put quite a bit of effort into !Download in the last month or so. When I first bought my E71 some three months ago !Download consisted of about 3 folders and 3 or 4 'loose' programs. I now get 10 folders and 5 'loose' programs with a fair bit of choice in the folders. Not an iStore but definitely improving.
The point is: Download! needs more than just more content. That folder-based UI is slow as molasses and awful simply because it doesn't give you any infos about the program behind the icons you're looking at.
Use the N-Gage app, strip out the social aspect of it, re-skin it with a slightly more sober interface, add categories and a search interface, and use this instead of the current Download! app...and then offer clearly defined rules for developers to get into this store and share the revenue in a fair way with them. Ideally, they should find a way to take the signing burden off the developers for apps that are added to the store too. A few, well, not quite easy steps, but they might lead to a lot more action in the S60 app ecosystem...
And as a sidenote: mail.ovi.com actually leads...somewhere other than a 404 error now. Will Nokia Email become part of Ovi, or is this strictly for the S40 mail service announced today?
Unregistered, you're absolutely right that they need to make Download much more slick and fast to navigate through. However, that may take time to develop and integrate into firmwares (apparently there's a three month delay between creating an app and putting it in firmware).
While we're waiting for a properly overhauled Download, it would be very nice to see a comprehensive selection of S60 software including all the best apps and games. There are some amazing S60 apps and games out there now, but 99% of them aren't available in Download.
And like you say, there should be a clear and fair path for developers to get their software made available through Download, perhaps with some kind of quality control to avoid absolute trash, but basically open to anything that's useful or fun.
Regarding Ovi mail, AFAIK that's the same thing as Nokia mail, though I could be wrong.
Best thing to be done is to redirect from Download to MOSH. 😊
User-driven communtites carry so much more blossom than a couple of cactii carefully and jealously kept in Nokia's locker-room.
What could possibly change? Folder structure, categorization, a bit more content... yawn. Tags are the way to go - that was proven already.
I have a feeling this is just a boring server upgrade rather than any major change. Apparently Nokia's maemo.org server is also being shut down this weekend, and that has absolutely nothing to do with Download or Symbian.
Sergey, regarding MOSH, apparently content makers absolutely hate it because so much pirated stuff is downloaded from there. If Nokia put it on all their handsets by default I think they would be in a lot of hot water with some of their content partners.
Well, it's monday and and for a laugh I thought to update my download app.
Since FW 20 on the N95-2 I've had issues with this working at all, and guess what
"error while browsing" stopped me in my tracks first time.
I care so little about the content or presentation of the download app when it fails to even update on my phone.