Perhaps because of its "soft" launch, discussions of Ovi Store have brought up an amazing number of misconceptions about how it works, which devices are compatible, and what kind of content is on offer. Instead of simply repeating ourselves, we've tried to set the record straight in our Unofficial Ovi Store FAQ, which can also be reached from the "FAQ" links elsewhere on this site. If you have any questions you want answered about Ovi Store please read the FAQ first, and if there's still something you want answered post a message in this news item's comments thread.

Just to counter the most common misconceptions though:

-Ovi Store is just one part of Ovi, a brand which covers all of Nokia's online services. Examples of other Ovi services include Ovi Mail, Ovi Maps, Ovi Share etc. All of them work through a single Ovi login (which is also known as a "Nokia Account").

-Ovi Store is NOT just for the N97. Ovi Store is available for most current Nokia phones and smartphones. This misconception is partly Nokia's fault, as their publicity for the N97 has implied that it's the first phone to have Ovi Store compatibility. In fact the N97 is simply the first phone to have the Ovi Store application preinstalled out of the box, but the Ovi Store application is also available to download onto most other Nokia devices.

-Ovi Store is NOT just for Nokia smartphones, it works on most current non-smart Nokia phones too such as the Nokia 6300, 5310 etc. (To put this in technical terms, Ovi Store works on both S60 and Series 40 phones.)

-Ovi Store is NOT just for Symbian software, it contains software for many platforms including Java J2ME, Flash Lite, Symbian S60 and soon Maemo Linux too.

-Ovi Store is NOT just for software, it also offers images, video, audio and other content too.

-Most Ovi Store content is nothing to do with Nokia. Almost everything on Ovi Store is made, published and owned entirely by third party companies. You can tell who has published something on Ovi Store by looking for the publisher's name on the item's page (for example the Ovi Store page about Tetris lists Electronic Arts as its publisher). If you want to give feedback about a particular item, contact that item's publisher.