The Nokia beta labs has just coughed up two new betas for us to enjoy. The first is an email service, named in Nokia’s time honored tradition of boring names for betas as, Nokia Email service.
The service lets you connect to “Google Gmail or many of the thousands of personal email accounts offered by other ISPs” and is apparently a cinch to use too. At the moment neither Hotmail or corporate email are supported, though this could well be subject to change with future updates to the service.
As per usual, all of the typical operator charges apply and while the beta of Nokia Email is free, there will be subscription charges introduced at the end of the beta trial.
The second beta application on offer is Nokia Chat. It’s basically an instant messaging service but with a few added extras. For example you can send voice messages with it and it’s all tied to some clever GPS wizardry that lets you share your location via Nokia Maps with your Nokia Chat friends and contacts.
It certainly sounds pretty forward thinking and the application is available to download in free beta form now.
Nokia Chat is the latest escapee from the Nokia Beta Labs skunkworks. It is an Instant Messenger, obviously, but what can they possibly have come up with to distinguish it from the thousand+ other chat apps available for S60 phones? Answer - they have liberally doused it in GPS special sauce.
At first blush the app works like any other IM-type program - type your comments using the keypad and watch your conversation scroll up the screen of your handset - but, unlike your typical IM client, Nokia Chat can share your current real-world location via Nokia Maps.
You can quickly see the location of your Nokia-using pals and use the app to arrange a meet-up.
A clever feature allows you to set ‘landmarks’ (e.g. your house, your favourite pub, work, etc). When you happen to go near a landmark, Nokia Chat will broadcast this info to your friends so they can keep track of where you are.
It all sounds rather jolly but, as is so often the case with handset-specific apps, it does depend on all the people you want to talk to owning Nokia phones. Windows Mobile or Motorola RAZR owners are used to being social outcasts, but iPhone users will find this kind of exclusion a slap in the face.
It’s really annoying when companies make decisions like this. It is unlikely to get people to persuade their refusnik mates to join a handset monoculture - the only real outcome will be that practically nobody bothers to use what would otherwise be a really useful little app.
