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1. Like the ‘auto-rotate’ feature (I can now annoy iPhone users “look my phone can do that too and much more!”)

   Hopefully a larger selection of news items will join in soon. Reuters would be a good feed to have!

   Like the interface and layouts.

   Comment by Bill C — December 10, 2007 @ 6:01 pm

2. yeah, nice little app.
   1. the first page is ugly as hell (”stop following the news etc”). change it!
   2. i don’t like the fact that donwload bar is hiding - for those without flat data plan is annoying.
   3.why help files weren’t “embedded” in the installation file?

   in rest, good app…congrats to team.!

   Comment by horia stanescu — December 10, 2007 @ 6:13 pm

3. I don’t understand where this application fits. It sort of competes with Widsets, but it sort of doesn’t. It competes with the built in S60 Browser RSS reader, but at the same time it doesn’t. Is the whole point of this application to take other peoples content and one day throw Nokia Ad’s next to it just to make some money?

   Comment by Stefan Constantinescu — December 10, 2007 @ 9:21 pm

4. @stefan
   I do not think Nokia receives the content for free.
   Advertising is a necessary evil. And as you probably noticed,
   Channels’ user experience is richer than Widsets, which, by the way is another app with another business model.

   Comment by horia stanescu — December 10, 2007 @ 10:13 pm

5. “Things to come” … would be nice if symbian s60 “itself” has this feature and applications just adapt. Would be quiet lame to implement this feature in each an every application …

   but i guess the beta labs guys just wanted to actually show the feature with an usable application ….

   i like the app, but the green/white theme pretty sucks….
   the “main menue” with the floating cards (chanels, my chanels, etc.) is a bit “too much”, would be cooler if the has a much simpler ui, and keeps up with the rest of the “s60″ UI-concept ….. Beta labs apss like sportstrcker oder wellnesdiary do this, but this app and widsets, even the internet radio have a sligthly different -> much differnet UI, I personally dont like that.

   In the end a nice application very useful but still looks ugly, hopyfully U dont take that wrog, just an inspiration

   keep up the good work,
   greets from austria!

   Comment by Daniel Marian — December 10, 2007 @ 10:25 pm

6. mmm, my first thoughts were similar to what Stefan said: why I have to install this beta application if there could be a way to get it using Widsets which just “graduated” by the way?
   My two cents:
   I’m sorry, but I’m getting the impression that Nokia is “pushing products” from a vendor (who needs revenue)/developers (who can quickly deliver something) point of view, rather than fulfilling the user need with some consistency (if it makes sense). This kind of inconsistency, similar to the S60 inconsistency, is justifiable in the S60 platform but not at “application level”.

   Comment by Reda — December 10, 2007 @ 10:39 pm

7. Well, in terms of stability and functionality, it works pretty darn well. If you could make the screen rotate a little more seamlessly it would be great.
   In terms of what-this-thingy-does, I have to agree with Stefan Constantinescu. It’s a bit confusing to have Widsets, mobile RSS and this, albeit this is more related to news literally than news on thing you subscribe to.
   The only suggestion I can make right now is something you’ve clearly already planned: add more service providers. Like you have Finland, add more countries (and thus more languages).

   Comment by Bogdan Galiceanu — December 10, 2007 @ 11:25 pm

8. I’m very disappointed to notice that this new version of Channels is much worse than the old Kanavat, really a big disappointment.

   1) New version is in almost all aspects slower than the old. The incremental download is the only improvement.
   2) The new ad system sucks. It’s so annoying it’s not good even as a joke.
   3) The “smooth scrolling” is not smooth at all anymore. It was slow but smooth in the old, but now it’s slow and not smooth.
   4) The font is too small in the new version.
   5) The user interface is worse in the new version in many ways, thus making it difficult and unintuitive to use compared to the old, e.g. the hidden soft keys and slow and unnecessary animations. And the new color scheme just looks bad.
   6) Why does the “preview” function download the complete data, and then after subscribing the channel the data is downloaded again completely when opening the same channel?

   But the biggest problem with the whole Channels system is that the content is extremely limited, unreliable with over a year old “news” shown, and also the news are shown in seemingly random order. Channels is a bad solution for a non-existing problem, and not even that well made to make it fun to use. It’s easier, faster, cheaper, and more reliable to read the news directly from your favourite mobile web sites.

   Comment by kanta — December 10, 2007 @ 11:46 pm

9. Can’t say I’m that pleased with the programs stability. It crashes constantly. I first had many problems connecting, I guess. The program would just sit there and do nothing. Only when I hit exit I noticed the ‘canceling updates’.
   When I went into ‘All channels’ and tried to get a preview of Euronews (1005kb???) it crashed.
   The next time I subscribed to the channel and looked at it through my channels. Looked like it was going to work, but when I opened up one of the articles, it crashed.

   Now I have made another attempt to look at a news item and it seems to work.

   I also notice the rotating now. Should I remove rotateMe 2.0 b4? It’s not running, but it is installed.

   Comment by localhost — December 10, 2007 @ 11:52 pm

10. Hi,

    Just tried Channels and was going to give some feedback (first time I’d do that in the beta labs) but I was very disapointed that clicking the “feedback” button just lead to a feedback form.

    I expected to see a discussion forum where all beta testers could discuss the applications with each other and with the developers. It would be a lot more in the beta “spirit”. A feedback form just doesn’t cut it as you have no way to know whether your ideas have already been suggested and you can’t react to other people feedback.

    Is a beta testers forum in the works?

    Comment by vioccc — December 11, 2007 @ 12:52 am

11. As for the feedback itself, I’d have loads to say about the UI. As others already pointed out, it seems rather obvious here that the developers focused on implementing show-off features which ultimately only decrease the application’s usability and do not even look that good. I would have much preferred for example to have a Page Up / Page Down shortcut (essential for this kind of application on a keyboard driven device) rather than a fancy scrolling main menu which wastes the entire screen to display only one option at a time.

    Regarding the “high-level” feedback, I am also a little bit puzzled as to what this application is really all about.
    I guess that, if bundled in the phone, it would make a nice application for “normal” users who are not interested in fiddling with the web browser and do not know what RSS or “Web feed” mean. This would be good marketing material: all the news at your fingertips. Nothing really new or terribly exiting though.

    What I initially hoped Channels would be was a proper RSS reader with a built-in RSS feeds catalog. Now that would nice. It would satisfy both the “normal” users (who would not even need to know what RSS is and would just use the catalog as in the current version of Channels) and the power users (who would ignore the feed catalog and just import their own feeds).
    I haven’t yet spent too much time looking at this but at first sight, it seems that there is a lack of any such application on S60 at the moment. The Web browser RSS reader is far too basic. Third party news readers I’ve seen looked quite ugly. I’d love to have a practical, full-featured and beautiful RSS reader for my E90.

    Comment by vioccc — December 11, 2007 @ 1:13 am

12. Thanks for releasing such a polished application as a beta.

    I love how simple it is to subscribe and to read feeds, and how the application automatically reverts to fullscreen mode when reading an article.

    it would be fantastic if a reader like this was integrated into the s60 browser (replacing the old reader).

    Comment by Paul A — December 11, 2007 @ 2:01 am

13. […] Here another initiative from Nokia Labs, the Nokia Channels application. More infos on the Nokia Beta blog. […]

    Pingback by biskero.org home page — December 11, 2007 @ 6:15 am

14. Obviously the display layout doesn’t take advantage of E90 internal display. That’s quite a minus…

    Comment by kirma — December 11, 2007 @ 2:12 pm

15. For those who don’t have a device that supports auto-rotate, I made a video of what it looks like on my N95.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rPqqvWgFWY

    Comment by wubbahed — December 11, 2007 @ 6:08 pm

16. Hi! I’ve used the older Kanavat app regularily to read News on my way to work - it’s a great way to kill 15 minutes in the subway. At least Helsingin Sanomat is providing very high quality news - the same that you can read in the actual news paper.

    Some initial thoughts on the new version:
    - Very clumsy and slow scrolling, far from being smooth
    - Screen estate is now much more efficiently used than earlier
    - Page up/down badly needed (maybe 2 and 8 keys like in Opera Mini?)
    - The popping ad is really irritating and confusing. I am not against having ads but now they distract too much. Maybe it could be placed after each news text?

    I really look forward to a new improved version!

    Comment by Petteri V — December 11, 2007 @ 6:34 pm

17. Finally I will be able to read some real news on my commute to work - as opposed to the trash thats dished out in London newspapers !
    i have a few feature requests :

    1. Iconifying the display layout might make the screen easier to navigate - too many key strokes being wasted now .
    2. Capability of changing the default font size .
    3. The auto-rotate feature craps itself when you put the phone flat on a table .An option to turn off the auto-rotate would be nice
    4. option to see how much memory your downloaded papers are using up on your phone .
    5. Integrating this product with an RSS reader will make this a full fledged news reader ,

    Comment by rajesh s — December 12, 2007 @ 10:30 am

18. Dear Bloggers,

    I am very delighted to read your comments about our Channels Beta3 service release. Throughout this project our intention has been to create a world class mobile media experience with superb content and great features, so we are extremely happy to see ALL of your comments, criticism and improvement ideas alike.

    Within the first 24hours we have been truly amazed on the reception of this service. Some people have already put videos on the rotation feature in YouTube and many more have been writing about the service on blogs. Furthermore, we have seen over 1700 people from about 100 countries and more than 330 different carrier networks to take it into use – worldwide. Thanks for your support and interest! This is just awesome Naturally this puts a lot of pressure on us to meet up with your needs and wishes.

    Let me quickly comment on a few things that have already been brought up:

    ** “the first page is ugly as hell (”stop following the news etc”). change it!”
    tt: This will disappear from the final product. Until then the splash will provide you some information about the beta release you are currently using. But, of course we could try to make it a bit more appealing for Beta4

    ** i don’t like the fact that donwload bar is hiding.
    tt: This is actually a bit of a bug, and we will put this on our fix list.

    ** why help files weren’t “embedded” in the installation file
    tt: We are waiting to receive our final UI translations for 48 different languages, including help texts. Whether we include all help texts in the basic SIS or have just English there and let the other languages be downloaded when in need still needs to be decided.

    ** I don’t understand where this application fits.
    tt: This is a very good point. From media consumption perspective it should fit exactly for that - to consume media on the mobile. Who knows, in the near future the application (icon) may completely disappear leaving us just the media brands visible! Or what do you think..??

    ** …useful but still looks ugly
    tt: As said above, the application’s user interface may become “obsolete” but media interfaces will always remain. As with many things in life, also UIs have a limited life span and will need to be refurbished from time-to-time with something more contemporary and fresh.

    ** The only suggestion I can make right now is something you’ve clearly already planned: add more service providers.
    tt: Point taken!

    ** The font is too small in the new version
    tt: We are moving towards using system fonts and introducing Unicode support (bringing support for Arabic, Thai, etc). I guess it would be a nice feature for the user to be able to change font size on the fly…

    ** …I initially hoped Channels would be was a proper RSS reader with a built-in RSS feeds catalog
    tt: This is an interesting comment. Dont you feel WidSets and other (pure) RSS readers already fill this space well enough? Our vision has been that branded media feeds in Channels should have much more content and be more comprehensive than just news headlines.

    ** …doesn’t take advantage of E90 internal display.
    tt: This is a tricky one! We have utilised the E90 screen size but not to the maximum, true. Currently in the E90 internal display we copy a “double” screen mode using the same graphical components used with high resolution S60 devices such as N80, E60 and E70. But I agree, it would be nice to utilise more of the internal screen for content display. This is something we will most likely have to investigate further!

    ** Very clumsy and slow scrolling, far from being smooth.
    tt: PetteriV, can you send us feedback directly through the feedback button and tell what terminal where
    you using. We have worked on this a lot and made many improvements along the way. But much could still be done – agree.

    ** Page up/down badly needed (maybe 2 and 8 keys like in Opera Mini?)
    tt: This is good idea. We will take it into our feature roadmap!

    ** The popping ad is really irritating and confusing.
    tt: There are few reasons for the “pop-up” ad, one being the fact that we need to show and retrieve them while reading stored content. Hence it may be that an ad has not arrived due to latencies on networks when the actual content is already drawn on the screen – or even withdrawn from the screen. So, we need to find ways to detach the ads from the actual content. And this is by the way it is done in physical papers too, ads are always in their own columns separated from the actual article texts. But, we need to finetune how the ads appear! Let’s see how they feel after that.

    ** Iconifying the display layout.
    tt: Rajesh, could you elaborate more this idea of yours via the feedback button.

    ** An option to turn off the auto-rotate would be nice.
    tt: This is already implemented. Go to main carousel and choose Options > Rotate screen off.

    ** .. how much memory your downloaded papers are using..
    tt: Yes, we have a framework of memory management in plans.

    What comes to general and immediate crashes and bugs please report these to email: channels.support@nokia.com. We will work hard to iron those out

    Once again, many Thanks too all of You who spent the time to drop a few lines to us.
    yours, -tatu

    Comment by Channels, Editor-in-chief — December 12, 2007 @ 11:01 am

19. […] chieftain of our Channels team replied to your feedback: Dear […]

    Pingback by Nokia Beta Labs blog » Channels team boss-man replies to your feedback (thank you!!) — December 12, 2007 @ 11:19 am

20. For devices without auto-rotate can I manually rotate the screen like in the Web Browser? This seems to be a nice feature of the OS UI, but few applications provide the option in a menu!

    Comment by chetbox — December 13, 2007 @ 4:53 am

21. Dear Sir,

    Recently, about 9 months ago I purchased a Nokia 5200 from a loacal shop, of a friend of mine, selling all kinds of Nokia and Motorolla phones. A few days back, I wanted to get my Nokia serviced, as it was not clean. Your nokia service centers take about 6 to 8 hours in que in waiting to get your phone serviced or repaired, therefore due to paucity of time, I decided to give it to a local repair shop. Yesterday, I transferred some music, i wanted to listen, to my Nokia 5200. Surprisingly, I have noticed that the mini speaker in my Nokia 5200 is not functioning to its best. Its not functioning properly. I cannot enjoy the music. It’s take great pain to write this mail to you.

    Kindly look into the problem and reply for the same.

    Comment by Raminder — December 16, 2007 @ 6:23 am

22. Channels can’t be closed from Task List (nor the end call button).

    The incremental update is corrupting the data, ending up with duplicate/empty news categories and articles.

    If content was downloaded text only, and then loading all content is switched on, perhaps the incremental download should be able to load the images also for already loaded text-only articles?

    The ads interfere with the menu. The ad pops up and the ad link is followed when using and selecting an item from the menu.

    Sorting headlines takes forever.

    There should be more than 16 headlines shown.

    The headlines view should be more compact. The full headline (or at least two-three lines) should always be seen without highlighting it. Remove the empty space and images and show more text.

    The order of the subsribed channels should be changeable, i.e. the order the tabs in My headlines and the order in My channels. So that the most used could be moved to first in the list, i.e. faster to use.

    My channels should have similar hierarchy as All channels? The hierarchy should have a list of all channels?

    For some of Help the last lines of the text is not shown. Fix the incorrectly shown apostrophes as well.

    Comment by kanta — December 17, 2007 @ 11:45 am

23. Nokia Channels beta

    Nokia gaat door met het ontwikkelen van allerlei mooie applicaties. Nieuwste telg in het succesverhaal is Nokia Channels beta. Het programma is verkrijgbaar via betalabs. Met Channels kun je:

    Through Channels, international and local brand…

    Trackback by 127.0.0.1 — December 21, 2007 @ 10:31 pm

24. […] Nokia Beta Labs blog » Channels media service launched at Beta Labs maybe I’m confused, but this looks like little more than an RSS reader with Nokia ads put in (tags: nokia rss) […]

    Pingback by MobHappy » Blog Archive » links for 2007-12-11 — February 7, 2008 @ 10:08 pm

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