You’re all obviously aware of Nokia’s Ovi services, which the company constantly updates in an effort to transform from a purely hardware company into a services one. Ovi is Finnish for ‘door’, as in the door to getting more use from your phone. However, I’ll bet you didn’t know about several other services that Nokia also has, which I like to call Nokia Unohtaneet services.
One of these services, Unohtaneet Sync, is a constant source of frustration for me. You probably know it as ‘Ovi Sync’, but make no mistake, it is, most definitely, unofficially Unohtaneet Sync.
Unohtaneet Sync is a relatively simple SyncML setup that allows you to synchronize your contacts, calendar, and notes to Nokia’s servers and back to your phone again. It was a great idea when it launched in August 2008 as Ovi Sync, but now that it’s Unohtaneet Sync, it’s just plain lame.
For starters, Unohtaneet Sync cannot be setup to automatically synchronize your information, nor is there a shortcut on any of Nokia’s currently available devices. In fact, on Nokia’s newer flagship smartphones like the Nokia N97, the Unohtaneet Sync settings are even more hidden than they were on previous devices, so that you have to dig through 3 layers of menus just to initiate a sync. Meanwhile, other flagship devices, such as the N900, don’t even support Unohtaneet Sync at all.
Second, Nokia launched their Ovi Mail webmail service a long time ago, but Unohtaneet Sync was never integrated. Users of Ovi Mail essentially have to maintain two separate contact lists, which is just plain crazy. Also, Nokia Messaging, the company’s push email solution doesn’t support Unohtaneet Sync, either. It’s entirely separate from pretty much everything, including Nokia’s other Ovi services, most of which could easily benefit from a centralized contact list.
Worse yet, Unohtaneet Sync has issues with multiple devices, while other SyncML solutions, such as Google Sync and GooSync, operate just fine and dandy. I have Google Sync over SyncML for contacts setup on my E63, 5800 XpressMusic, and N97, as well as GooSync, and never get duplicates, no matter how often I switch between those three phones. When I add Unohtaneet Sync to the mix, I get several copies of each contact, no matter how many times I manually de-dupe everything.
It would be really simple for Nokia to change Unohtaneet Sync back to Ovi Sync, and would probably take all of about a week for the talented gang at Ovi to accomplish:
1. BUILD AN APP – seriously, there was an awesome application called Swim that would basically let you automate the synchronization process. Unfortunately, it only works on S60 3rd Edition FP1 devices – FP2 and S60v5 devices aren’t supported. Nokia needs to get with the developer and make it happen, or do it themselves.
2. INTEGRATE. The contacts that I have on my cellphone is the most intimate social network you’ll ever find – it’s people who I actually communicate with on a frequent basis, and Nokia has access to that. They most certainly need to approach this in the most delicate way possible, but by integrating this into their Ovi services (Ovi Maps, Ovi Mail, Ovi Share, Ovi Chat, etc), they’ll be able to offer me the absolute most personalized experience ever, and that’s not something to be taken lightly. While you’re integrating, why not let me synchronize with Facebook to bring my friends’ contact photos over?
3. FIX IT – it’s SyncML, a pretty common standard. Given that 2 other SyncML services can properly handle multiple devices without issues, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there’s something wrong with Unohtaneet Sync, and not my device. I should be able to set Unohtaneet Sync up on as many Nokia devices as I want and not have any duplicates, ever. It should also be much easier to consolidate those duplicates when they do happen.
Are you an Unohtaneet (Ovi) Sync user still? Do you have the same issues that I have, or is your experience 100% solid? What other suggestions do you have for Nokia to add to this seemingly forgotten service?
