14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia Mobile Communities, the experimental service rolled out by Nokia Beta Labs last month, has received an update. The new release brings several new features and bug fixes.
Available during the beta trial only to users in India, Nokia Mobile Communities is a service addressed at emerging markets where the majority of users do not benefit from mobile Internet access. The service attempts to bring social networking features to users who do not own a smartphone and do not have a Web connection available on the handset. All the communication is done entirely via SMS, using either a Java client for S40 phones or the native SMS interface in the case of non-Nokia devices.
The additions brought in by the latest release include new features, such as the possibility to share streams as well as specific posts, the ability to view posts for a specific stream, and the display of search results directly on the stream wall. Also added were user settings to control charge notifications, location sharing and message history. Another change is a streamlined registration procedure which should make the service easier to pick up by new users. Besides these improvements the update also addresses several bugs found during testing phase.
Unfortunately, the new features related to Streams also have a downside, degrading the performance of the application. While the user experience should not be severely impacted, Nokia Beta Labs is working on the issue, a fix being expected in a later release.
Before installing the update, Nokia Beta Labs recommends that the previous version should be uninstalled, as the underlying data structures that power the application have been changed. This may cause old chat messages and stream posts to be lost, but the conversation groups and subscribed / created streams will be synchronized so that new activity in either should not be affected.
Nokia Mobile Communities is initially available for S40 devices with a screen resolution of 240x320 pixels. The application can be downloaded here. Indian users who prefer to download it over-the-air can send a message with the text "nmc" to 55555 to receive the download link directly on the phone.