Nokia Channels not ready for the prime time

[slitchfield]

Perhaps it was unfair of Ewan to review a beta - but maybe his feedback will help the development team avoid wasting their (and other people's) time? Nokia Channels is a newspaper-like, closed content consumption system and here's the detailed review .

Read on in the full article.

Offline news reading seems nice.

In MyChannels view, if you update all your subscriptions, then Disconnect, next time to open them will be with the stored content. It's really a digital edition of your newspaper, update it when your are leaving home, read it on the go without net connection. And the ads are there also :-)

It is just great for Finland...9 choices..who want to read the Sun when the International Helsinki Sanomat is available..Especially if you want Formula One or Rally news.

[whatleydude]

Looks like a bad rip off of Mobizines if you ask me...

... and yeah - Widsets would be better. As would Mippin.

*sigh*


Next!

[Berty]

Avant Go is all you need.

[elp]

I actually commented on the beta lab blog when channels was annouced that it would have been a lot more useful if it had simply been a full featured RSS reader with a built-in list of RSS feeds. "Mainstream" users would have been able to use it as the current channels app but this would have allowed more advanced users to add their own feed (there are literally milion of sources of information out there, an closed source of providers just doesn't make sense in this world anymore).

The project manager answered my comment saying that he was very surprised at my proposition. According to him, there are already RSS readers out there (which is true but none of them are really powerful and practical) and there isn't any point in developing another one. Personally, i don't see the point of re-inventing the wheel but that's just me.

[p51]

This now has the screen rotate function of application "Rotateme" which is a nice implementation for Nokia.

[Sergey Zak]

Remember MS IE4 "push channels"? I think not.
They also went nowhere despite the amount of hype.
Just 3 words to Nokia Channels Product Management: "Open Industry Standards".

[jon81uk]

Nokia Channels does seem a lot like a rip-off of mobizines which was a fantastic little application as it would download all content in the background and the be viewable offline and this I think is another area channels seems to fail, although a lot of us are on unlimited data it was nice having it available for use on the train for example when connections are patchy, the info was automatically there for you.
I just wish Mobizines was still available, they have gone to 3 network only :-( and I don't find mippin anywhere near as good.