New features include weather and traffic updates, a schedule manager, which helps you keep track of which stage you need to be at to see your favourite bands (and tells you if your choices overlap), and detailed maps for each of the two sites where the event is happening. It's a rather impressive set of updates that upgrade the application from nice-to-have to essential, if you are attending V Festival and have a compatible Nokia phone.
The maps are not only for looking at however. Something we've often heard suggested but can't recollect anyone actually trying before now, in this context, is the ability to use the GPS to mark your own POIs on the map, like where you pitched your tent or where you're going to find your mates. You have to be at the event to try this out so we don't know how well it will work on the day, and we imagine it won't be perfect given how temperamental GPS fixes can be (and presumably no Wifi positioning in the middle of a field to back it up), but it's good to see the boundaries being pushed.
Also useful is the line-up section, which now lets you create a customised 'my schedule' listing, by picking acts from the event's listings. With multiple stages, there will inevitably be some clashes, but the application helpfully highlights these for you. It's a useful way of planning what you want to see in advance and, best of all, means you're not reliant on your own brain to remember things.
The features of the earlier version are all here too, but have been moved around a bit to make the new features more prominent. You can see the Twitter, Facebook photo, Flickr photo and YouTube feeds relating to the event, and have a complete programme guide to attending the event at your fingertips as well, with links out to Ovi Maps for getting travel directions by road, while those who download the app can also enter a prize draw to win tickets to the event (well, maybe too late by now if you didn't enter already) or a Nokia X6.
The V Festival app is the result of Nokia's sponsorship of the Festival. Clearly the V Festival application is a branding exercise, rather than one with a direct economic benefit. We think this kind of application will become more prominent as application store rices races towards zero. But, more importantly, it is an excellent example of how a mobile application can help add significant value to a live event. Not only does it replace the paper guide (which you'll lose anyway), it also adds a whole other level of contextual functionality. Moreover with features like the Twitter and Flickr stream it possible to see how mobile, by connecting the physical and digital worlds, can begin to add an extra dimension of social to a live event.
V Festival 2010 is available now for all S60 5th Edition (Symbian^1) devices in the Ovi store.