Exploring Nokia’s Ovi features

Accessing Nokia’s Ovi features have been gaining momentum among Nigerians, especially the youths, reports Remmy Nweke.
Imeh Okon, is a year-two student of Mass Communications in one of the higher institutions in the city of Lagos and has just got a new Nokia phone from the popular Computer Village, Ikeja-Lagos.

The young Imeh’s desire to get the Nokia phone, which is 2600 model, was because a friend has been enjoying what he described as free download of various stuffs which cut across applications, games and entertainment audio.

Some of the applications available to subscribers of Ovi on Nokia mobile phones ranges from ‘SMS Text Msgs’ by Sunny Gulati which is rated as an entertainment worthy 0.01 mega bit (MB). Its users can intend to send romantic, friendship, cute and inspirational Short Messaging Service (SMS) to near and dear ones, access free messages directly on their phones.

On Opera Mobile 10.1 from Opera Software which avails subscribers with speed dial, tabbed browsing, geo-location and always convenient password manager. Just as the Road to Hell Third Dimension (3D) by Jollybox offers free game derived from KORa 3D racing game, consisting of 13 selected races from the last year of online.

Also available at the Ovi Store is the free version of ‘BoxIt2’ by Digiment Games, which comes with 20 levels in-game ads by innerActive and requires data connection, even as it’s upgradeable to the full version.

Additionally, one of the features of Nokia Ovia is the ‘Facebook Chat’ by mSonar, described as chat with your Facebook friends on your Mobile! Just as another interesting iON BatteryTimer comes free from Capree Mobile; No more will you have to suffer battery drain because iON offers the control of operating time remaining to complete discharge.

On the other hand, ILYou 03 by Inode offers a cool ‘I Love U’ wallpaper for your mobile! Whereas the eBuddy Mobile Messenger from by eBuddy is another chat engine option on MicroSoft Network (MSN), Facebook, Yahoo!, GTalk (Orkut), American Online-based Instant Messenger (AIM), MySpace and ICQ, a popular instant messaging computer programme first developed by an Israeli company, Mirabilis and now owned by AOL, as well as getting the most popular free IM applications on your mobile.

Solutions Marketing Manager for Nokia West Africa, Ms Beatrice Olumhense recently said that by registering on Ovi Stores, which includes that subscribers like Imeh has to enter a name he would likely use to sign-in into Ovi, thereby having an account. Though this signing-in name should not be less than three characters nor more than 32, the password must be confirmed, which must not be less than 6 or more than 18 characters respectively. These details, she noted would be used at the event of the subscriber forgetting his or her password.

She pointed out that this is followed by contact information beginning with one’s country with a header that the user may choose to enter either an electronic mail (email) address or cell number, but has the liberty of entering both commencing with the country code number whilst inserting cell number.

The Ovi Stores, according to her, has its objectives divided into five distinct pages of recommended, applications, games, audio and video toggles respectively as well as personalization.

Another header notifies the users that occasionally Nokia Ovi Stores would like to reach out to customers to tell them exciting news about Nokia, thus they are required to thick how they would like to be contacted; namely by sending them the latest information on applications, games, entertainment and more from the Ovi Store via e-mail; send via Short Messaging Service (SMS) and finally, the choice of receiving updates from Ovi about the latest features and services.

ITRealms Online gathered that after registering on Ovi Stores includes the choice of language of which the United States English seems a default choice, but the column has Cestina, Dansk, Spanish Espanol, Espanol Latina, Deutsch, Suomi, Francais, Francais Canadien, and Netherlands.

Also, ITRealms Online gathered that a reconfirmation is however, needed to ensure that Nokia does not register robots, hence it prevents automated registration with a text displayed that must be entered into the box and which is not character case sensitive.

By clicking or selecting ‘I agree’ button at the bottom, shows that the user has accepted the Ovi service terms, the Ovi Store terms and the privacy policy; Completing registration to download, rate and review means that your cell phone is set.

Additional reconfirmation mail would be forwarded to the registrants email and reads;
“Hello Imeh and welcome aboard! To experience the full suite of Ovi services, all you need to do is visit http://www.ovi.com. Alternatively, if you would like to update your Nokia account details, please visit https://account.nokia.com. Please verify your email address by clicking the link below: https://account.nokia.com/acct/verifyEmail?id=B1jbUi6QnZ&lang=en-US If clicking the link does not work, copy and paste the URL in a new browser window instead. Thank you for joining and we hope you enjoy using Nokia services. All the best, Your friends at Nokia http://www.ovi.com.”
Speaking recently during the launch of Nokia C3 in collaboration with MTN Nigeria, Nokia’s representative, Mr. Marcel Van-de-Pas, said that Nokia as the number one leader when it comes to giving consumers solutions to their mobile needs which is evident in Nokia’s Ovi mail and Ovi chat on board, saying email and chats could be set up straight from the device.”

He noted that almost all the Nokia phones coming into market have the Ovi features.

At the unveiling of strategic partnership between Guaranty Trust Bank plc and Nokia, Deputy Managing Director, GTB Plc, Mr. Segun Agbaje, represented by General Manager, Information Technology (IT) at GTBank, Mr. Dare Adeyeri accompanied by the Group Head for Communications and External Affairs, GTBank, Mrs. Lola Odedina, said that new Nokia phones in the NSeries coming into the country would have GTBank’s Mobile Velocity (MoVe) application embedded.

Adeyeri said that most of the NSeries coming into the country towards the end of this year would have this application preloaded before shipment to this part of the world, noting that MoVe application would be available on Nokia Ovi, which is an online store and open vista for opportunities for GTBank on the Ovi platform.

As said by him, Naira Mastercard from GTBank, is the only accepted means of card payments on the Ovi Store, while GTBank’s innovative mobile banking application, MoVe, would be available for free download on Nokia’s premium application store, www.store.ovi.com and GTBank’s www.gtbank.com.

Equally he said that the partnership with Nokia is in line with the bank’s quest to leverage on emerging possibilities of mobile marketing as the bank seeks to expand its already robust electronic banking platform.

Stressing that the partnership would bring to its customers cutting edge innovation and services at all levels, a vision he believes would be a boost with Nokia brand. He listed some of the features of GTBank MoVe application, for instance, to include real-time currency exchange calculator for most of the world’s currency as well as Naira; ATM and brand locator, GTConnect widgets to name a few.

The General Manager, Nokia West Africa, Mr. James Rutherfood made it clear that though Nokia is diversifying into mobile solutions, the mobile phone manufacturer is not stepping down its manufacturing aspect.

The convergence of solutions, he said, has encouraged Nokia to look into this area, stressing that Nokia has transitioned to a mobile solutions entity. Pointing out that this has been evident with Nokia’s Ovi store, which is open 24 by 7 days per week and accessible in 190 countries, while 85 per cent of those who signed in repeats visit daily.

Further, Rutherfood said that about 30 million downloads are done on Ovi store per day with about 120 operators involved globally. Emphasising that at Nokia, they would continue to seek ways to deliver an unbelievable experience. Nokia, he said, is not exiting mobile manufacturing because a lot have involved and devices are becoming much richer in terms of features.

The mobile business, he said, keeps up in business, just as counterfeit products have become a global challenge, which is not limited to Nigeria alone. Primarily, what Nokia has done is that the likes of Imeh could through Ovi services explore Nokia features, which could be used from a mobile device, computer through Nokia Ovi Suite or via the web.

Just as Nokia says its focus presently is on five key services areas, namely the games, maps, media, messaging and music. Therefore leaving subscribers with plenty choice and where they plug in is entirely theirs, especially at this era of social networking at ease.

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