Ovi Contacts updated for S60 3.2 phones

Published by Rafe Blandford at 18:44 UTC, February 26th 2009

The beta of Ovi Contacts (the service formerly known as Contacts on Ovi, which was formerly known as Nokia Chat...!) has been updated for S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 phones (e.g. the Nokia N96 and N85). For existing users, there are no major feature additions, but a number of bugs have been fixed and the application and service is more stable, which should broaden its appeal. Read on for a quick look at Ovi Contacts.

Ovi Contacts, which integrates with the Contacts application, is an instant messaging and presence sharing service. It allows you to chat to your friends (instant messaging) and share information about what you are doing (presence). The latter currently consists of a customisable message (status), music currently being played, call status, and location.

While instant messaging is the most obvious function of Ovi Contacts, it is the presence information which may have more of an impact in the long term. Providing contextual information about what your contacts are currently doing allows you to make more intelligent decisions about when and how to contact them. This is part of the thinking behind social location which Nokia has recently been promoting.

Location sharing, at the presence level, is done via landmarks (i.e. you choose the landmarks at which you are happy to share your location). When you are physically at those landmarks, your presence information is automatically updated. The landmark name is shown in brackets after your name in the list view and is also shown in your profile. This level of sharing is fairly granular, as others will only see the landmark name.

However you can also choose to send your precise location to a friend when chatting to them and they can then view this information in Nokia Maps. As shown below, your location is marked by an icon made up of your profile picture.

What's notable about these location features is that they are more geared to providing contact context rather than being part of a map-centric friend finder as seen in Nokia's Friend View and Google's Latitude.

Currently Ovi Contacts is limited in its impact because it is being used by only a limited number of people. For such a service, the network effect is very important (i.e. the more people use a service, the more valuable it becomes). Currently you can add contacts from Google Talk (and other XMPP based services) to Ovi Contacts, but other, more popular, IM services are not supported.

One impressive aspect of Ovi Contacts, and something we will be seeing for other Ovi services, is the ability to sign up for a Nokia Account (Nokia's single sign on solution) on the device itself. Existing Ovi users will likely already have such an account, and it certainly enables you to get things up and running quickly, especially if you regularly change devices.

Ovi Contacts is still in beta, which means you may still experience crashes and other problems with the service. However it has come a long way since the first version of Nokia Chat.

Nokia are currently conducting a survey, via the Beta Labs Blog, on Ovi Contacts. You can help shape the future of the product by giving your feedback and opinions.

Other IM networks and the network externalities (network effect)

Realistically, to achieve a reasonable level of uptake, Nokia will, as a minimum, need to allow you to add contacts from other IM networks (Microsoft Live Messenger, Yahoo, AIM, Skype) to Ovi Contacts. Even this is flawed, as most people will prefer to use their existing IM account (why go to the bother of telling all your friends you're now name@ovi.com, not name@msn.com).

Therefore, ideally, it should be possible to sign on to existing IM networks using existing accounts. This would allow users to appear on their existing IM network with their current username. It also avoids the need to add contacts all over again. Nokia's recent acquisition of Oz Communications should provide the technology to enable this. It would also let Ovi contacts take advantage of the network effect of other IM networks.

Ovi Contacts at MWC

Ovi Contacts was pre-installed on the phones Nokia launched at MWC this year, the E55 and N86 shown below being two examples of this. Moreover it was included as a plug-in on the home screen of the device - this is very valuable screen real estate and underlines the importance of the service. Ovi Contacts is a key part of Nokia's play for the social location enabled address book (or, as I put it above, the context aware contacts list).

Ovi Contacts set up on the home screen of the recently announced E55

Ovi Contacts setup on the home screen of the Nokia N86 8MP

News Discussion

Quote:

Originally Posted by slitchfield Well, what the world needs is a way to integrate your existing Contacts, Facebook contacts, chat buddies etc in a context-sensitive way.

I dont think that is the area of contention but this is a lock-in type of system. We have seen this in digital photography and ultimately the only way the consumer is protected is to have portability of your data and meta data.

Putting this all on "Ovi" is not going to be user friendly the day you dont like a Nokia phone anymmore. In contrast I can tag my photos as I like and I am not stuck anyhwere.

Quote:

Originally Posted by skagen Putting this all on "Ovi" is not going to be user friendly the day you dont like a Nokia phone anymmore. In contrast I can tag my photos as I like and I am not stuck anyhwere.

You're not stuck with Ovi either. You don't need a Nokia phone to post photos on Ovi, and you always have a copy of your photos (don't you?). Same with your contacts - Ovi provides a synchronization service, which means you have to have something to sync, which means you always have a copy of your contacts, no?

If you no longer have a Nokia phone, you won't have the ability to sync to Ovi Contacts any longer, but it's a service you don't pay for directly (you "pay" by having a Nokia phone). However, Ovi gallery (Share) will still work fine (another service you don't have to pay a cent for, and unlike other free services, there aren't even any advertisements). Files on Ovi will also still work, as will Maps (you just can't sync to your phone). Ovi mail will still also work without a Nokia phone.

MobileMe is not going to be user friendly the day you don't like paying Apple anymore. You'd think for a service that costs 77 EUR ...

Using any "cloud" service, indeed using any service, always entails some risk or risks associated with the service no longer being available.

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