Nokia Photos v1.5 Now Available On Beta Labs
What a way to celebrate the end of our Phontography Week here at Symbian-Guru than with the release of Nokia Photos v1.5 over at the Nokia Beta Labs. If you’ve been using Nokia Photos for a while, you’ll already know that this application is a great way to organize all of your photos - not just those you took with your phone. There are a handful of new features, as well, so you’ll definitely want to check it out.
I’ve been using it for a little while now, and there are several features that I’ve come to really enjoy. For one, this newer version of Nokia Photos is faster and less memory-intensive than previous versions. Of course, your experience may vary, but I’ve noticed a marked improvement for sure.
Also, a new Map view is included, allowing you to manually geotag your photos and videos with location information, right from your computer! This is awesome if you take some photos with your phone and others with your digital camera, and want to tag the camera photos. It also makes it easy for those of you with a phone that lacks GPS. The mapping process is simple, you just drag your photos onto the map, and that’s it. Easy as pie. There’s also a really handy area at the bottom of the map that shows you the photos which do not currently have a location tagged, so you can easily determine which photos need to be updated!
You can also tie your Share on Ovi account to Nokia Photos, allowing for a great tool to upload from your desktop to your Share on Ovi account. Unfortunately, there are still two really big issues with this feature. First, for some ridiculous reason, Nokia Photos only allows you to upload 50 images at one time. There’s no logic for this limit, given that I can use the web-based uploader for far more than that. The second major issue, for me, is that I’m unable to create a new channel through Nokia Photos. Thus, if I wanted to upload say, all my photos from this weekend (150 of them, let’s say), I have to first open Share on Ovi from my browser and create the channel. Then I have to pick the first 50 images and upload them, followed by the 2nd 50 and the 3rd 50.
Hopefully the Nokia Photos team can fix this in a hurry, so that I can easily create a new channel from within the application, and upload all 150 photos (or more) with only a few clicks.
If you’re using a Windows-powered computer, then I’d highly recommend you cruise on over to the Nokia Beta Labs to download this new version of Nokia Photos. It integrates nicely with Nokia’s Ovi Suite, as well.
Hmmm.. on the other hand, I gather there may be some logical (or a technical) reason for not allowing more than 50 pics at a time, at least in the beta; could it be e.g. something to do with stability? I mean, why would they otherwise put a 50 pic limit in? Would imagine that the thinking process is not “Hey let’s just put a 50 pic limit there although we have no reason for doing so!”
I’m sure you’re right, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.
Instead of developing Picasa/Photoshop Express/ACDSee clones, i’d rather Nokia fix the annoyingly slow and clunky galleries on their NSeries devices. You’re a phone maker, remember, Nokia?