I must admit there was a time when I was unsure where Nokia was headed with Ovi or Twango (Twango has become Share on Ovi, which is the photo and video sharing equivalent of Flickr). It was also becoming confusing when the PC syncing software for Nokia phones comes in 3 flavours: PC Suite, Nseries PC Suite, and Nokia Ovi Suite for PC. Well, fortunately things are pulling together now. (It should have been sooner!)
For some time, I’ve been a happy user of Share on Ovi, which is the photo and video sharing equivalent of Flickr. I have been looking for somewhere to store on photos online. The trouble with many free online services is their limited quota. They either limit the online storage capacity, the upload bandwidth per month, or one thing or other. Share on Ovi is amazing. They have limited too, but the only limit is 100MB file size per multimedia item. Now, 100MB for a photo with today’s technology is plenty of space. 100MB is quite decent for online videos too. So this isn’t really a concern. Apart from this, there are no quotas of how many items you can store online, how many can be viewed, how many you can upload per month, etc. It’s quite amazing. It’s free, of course.
What’s updated is the new Ovi services which now let you sync your phone contacts and calendar entries into the “cloud” (i.e. online). Once you have your information in the cloud, it is very easy to sync it to any other devices. This is not unlike how Apple’s MobileMe works.
To get started with syncing your phone, sign-in to Ovi (or register a new account if you do not have one). Go to the welcome page if you’re not there, then click on Add a device. Follow the screens to choose your phone model, provide your phone number and other details, confirm the settings, then wait. A configuration SMS will be sent to your phone. View the message, enter the PIN displayed in your browser, then click Options, Save on your phone. Go back to your computer browser and follow the on screen instructions.
Note that syncing requires a data connection. If you use GPRS or HSDPA, then data charges may apply. If your phone has Wifi, you may prefer to choose to use the Wifi connection instead.
The contacts and calendar web interfaces on Ovi aren’t the best. But the infrastructure is ready, Nokia just needs to polish up the web interface, and I certainly hope they’re working on that.