Open the SW update app on the phone to download the update.

The guys at AAS have already got their hands on the changelog, which looks pretty good if you are a N86 owner.

Camera improvements:

• Improved still image quality
• Improved video quality
• Face detection added
• Red-eye removal added (Nokia note: “this is image processing which removes the red-eye. You need to be in red-eye reduction flash mode for it to be operational. Other flash modes it is disabled as there is a small shot to shot impact due to the extra image processing.”)
• New focus point indication – this shows where in the scene the camera is focussing
• Improved Close-up focus. (Nokia note: “As a result you will find in most situations you can focus much closer than before. The new focus point indication will also help in confirming which part of your subject is used for critical focus checking”)

Significant bug fixes to:

• Web
• Music store client
• RealPlayer
• Ovi Maps (including faster calibration of the digital compass)
• Here and Now
• N-Gage client
• Nokia Messaging

Additional changes & screenshots :

Ovi Contacts is now pre-installed (to the ROM) & the standby plug-in has also been added.

An OVI standby theme has been added. The Ovi Contacts plug-in is available via this theme. To disable the Ovi Contacts plug-in, use the Horizontal icon bar theme.

Face detection feature for Image captures.

My Nokia app has been updated to include a Tips History section.

Ovi Store client has also been included in the update, but it is an older version from the one which became available for download from the store last week. The version included in the firmware is not as responsive and fast as the downloadable version, though sadly, you can’t download the newer version now.

Also, an Ovi splash screen has been added when you start your phone for the first time, followed by a prompt to check for updates.

The guys at AAS are also reporting that Automatic VoIP re-registration has also been added.

After a hard reset, the C: drive showed around 70MB of free space & there was 63MB RAM free.

Although UDP will ensure that your data is intact even after the update, I would recommend you hard reset your phone and start over a fresh. If Music folder icon reverts back to the default folder icon after the update, a hard reset will bring back the Music folder icon.

Bought a new phone which came with Nokia Messaging integrated with the default messaging client for emails? You would have noticed that there is no direct access to Mail for Exchange client on these phones like on the other S60v3 phones. That is because Nokia has integrated the Mail for Exchange client with Nokia Messaging on the new S60v3 FP2 phones like the Nokia E75, Nokia E72, Nokia E55, Nokia E52, Nokia N86 8MP and Nokia 6710 Navigator. Due to this, users could not directly configure a Mail for Exchange profile for Google Contacts & Calendar syncing.

But if you still wish to use Google Sync for contacts & calendar syncing, here is a guide which will let you do so. I have faced a lot of problems with Google Sync whenever I try to use it, Hence I would recommend you back up your contacts & calendar before syncing with google.

Directions -

Start the E-mail setup wizard.

Enter your username followed by “@gmail.edu”. It has to be “.edu” and not “.com” Click OK.

In the next screen, Choose “Corporate” & press Next.

In the next screen, Choose “Mail for Exchange” & press Next.

You will now be required to enter your Google credentials & the server name. In the username, enter your google email id followed by the password. For the Server Name, enter “m.google.com”. Let the Secure login remain at On.

In the next screen, select “Email and data” & press Next.

This stage lets you decide whether you wish to Merge your phone data with google data. Choosing Replace will replace the data on your phone with the data on google.

The wizard will say email is now configured, but the set up isn’t over yet. Open Email settings.

In the settings, Open Mail for Exchange settings.

From the next screen, Open the Mailbox settings.

From the Mailbox settings, edit the “@Gmail.edu” back to “@gmail.com”. Leave the mailbox field blank. The User name will be your google email id & the password is your google password. After changing these settings, press Back.

Now go to the “What to sync” settings, change the “Sync email” setting to NO.

Next, Go to the “Personal Inform. Manag.” settings & from the next screen, Go to the “Applications” settings.

Go to “Calendar” settings, Leave it at “Yes”. The other settings can be according to your choice.

Next up, “Contacts” settings from the “Applications” settings. Leave it at “Yes”. You can choose whether to keep the current items on the phone or replace them with the ones on google.

This is important, Turn OFF the To-do sync. Otherwise, syncing will fail.

That should be it. You should be good to go. You phone contacts & calendar should now be syncing with your google contacts & calendar. There are a lot of settings for you to customize still, Open the settings and except for the settings mentioned above, tinker with the remaining settings according to your wishes.

Although I should warn you again, Google Sync is not perfect. I have only ended up messing my contacts & calendars everytime I used google sync. You can visit the Google Mobile Help forums and check out the problems other users are facing.

(With help from Google Mobile Help forums)

This is certainly a welcome update and shows that the ovi store team is hard at work & is working on improving the ovi store experience. Yesterday, we also told you about the updated error messages in the ovi store. With the upcoming maintenance work at the store today & tomorrow, we can hopefully expect more updates rolling out soon. As always, we’ll keep you updated on whatever we come across.

- Wednesday September 23rd at 8 PM EST the service will be unavailable for a few minutes.
- Thursday, September 24th at 8 AM EST the service will be unavailable for a bit longer.

You won’t be able to access the store at these times. There is no mention of what is supposed to be tackled in the maintenance. We’ll keep you posted if we notice anything new.

Thankfully, the Ovi Store team has tweaked the error messages and made them actually meaningful now. Previously, if you opened a link for an item which wasn’t available for your phone, the store would give you an error message that said “This item is no longer available.” Now, when you open the link for an item which is not available for your phone, the error message clearly says that “this item is not available for your device : [ Model Number].”

The error message as seen on the Ovi Store website.

The error message as seen on the mobile website.

If you find any more tweaks or new error messages, please drop us a comment.

Reminder – If you are a developer or know any developer who develops for Ovi or Symbian and publish the content on Ovi Store, ask them to take the Ovi Developers Survey 2009.

This week was undoubtedly dominated by the much awaited Nokia World 2009, which saw new phones getting announced, Nokia first foray into the computer segment & new services being revealed. Also of interest and importance was the launch of the Ovi SDK & APIs letting the developers make use of Ovi services and quickly develop useful applications for a variety of phones as well as the web.

Nokia announced the X6 Touch-screen Music phone with Capacitive touch-screen, 32GB of Storage, a 5MP camera with Dual LED Flash and it “Comes with Music”.

Read more | Watch “Introducing X6” Video | Details & Specifications

Nokia also announced the X3 Music phone based on their S40 interface with a 3.2MP camera, direct access to Ovi Store and “Comes with Music”

Read more | Watch “Introducing X3” Video | Details & Specifications

The 3rd phone to be announced was the N97 Mini, a smaller variant of the flagship Nokia N97, with a personalised home screen, a 5MP camera with dual LED flash, slide out QWERTY keypad and 8GB of internal storage.

Read more | Watch “Introducing N97 Mini” Video | Details & Specifications

More specifications for the Booklet 3G, Nokia’s first computer running on Microsoft Windows, were revealed at the Nokia World. Powered by an Intel Atom Z530, 1.6 GHz the booklet comes with a 1GB non-upgradable RAM, a 120GB hard disk and a 16 cell battery amongst others.

Read more | Watch “Introducing Booklet 3G” Video | Product Page

Nokia World also saw the launch of three new services at the Nokia Betalabs, all of them getting covered here at OviApplications.com in detail.

Ovi Lifecasting : Nokia Launches Ovi Lifecasting Beta to Help You Share Your Memories Instantly on Facebook

Nokia Messaging with Social Messaging : Nokia Messaging Expands to Social Messaging with the New Beta

Ovi Maps beta for S60v5 : Ovi Maps with New Content & Services Arrives at the Betalabs for Touch Phones

On the 2nd day of the Nokia World, Nokia announced the beta of the Ovi SDK & APIs for the developers. In the press release, they mentioned that “Nokia makes it easier for web publishers and developers to create applications with integrated services with Ovi APIs and Ovi SDK Beta introducing a new breed of applications for the web and smartphone platforms”

Ovi Opens up to the Developers with the launch of Ovi SDK beta & Ovi APIs

Oh and to complicating the naming mess even more, the application is now called Nokia Messaging email. Yeah, email doesn’t not start with a capital “e”.

Here are the screenshots showcasing some of the changes in this release :

The new Gmail icon.

The settings now let you configure whether to show images in the HTML view.

Youtube video embedded in the email.

The ever going naming mess. Is it Email or Nokia Messaging or Nokia Messaging email now?

To download Nokia Messaging on your phone, visit http://email.nokia.com from your computer or your phone.

Thanks to lekovodolaz for breaking the story first on Twitter.

Update 1 : You can now view embedded content from within the mail view. Example : Youtube videos embedded in the email can be viewed from within Nokia Messaging.

In the 3 months since Ovi Store launched and was available to the public, users have downloaded a little over 10 million pieces of content and applications. This combined with the claims by Nokia that an average user has done 6 downloads from the store, gives us a figure of round about 1.67 million users using the Ovi Store. Considering Nokia’s worldwide presence and that the Store supports over a 100 different devices, the numbers seem pretty disappointing. Another statistic available to use was that the store saw a 50% increase in the number of downloads between July & August.

One of the reasons for the abysmal number of downloads is the availability of the store out of the box. The client is not preloaded on the phones . Except for the Nokia N97, no other device shipped with the Ovi Store client pre-installed on the phone. Even with the N97, the first firmware included only a shortcut to the client setup, which meant a user would first have to download the client before he could use it. On all the other phones, there isn’t even an shortcut or bookmark to guide the user to the store. Users would have to manually visit the store to download the client onto their phone. In some countries & on some phones, the Downloads! app on the phone (which has now been replaced by the Ovi Store) features the Ovi Store client download. But why is this limited to a few countries is not known. Even the recently launched Nokia N86 did not ship with the Ovi Store client pre-installed. What is even more surprising is that the client is not even compatible with the N86, and even after a firmware update, users are still waiting for the Ovi Store client compatibility. Steve Litchfield, in his review of the E55 mentions that “Also hinting that the current v21 firmware is incomplete is that the Ovi Store client and the N-Gage client were also missing from the E55…Oh, and there’s no Ovi Store download link yet within Download!” Steve has also pointed out that the reason Ovi Store is not compatible with E55, E52, N86 & probably E72 too is because of the updated Web Browser. Apparently, the Ovi Store client has some issues with the new browser.

The cost of getting the content published to the store. A store is only as good as its content. If you make publishing the content into the store expensive, It can do no good to the variety of content available in the store. A developer has to purchase 2 different certificates which could cost upto $300 and every time an applications is signed for the store, that costs another $20. This high cost of entry proves to be a major barrier for developers developing free applications. Things get even difficult if you wish to get your themes published to the store, as only “Premium Publishers” are eligible to get their themes published on the store.

There is no option to Try before you Buy. The store only supports two kinds of downloads – Free download or a Paid download. A user does not have the option to try out the applications before he can make a decision on whether he wishes to buy it. Few developers are getting around this barrier by introducing “lite” versions of their applications / games which are nothing but a time limited trial or a feature curtailed demo of the app.

A lengthy procedure to re-download the content. What do you do after you have just reset your phone. Fire up the store, login to your account & download the content you have already paid for and are entitled to. Sound simple and fair enough, right? But that is not something the Ovi Store will let you do. They offer you a personalised service. All you need to do is mail the support guys, explain to them that you reset your phone because of some issue with the beta firmware the phones ship with now a days, and wait for them to help your out with the re-download. Time frame? Anything over 3 days. Why all this fuss when all you should be required to do is login to your account on the client and simply re download the content once the store has cross checked the handset via the IMEI number!

The future is not entirely gloomy or doomed though, changes & improvements are expected to hit the store soon.

Mobile Entertainment is reporting that Try and Buy is coming soon to the Ovi Store. According to Marco Argenti, Nokia’s head of media and games, “The first new business model that we’re going to launch is try-and-buy. It has already been tested in some of our preloaded games, and we’re making that available in the store and allowing people to upgrade to the full version directly from the application.” He also spoke of the introduction of subscription based services from within the store itself, “We’re also thinking of implementing subscriptions, but more in terms of a subscription to specific applications, rather than a subscription to the store itself. It might be needed for content like news which is an ongoing service where you don’t want to charge users up-front, but use a renewal model every month or week.” This would add an entirely new dimension to the store as it would enable the developers to come up with exciting subscription based services for the users to opt for instead of a one time bulk payment for the entire package or the application.

Although not confirmed, I have also heard that re-downloading of purchased content should be addressed in the coming months. If you have any information regarding this issue, please leave us a comment and I will update this post accordingly.

More device support coming soon. All the new S60v3 devices which shipped with the new 7.1 Web Browser are currently not compatible with the Ovi Store client because of some the new web browser. But a compatible build is expected to be released soon. Steve Litchfield recently tweeted that “Yes, it’s because the Ovi Store client doesn’t like the new v7.1 Web browser. There’s a new client coming in a week. Also, as more and more devices ship with the Ovi Store client pre-installed, not only will more people start using it, but even people who were previously not aware of the store would come to know of it and what it offers.

More language support soon. MocoNews.net is reporting that Portuguese, French and simplified Chinese languages would be supported by the Ovi Store by the end of this year. This should significantly increase the user base and bring in more locally relevant content to the store.

New Content. MocoNews.net is also reporting that Nokia is approving 500 new content items per week, which I believe would be the biggest attraction for users to start using the store.

More Carrier Deals. Nokia is reportedly in talks with more carriers from around the world, including AT&T in the USA for carrier based billing support.

According to the press release “Nokia makes it easier for web publishers and developers to create applications with integrated services with Ovi APIs and Ovi SDK Beta introducing a new breed of applications for the web and smartphone platforms”

The Ovi for Developers beta program

Nokia is inviting developers to join the Ovi for Developers beta program on the Forum Nokia Developer Community site (www.forum.nokia.com/Ovi), and will make the Ovi SDK Beta and Ovi APIs available to them. Applications created with Ovi SDK and Ovi APIs will be distributed through the Ovi Store in 2010, bringing the applications available to the hands of millions of consumers around the world.

The Ovi SDK Beta and Ovi APIs

The technology preview, now available to developers via registration, contains:

Ovi SDK Beta – an easy-to-use, web-based toolbox which provides tools to create applications for the web, and Symbian and Maemo platforms, with integrated Ovi features and a distinct user interface. The Ovi SDK Beta contains the Ovi APIs and all-new Ovi User Interface (UI) libraries, which enable effortless creation of rich applications. The Ovi SDK Beta utilizes standard web technologies – HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript (JS) – programming languages that are most familiar to the world’s developer community.

Ovi APIs – provide developers with a simple way to integrate service features such as maps or navigation to their web applications. Nokia today introduced the first two Ovi APIs:

- Ovi Maps Player API – bringing maps to mobile and web applications effortlessly. The API is powered by Ovi Maps and features over 180 country maps, location-based search and detailed place information. Other features include vector-based maps that give a range of views, including map, terrain and 3D modes for dynamic map mash-ups. Nokia first introduced the Ovi Maps Player API for the web earlier this year.

- Ovi Navigation Player API – allowing developers to bring Nokia’s industry-leading walk and drive navigation features to their applications, including pedestrian navigation, turn-by-turn car navigation and route planning. This makes it possible for content creators to create applications that take the consumer to his destination of choice – be it to a friend’s location, a landmark, a restaurant, or the bus stop.

You can read the entire press release here : Nokia expands ecosystem opportunities and showcases work with partners, publishers and developers

For more details & to apply for the Ovi SDK beta, visit http://www.forum.nokia.com/Ovi

As with all their latest releases, Nokia has also shared videos explaining & introducing the Ovi SDK as well as the Ovi Ecosystem. You can watch the videos below.

The following softwares were released at the store today, in addition to the ones already available from the store here.

1. Best Taskman

“Running applications and tasks control, ability to substitute built-in system task manager or work along with it, ‘Windows Alt-Tab’ style task switcher, a unique way to access favorite applications (Quickstart), running processes control, and many more advanced functions to explore. Unlike built-in task switcher it tells you what programs exactly are running on your smartphone, where these programs reside, memory they consume and capabilities they use.“

2. Best Jotter

“Best Jotter allows you to write down quick notes, memos, ideas and any piece of information, organize it, and easily find at any time. You can keep your sensitive information as notes as well. Just set up a password in the application and Jotter will encrypt all your data. Additionally it’s possible to export notes to a text file that you can transfer to PC. The format of this file is very simple and you can edit the file in any text editor or Excel, transfer it back and import to Jotter.”

3. Best Converter

“Best Converter is the fast and easy way to convert almost anything to anything else. Over 1100 units in 67 categories – it’s a real conversion power in your pocket!”

4. Best Menu

“Best Menu is: a launcher – you can can organize and instantly access applications, phone numbers, contacts, emails, documents; text templates – you can insert predefined text templates into any application; a macro machine; fast and easy search – with ‘Type & Go’ you can type anything and the service will find contacts/applications matching your text. When you activate the service to access its functionality in any application just press and hold green key (dial key) for more than 1 sec”

5. Best Full Screen Message

“When you get a voice call, no matter what application you’re in, you always have instant access to it. Why getting a new message should be different on your phone? FS Message application shows incoming text message on full screen instantly when it comes. Additionally it shows all unread messages and you can switch between them very fast with left/right keys. You can mark the message as read, reply it, call back to the sender, delete the message or open it in messaging application.”

6. Best Blacklist

“It is a service for automatic calls reject depending on your rules. Are you at the meeting and can’t accept calls at the moment or you want to block someone from calling you permanently? Blacklist offers you an easy solution. Blacklist Scheduler makes your phone an automated personal secretary. It can reject everyone at night, accept only co-workers at business hours, etc. Just configure and turn the service on once and forget about all unwanted callers.”