Download! - Still broken on S60 5th Edition
Published by Tzer2 at 2:08 UTC, January 19th 2009
The sad state of Download! has been a topic of discussion in Symbian S60 circles for quite some time. Other consumer device platforms from Nintendo's Wii to Apple's iPhone have managed to show how successful software and content download shops can be if they're easy to use, so why can't this happen on Nokia's Symbian devices? We've taken a look at the latest version of Download! on S60 5th Edition, on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, to see if it's any improvement...
Download is still broken...
One of the main complaints about the S60 3rd Edition platform is the built-in "Download!" service on Nokia S60 models, which is supposed to provide a way to download free and commercial software straight onto the phone.
All About Symbian has written about this in the past but some of us had harboured a hope that the new S60 platform version would go some way to tackling Download's problems. Download in S60 5th Edition is slightly better in some ways, faster and more reliable, but the essential problems remain and it's worth going over them again so that (hopefully!) someone at Nokia notices how unhappy its users are with the service.
Just to give a specific example, here's a look at how installing an app happens through Download! on the Nokia 5800, the first device to use S60 5th Edition:
1) The first step towards a purchase is to notice the Download! icon. It's right there on the front page, the name pretty much tells you what it offers, and most new users are likely to try this at least once. So far so good.
2) You then notice the slightly odd mixture of vague categories and specific app icons, and why is the videos icon so small? Still, the main categories seem to be reasonably useful as a guide, let's try downloading a game.
3) The selection of games is rather limited, mainly because S60 5th Edition devices have only just gone on sale (but even on S60 3rd Edition devices most compatible games still aren't available through Download!). Let's try Marble Revolution.
4) Okay, a text description, but no screenshots or demo though. However, it says "Price: Free", so the game costs nothing! Great, a nice bit of freeware to test out this new phone. Let's click on "Get".
5) Erm... okay, so it's installed the game. Wait, why is it also installing a second app called "license manager"?
6) Aha, now the game has started loading automatically... oh no wait a second... this can't be right. It refuses to load the actual game until I pay for it, and there's no free demo option either. The description on Download! wasn't exactly true, was it? Luckily this reviewer had an unlimited data plan so there was no cost in the actual download process, but many people would have already had to pay just to download the installation file. And it's also a waste of time for anyone looking for freeware, which is how the game was advertised on Download!
7) Maybe if we try accessing the game's icon directly from the Applications folder it will work... oh no, it just takes us back to the same "purchase or go away" page.
...and it's the same story for many other apps in the Download! section, apparently freeware but actually commercial. This really isn't the best way to encourage customers to come back. At best it wastes their time, and at worst it costs them money in unnecessary download charges.
Even beyond this price labelling glitch, the service is cumbersome and awkward to use. There's a lot of stuff that needs fixing.
How Download should work
Again, AAS has covered this ground, but as Nokia don't seem to have learned their lessons, maybe the lessons are worth repeating:
- Download! on S60 phones should have a good and wide selection of S60 software, and ought to include the best titles available in each category. To take games as an example, some indie publishers such as Zingmagic are on Download! (at least on S60 3rd Edition), but others like Infinite Dreams and Astraware are totally absent, despite publishing some of the most critically acclaimed S60 titles of recent times. And, weirdly, there are some other very poor games on Download! which have been there for literally years. It's difficult to know why the rubbish is there when most of the really good games aren't. Is Nokia putting games on Download! according to the size of their publishers' wallets?
- Download! content should display honest prices, visible before the user downloads anything. This is not only a good idea, it's possibly a legal requirement under consumer law in some countries. This is especially important for users who have non-flat mobile data charges, because every download costs them money, so unwanted downloads (such as freeware which isn't really free) is a waste of money.
- Purchase methods should include paying by phone bill or phone credit. People spend a lot of money on calls and texting because they can use these services on their phone at the touch of a button. They would buy a lot more mobile software if it was similarly available by just selecting it on a screen. Vouchers might also be a good idea, for countries where phone billing isn't possible.
- Content ought to have screenshots, and wherever possible demos too. It's all very well saying your app does something amazing, but people are far more likely to know whether the app is for them if they can see it running in some form or other.
- Independent S60 developers producing quality applications and other content (such as themes) should have a clear and fair pathway to being published on Download! Perhaps there should be quality control to prevent absolute rubbish clogging up the app directories, though others may dispute the need for such measures. But either way, the process for getting content published on Download! needs to be made far easier, clearer and cheaper if the independent S60 development ecosystem is to survive. S60 developers are making some really great applications and other content, but hardly any S60 users find out about these because there's no mechanism for them to do so.
- Content needs to be categorised more intuitively. At the moment, the categories are too vague and all-too-often misused (for example the Videos category often contains non-video content). There are also too many publisher-based sections which contain totally uncategorised content.
Why Download! is so important to the future of Symbian S60
If you can make software download services easy to use, even non-techie people will use them to buy software. This has been shown across many different kinds of devices, including the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console and Apple's iPhone App Store, both of which are aimed squarely at consumers without technical knowledge. Even Nokia has shown itself a potential model for Download! with its N-Gage platform client, which is much easier to use and contains more quality content.
Improving Download! is important for another reason, which is Symbian's and S60's status as non-consumer brands. Only phone anoraks and mobile companies know about them, everyone else has never heard of them, despite their massive sales and enormous market share. This severely reduces the chances of Symbian users actually buying Symbian software, and here's why:
If you buy a Windows PC, you see the Windows logo on the advertising, the packaging, the computer itself, the startup screen and the OS, so you know that you own a Windows-compatible machine. If you want software for it, you know you have to look for Windows software.
If you buy a Symbian S60 device, there is usually no Symbian or S60 name or logo anywhere, except perhaps tucked away on the legal page of the phone's manual. Most people who own Symbian S60 devices will never know they own such devices. Because they don't know they're Symbian S60 users, there's no reason why they should know that they can use Symbian S60 software either.
Download! solves this problem by totally sidestepping the need for branding. All a potential Symbian software user has to do is notice the Download! icon, click on it, and explore the contents of the service. If the Download! service offered a proper selection of good Symbian software, and accepted submissions from most or all developers, it would immediately and directly connect the Symbian development community with their potential customers. Such a connection would make it so much easier to find and purchase Symbian software, it could have potentially massive benefits to the Symbian ecosystem, and this has been proven to happen on other platforms with well-designed on-device software shops.
We've seen an explosion in download purchases happen on many other types of devices, why can't it happen on Symbian devices too? Nokia Music offers a reasonably comprehensive range of audio content direct to phones, why can't Nokia Download! do the same for software?
Tzer2, All About Symbian, 20 Jan 2009
Categories: Comment, Software, Develop
Platforms: Series 60, S60 3rd Edition, S60 5th Edition
Feature Discussion
That is simply insane!
It means somebody is adding new contnet to the Downloads!, but what a worthless crap are they adding.
Maybe they were just taking the motorcycling lobster concept forward, but I find Download! rather psychedelic anyway :-)
But that was at least when Download! used to work - these days I only get a "file not found" error.
It doesn't work. The app won't even start downloading the catalogue.
Hello? Anybody home, Nokia?
When I opened the Download! app, I could see two catalogs named "Catalogs" and "Download!". Stay with me, please...
It was when I clicked on the Download! icon (no, not the one in the main menu, the catalog named Download! inside the Download! app, you know, next to the catalog named Catalogs), that I would get the "file not found" error.
I chose each one and did Options->Remove to remove the catalog. After the list was empty, I did a refresh again. This time it loaded a set of catalogs - Office, Fun & Achieve, Internet etc. These were inside the Download! catalog earlier. But now there is no Download! catalog. These catalogs are directly in the menu now. That explains the error. I was clicking on the Download! catalog which no longer existed server side, but which the refresh did not remove automatically.
Hope this helps someone.
1) AFAIK, a developer must use the Tanla (formerly OpenBit) License Manager to be incorporated into !Download. Using this license manager is not cheap.
2) !Download is only available to Forum Nokia PRO developers (see http://www.forum.nokia.com/I_Want_To...okia_Channels/). Forum Nokia PRO is invitation-only, and this explains why there are so few apps out there.
3) Again AFAIK, not telling the price of an item is illegal in the entire European Union. But even if it was not illegal, it is a prime example of how not to interact with potential customers.
mobilephonedevelopment.com/archives/751
1. The Download! catalogue is basically rubbish, and always has been. Any new Nokia owners who visit Download! may never go back there.
2. Even if users do visit Download! periodically, the content remains cr*p because it never seems to be updated.
It seems to me that Nokia have really missed a trick with Download!. Whether you like the iPhone or not, and whether or not you agree with Apple's restrictive policy (I personally don't), their App Store has clearly shown how things can be done, and possibly should be done.
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Originally Posted by Mobile Observer
I think iPhone users buy apps in iTunes on a PC/Mac, it's much easier on a big screen than on the phone and iTunes is already there to manage music/podcast/video. Nokia needs a similar combo app for music/video/applications. Having said that, a polished app store on the phone is also a must have.
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Nokia does actually have an online store, of sorts, but its even more of a hash than the phone version.
Theres no search function,
The apps are not grouped correctly with the device you choose,
The same problem of it saying its free, and its actually a limited trial version,
There is so very little on there as to whats actually available.
Download, and the accompanying joke of the online version is among the 2 things that really confuse me about Nokia. It's just so shockingly bad, and reasonably easy to fix and sort out, from a company with the resources Nokia has.
I just don't understand it, I really don't.
[Yes, I agree Download sucks. I don't need to repeat any off that]
1) I distinctly recall Nokia having some kind of a survey on Download (or was it on the online app dowload service?) last fall. Have you guys at AAS tried to ask Nokia about what happened with it and what their plans are (you must know a ton of people in Nokia, and it would be worth a shot to try to talk to them and also convey your points to them directly)?
2) Second, why don't you guys actually tell Nokia that you are considering filing a complaint on the misleading pricing information? That would VERY likely get them off their butts at least on that particular point.
I guess its remotely conceivable that Download is not being developed due to something else being in the works or because its not considered strategically important compared to e.g. Ovi suite of services (which would arguably a mistaken strategic priorization but that's a matter of debate).
Nokia are aware of the issues and it is fairly obvious there will be developments in this area soon. However there's nothing in the way of details (Nokia folk are usually well media trained and don't give much away).
Some of the problems with Download do have reasonable(ish) explanations too. Most people do underestimate how hard it is to deliver this sort of thing within the context of how / where Nokia operates.
Despite this and the fact we know it being fixed / worked on it's not going to stop us saying it's still not good enough. Needless to say we'll probably complain about whatever comes next too.
Difficulty in making it available in multiple markets. There are different legal requirements for each market with this sort of thing. We already see this with a lot of Noki's Ovi services. There's obvious benefits to have something simpler (more controlled) that you can have available in all markets (Download! as it is now). It's not just legal requirements either - think about localisation in terms of language, terms and conditions, currencies, payment processing etc etc. Creating a app store platform that is flexible enough to deal with this sort of thing is hard...
Variances within applications - there's multiple way developers collect money - be it via OpenBit's LM or similar, via aggregators, via operators... Chances are for a store to work you'll have to create a standard way of doing payments. Developers will have to support that. Trials? Subscriptions? How does this play against what's in the marketplace already? [N.B. Only freeware in Android marketplace at launch]
You have to partner with people and there is a cost to that. It's quite easy to this and be transparent about it and of low cost when you're delivering to a limied market. BUT it will go up the more devices you have on the market and will go up as your ecosystem get more complex. Nokia's mobile ecosystem is enormous... Yes this is a bit of cop out, but it's also true.
Multiple devices - it harder to do with multiple devices - more testing (yes most things will just work, but not always... This is an area where legacy and wide platform reach hurts.
Operators - Nokia still sells most of its phone trough operators / carriers. They are the main customers and what they want goes. They're unlikely to approve of app stores on lower end phones, especially on devices where they have their own download type offering (even if it is just cruddy Java stuff). Nokia will therefore be more inclined to spend time and money on the requirements they do want (e.g. look at the fuss Ovi has and is still causing). Some operators will even remove Download (and that was designed to keep them happy by including pSMS revenue)! I personally suspect this is the biggest single reason Nokia hasn't done much in this area until a year ago. Of course once the success of the app store became apparent clearly a response was needed... but it will take time, and the operator issue is still the elephant in the room.
Ironically it's actually easier for new entrants focused on the high end (Android, iPhone) as there's no pre-existing framework i.e. its not something new, its part of the package...
In the Symban World apps stores have kind of fallen between the responsibility of Symbian Ltd., Manufacturers (like Nokia), and operators. All would probably liek to do them, but it seems to me that there hasn't been the will.
That said it should be possible, but its not a simple case of taking a list of applications and making them available in a client.
Please note this isn't intended to be complete and its off the cuff rather than carefully written (and there's probably stuff missing).
Nokia are a European company and, thanks to the EU, there is more-or-less a single market and set of laws for all Western and Central European countries. It would be relatively easy for Nokia to create an online store for Europe; if Apple have managed it, then I'm sure Nokia could manage it if they were truly interested.
My impression is that they're not that bothered, otherwise they would have already introduced something akin to the Apple App Store. Let's face it, they could make all the Beta Labs apps available via Download! if they could be bothered; that would already be a great improvement to what's currently on offer....
The Apple Store is awesome and provides such a level of exposition to developers that they can afford to charge less for their products. A game like Marble Revolution would cost something like 99 cents at the Apple Store.
Nokia has to dump the Download! altogether and start from scratch and come up with something like the Apple Store. More and more I see myself downloading apps for my iPod Touch and less for my N95. One day, I may dump the N95 and just go for an iPhone (well, of course they would have to tweak it a little bit and improve the camera).
buster - I probably should have emphasized the time element more, but yes they could have probably done more in the interim. Then again, as edge users, we're far more aware of these things. The vast majority of Nokia's customers will not notice... on the other hand those self same people could create a support nightmare if beta apps were offered. I suppose this is just another example of how things are more complex in the real world that we would really like.
BUT... the bottom line is that Nokia already has deployed much better on-phone shops such as Nokia Maps, Nokia Music and N-Gage, all of which are streets ahead of Download, and which are bundled with phones in their firmware.
Why can't Download be at least as good as Maps, NMS or N-Gage? I don't think that's an unreasonable demand.
And why isn't Download better integrated with Ovi services? Why can't Download act as a gateway to NMS tracks as ringtones for example, or offer N-Gage games? Why does Download have older versions of Nokia's own apps, when newer versions are already available?
All other parts of S60 and Ovi have constantly evolved and improved over the years, but Download now is the same as Download when it began. There's just no excuse for that situation. Everything else in S60 5th Edition is greatly improved or going in the right direction, but Download has stood completely still.
Whatever problems the iTunes store may have, they don't come close to eclipsing its virtues (I can't say anything about the Android store since I don't own a G1). Some good points that Nokia/Symbian should study hard:
- ALL apps available for iPhone/iPod Touch are there (not counting the jailbroken ones).
- The prices are extremely accessible (I see this as the most important point).
- When you download an app, it's yours and tied to your account, not to your device.
- When the developer updates the app, it gets updated in your device as well.
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Originally Posted by sjhong
Funny how nobody mentioned the elephant in the room (if I missed a comment, please forgive me), the Apple App Store. What an innovative idea, huh? 500 million downloads in 6 months (compared to 100 million downloads in 10 years for Handango).
The Apple Store is awesome and provides such a level of exposition to developers that they can afford to charge less for their products. A game like Marble Revolution would cost something like 99 cents at the Apple Store. |
And it is now absolutely clear that AppStore is where the money is right now.
And not only for applications. Imagine what would happen if you buy ringtones and wallpapers like that. Not by using SMS subscription schemes that everybody hates. Why on earth are device manufacturers leaving all that money lying on the table?