Search for the Ovi Store's search
Nokia launched its Ovi Store back in the end of May. It was deemed somewhat of a disaster by many much due to technical difficulties. I didn’t bother trying out Ovi Store until around a week after it’s launch (which is around three weeks from now, as of writing) - I figured it would be slow. So, when I tried it, the store was running at a decent speed, loading the pages a-ok. But I did run into a problem.
Where’s the search?
I couldn’t find the search. I had to search for the search. I looked into the Options -menu - wasn’t there. Huh?
“Oh there it is”, I laughed at myself. “How had I been so blind?”, I pondered on. At the top of the screen, there was a gray box that looked more like page heading than a button for search. Of couse it had “Search” written on it, but I never read those texts anyway!
I realized why I hadn’t seen it right away; the search didn’t highlight itself enough. The search box drowned into the sea of color and information, never to be picked up by my gaze.
Need for Search
Ovi Store is supposedly the answer to Apple’s App Store. App Store has over 50,000 apps and Ovi Store boasting around 2,000 as of June 17, 2009. Just browsing through them is tedious, so you need a proper search to satisfy the needs.
Also, there seems to be no category or search option for free apps, which makes discovering free apps that much harder. Bummer. Update: just updated Ovi Store and it has this functionality now! Weeee!
Overall, the Ovi Store is a welcome addition to the Nokia world, I sincerely hope we’re gonna see a burst of great apps for us to discover!
1. Oh god, I’ve been bashing Nokia a bit too hard lately.
