Nokia's Ovi Store just got itself a planned refresh, though quite a bit of the change is hidden under the surface - see the comments from Rafe and Ewan below. The client for S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition also got itself an update, to v1.07(12) [from the old v1.06(18)], with the main change being that the 'Load more' mechanism to browse through additional pages in a category now behaves more like that in the Apple iPhone app store, e.g. extra items get added to the bottom of an ever-growing, always-available scrolling list. More on this below.
Read on in the full article.
"The client will now search for a string inside a name"
Wow! But it still doesn't search with part of a word. You have to correctly spell "Exclusion" to find the game, "excl" or "clusion" don't bring any search results. Totally ridiculous.
Pffffffft. :P Top story...what's next? 😃
It still installs to phone memory too 😞
The homescreen apps channel is not available on store.ovi.com while surfing through PC. 😞
The Ovi Store app still has three major flaws:
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[*]It’s slower than the mobile web-based site. This could, almost, be forgiven if the app delivered more functionality than the mobile web interface but it doesn’t. It actually delivers less functionality as my next two points clearly demonstrate.
[*]There is no way to re-download an app without uninstalling it. My Mail For Exchange client often fails on restart, reporting that I should create a MFE profile, which it does not allow me to do. Endless restarts do cure the problem eventually as the MFE client finally discovers the profile, which was there all along. Far quicker to reinstall the MFE client, except you can’t from the Ovi Store app, you can only do that from the mobile web interface, which is frustrating as the Ovi Store App keeps trying to launch. Anyone know how to disable the thing?
[*]To search for something in the Ovi Store app you click on the “Search” box,this then takes you to another page, with another search box, you then have to click down to actually select this box. Then you have to click on it again before you can actually enter the search string. That’s just bad design. The mobile web interface is much better, with one search box that you simply click once to enter a string. Trouble is the search then fires up that dashed Ovi Store App again!
[/LIST]
All in all a frustrating experience and not at all user-friendly.
Micky! wrote:It still installs to phone memory too 😞
Yup, very irritating - as per most Symbian apps, you should have the option of installation to whichever area of memory you want.
amwebby wrote:# To search for something in the Ovi Store app you click on the �Search� box,this then takes you to another page, with another search box, you then have to click down to actually select this box. Then you have to click on it again before you can actually enter the search string. That�s just bad design. The mobile web interface is much better, with one search box that you simply click once to enter a string. Trouble is the search then fires up that dashed Ovi Store App again!
This has always irritated me, and I can't even begin to figure out what sort of idiotic half wit of a developer would put in something like this. But then I seem to happen upon similarly irritating design "considerations" on a daily basis.
Ok, so generally the continuous content pages are a nice addition. Two small things: Why doesn't it load the next set of content automatically when you've scrolled to the bottom ? Or at least provide the option to do so..
Second, which kind of fits nicely to my first point...In the german version they translated "Load more items..." to "Weitere Artikel werden geladen...", which, translated back into english actually means "Loading more items...", implying that more items are already being loaded. Of course that's just confusing the first time, but still I'd expect that they don't do their translations with google..
Find it a slight improvement, but why oh why do Nokia insist on everything loading on C something which is very lacking on my N97. I have dozens of apps installed on E which work as fast and often faster than Ovi Store App !!!! Just cannot comprehend Nokia's logic (same applies to Maps, but somewhat off subject ) 😞
Yes, a slight improvement but why do they still not include version information? It's frustrating as the Ovi Store insists on pushing apps to the front of the release date list even when the app hasn't been updated. I suppose they're trying to make it look like a lot of apps are being released into the store.
Another bug bear is all the chaff in the apps list that isn't really apps, like fonts and the rss feeds of websites made using the ovi store wizard. Again I guess they're trying to make it look like there are lots of apps.
Both of these things are very transparent and rather than making the store look like it has lots of apps they detract from what is a good foundation.
One thing that seriously gets on my nerves is after viewing an app, pressing the back button takes you all the way back to the top of the page, very irritating especially when you've clicked load more a few times, then you have to scroll aaaall the way down again.
i agree with the above comment, the scrolling is painful. the old version with pages was better. it wouldn't be as bad if there was a 'to bottom of page' button at the top, because chances are the app you just viewed is in the last set you loaded.
or even better, if after viewing an app it returned you back to where you were. its not rocket science.