Teaching old N95 new tricks

Nokia launched their new flagship N97 last week to much fanfare! This however did not mean much to me as I just got my phone repaired. However, I did discover Ovi. Ovi allows Nokia owners to sign up and sync remotely with their server both contacts and calendar. This is a really useful feature, and provides a good way to back up things. This is one area I liked about the iPhone - integration.

More importantly, they have also been progressively releasing a suite of new software that will integrate nicely with the N97 and Ovi. There's the new Nokia Music application and store - a direct competitor to iTunes. It's not as polished yet but it does the job. Then there is Nokia photos - to compete with iPhoto. This is a nice piece of software, and allows you to organise your photos by timeline as well as location, using the geotagged information from the phone. Also, you can now upload directly onto Ovi any photos of videos you took on the phone, and share it with your contacts, and even link Ovi with your Flickr account!

The biggest most useful feature however, has got to be the new email program or Nokia Messaging. Although it is still in beta, I see alot of potential for it. It's a two part systme. Firstly, you sign up to the service online. Nokia provides a service where it links up your email account, be it an ISP or internet mail such as Gmail, and pushes any new email straight to your phone. The second part is the cool application installed onto the phone. Although you can already check email using the messaging program, now you can get emails pushed onto your phone. So Nokia doesn't actually provide you with an inbox, more of a redirection. The data cost is pretty minimal (I use about 400kb per day skimming about 15 emails and reading about 3 or 4 in full). You can link up to 7 email accounts to one phone and the whole system works seamlessly!

So now my phone does everything an iPhone does in terms of integration, I don't feel so compelled to upgrade my phone any time soon! The biggest selling point of the iPhone for me is now adequetly covered by the N95. (The touch screen is nice, but not a must have). Good on you Nokia!