Changelog FW v50.0.005:

• Browser 7.2
• Lifecasting (with Maps 3.0T SR3.0)
• Flash Video Phase-3 – Flashlite 3.1.7.x
• Gimlet Touch 2.2
• Kinetic scrolling in Appshell (Menu grid)
• OVI Sync 2.0
• Hurriganes Music Player (similar to that on the N97)
• Enable Side lock Key functionality during Swipe UI (Calendar/Clock alarm)
• Windows 7 Device Stage Support
• OVI store 1.5.6
• Quick Office v4.2
• OVI Music
• Cherry v2.1
• Rihanna service launcher
• OVI contacts 1.50.8
• Workaround for Niagara (SMD) display module for DFS52.50 based products

Via

With a great user experience, an aggressive global rollout plan and a focus on local relevance, Nokia felt that it was time to commend some of the landmark the Nokia services have achieved. Taking a look at the Ovi umbrella of services, Nokia particularly highlighted the success of its Location, Music, Store, Messaging, Money and Life Tools services. Full press release after the break.

“Our recipe for success has some pretty simple ingredients: delighting consumers. Yes, we are in more places, serving more people, with more great content and services. True, more than a million apps are being downloaded a day from our store; Comes with Music is now available in over 25 markets; and every second of the day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, another person downloads our new Ovi Maps app. These are great achievements, but our goal is to delight hundreds of millions of consumers around the world – and we are well on our way,” says Niklas Savander, head of Nokia’s services business.

“Our global footprint means we have scaled fast, reaching a really significant number of people using a variety of different phones and smartphones. We started the year with a bang with our free Ovi Maps navigation launch and we have just announced the pilot of Nokia Money running in one of India’s largest metropolitan areas. Going forward, we are increasing the speed and concentrating on developing a magic experience for the people that use our services.”

Nokia highlighted landmark achievements for its key service areas:

Location: Launched in late January, the new Ovi Maps features drive and walk navigation in 74 countries and 46 languages, as well as traffic information in many. All new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include this great service – at no extra cost.

- More than 3 million Ovi Maps downloaded to date
- More than one download per second, 24 hours a day; around 100,000 downloads a day
- Rich functionality and the best mobile maps coverage in the world

Music: Last week, Comes With Music grew to 27 markets with its arrival in the Middle East. People that own a Comes With Music device can download as much free music as they want from Ovi Music and, unlike other online music services, can keep them on their device forever. Music downloaded from the Ovi Music à la carte menu is also DRM-free.

- Ovi Music is in 33 markets, making Nokia the world’s most scaled global digital music provider
- The average person using Comes With Music downloads 500 free songs in the first few weeks of using the service, which would cost about EUR 450 from iTunes
- More than nine million tracks in the Ovi Music catalogue

Store: Launched in May 2009, multiple upgrades and experience improvements have improved the browsing and search experience, leading to a significant increase in the number of downloads. In 2010, Ovi Store will have more languages, billing support, improvements and of course, lots more apps.

- More than one million downloads a day
- The number of people shopping on the store doubles every month
- Fully localized store in 18 countries supporting 30 languages, and serving 90 percent of Store visitors with their local language
- Integrated mobile billing from 60 operators in 18 countries

Messaging: A million people a month open an Ovi Mail account, often their first online identity, bringing the total number of accounts created to more than six million in just over a year. Working closely with operators, Nokia Messaging, Nokia’s push email service, is now signed up with over 70 operators.

Nokia Money: Global financial services initiative starts in India
In partnership with YES BANK, a commercial pilot of the global mobile financial services initiative has started in Pune, one of the largest metropolitan areas in India. The service in Pune, called Mobile Money Services by YES BANK, brings financial services to the consumers’ mobile devices.

“The Nokia Money initiative based on Obopay’s platform is initially targeted at growth markets and designed to work in partnership with multiple network operators and banks, involving distributors and merchants in a dynamic open ecosystem to seamlessly provide the new services. YES BANK is our first partner in India to bring this service to market,” said Teppo Paavola, VP and general manager of Mobile Financial Services at Nokia.

- Initial phase: consumers will be able to transfer money to another person just by using the person’s mobile phone number, pay utility bills as well as recharge their prepaid SIM cards (SIM top-up).
- Later, consumers will also be able to pay merchants for goods and services.

Nokia Life Tools:
Nokia Life Tools is providing rural subscribers with livelihood and life improvement services, including agriculture and education services. Subscribers primarily depend on the agriculture trade and live around the poverty threshold – which makes parting with one or two dollars each month for a mobile service a substantial investment. Since its launch in mid-2009, around one million people have already subscribed to the service. Nokia Life Tools is available in India and Indonesia, and will roll out to more markets this year.

Press Release

For all those music lovers out there, Nokia has announced the Ovi Player. Ovi Player is the new name for the earlier Nokia Music application. Ovi Player is not a ground-up rebuild of Nokia Music, but it does contain some new features that will make it even easier to use.

Ovi Player contains some new views to help you navigate and enjoy your music collection. The ‘recently added’ view is used by many people as a way of keeping track of their new music. This enhanced view shows your recently added music grouped by albums together with cover art. In addition, the introduction of a ‘filter column’ on the detailed view will also help you browse your music collection more easily.

The player has also been redesigned to be more compact and to offer a more responsive volume control and track position selector.

Ovi Player is compatible with all existing Nokia Music Stores. When viewing Nokia Music Store using Ovi Player, the ‘music queue’ is now retractable to allow the best possible browsing experience. The queue is retracted by default but can be exposed by hovering over a simple arrow control.

When getting new music, the download progress is now displayed in a consolidated ‘progress panel’ at the bottom of the application. This panel also lets you monitor your device music transfer status.

As well as containing numerous defect fixes and some performance enhancements, the Ovi Player also support Windows 7.

[Via]