Nokia Headlines launched: Nokia Channels rebranded and reloaded
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Even though some of the more technology-savvy folks don’t understand why somebody would want a branded media service and a content discovery system in the world of open internet and RSS readers, Nokia Channels Headlines keeps going strong. Now, we have re-packaged and re-branded the concept as Nokia Headlines. Go try it and share us your thoughts!
Download Nokia Headlines here.
Note: you will lose your previous subscription list in the update, sorry…
Changelog:
New features:
- New name and icon: Headlines
- If the battery level drops below 14%, the intelligent content background updater stops automatically.
- After reboot background updater starts automatically.
- Publication content packages are stored to memory card when available.
- Possibility to offer “preinstalled” publications.
- Add content item added to Option menu in My content view.
- Possibility to fetch advertisements from publisher’s own Ad serving platform.
Key fixes:
- Memory leakage fixed when browsing back and forth on headline tabs.
- Memory full notification fixed.
- Minor UI fixes in All content and My content views.
Works well on my N95, though the progress bar stutters a bit. It was at about 125KB loaded, stood there for 5 seconds or so and then jumped to 380. Other than that it worked smoothly. And I like the new interface.
Comment by Bogdan Galiceanu — May 6, 2008 @ 8:18 pm
The instant I saw that annoying ad pop up I quickly uninstallled this app. No thanks, I don’t need ads to slow down my phone and annoy me. Oh and the inability to add my own content is another minus. In today’s world of free rss readers this has to be a complete joke.
Comment by cabby — May 6, 2008 @ 11:18 pm
Interesting app but will only be benefical if all main players come on board. ie: More National Newpapers, tech digests etc.
Please make sure to add more “channels” to make this app more functional on a daily basis. Otherwise existing apps like Resco News and Widsets (even though its desperately slow on N95-2 for some reason) will stay on end users phones.
Comment by weareborg — May 7, 2008 @ 12:00 am
First thoughts. I’m using a N95 Original
The Add at the bottom is a bit annoying, I clicked on it 3 times when trying to add “The Sun” to my list (Which happened to be at the very bottom of the list).
Hard to see what is selected as the options list closes as soon as you click on an option. I tend to go back into to to make sure the item i selected was changed. A bit annoying.
Also if the list of Headlines go off of a page the bottom entry is obscured by the Menu Bar at the bottom. (For some reason they didn’t slide out of view every time)
Also it seems to Close (Crash????) some times when I select a new subscription for the first time. I then have to start the program again and select the Channel again for it to load correctly. Don’t know if it needs to do this to activate the new channel or not!!
Also can you add that it uses the Accelerometer to change the Layout
Thought i was going mad when it didn’t rotate when i slid my phone open in the other direction and it didn’t change! :D:D
But all in all, it’s a good prog with a few minor annoyances
Comment by Solitaire — May 7, 2008 @ 2:04 am
[…] Nokia Headlines launched: Nokia Channels rebranded and reloaded […]
Pingback by Nokia Launches Channels | ExeHome.com — May 8, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
Hard to see what is selected as the options list closes as soon as you click on an option. I tend to go back into to to make sure the item i selected was changed. A bit annoying.
Comment by Adeel Ayub — May 8, 2008 @ 4:01 pm
[…] over at the Nokia Beta Labs, Nokia Channels was updated and renamed to Nokia Headlines. Personally, I’ve no use for the application. You can check it out here, it offers a branded […]
Pingback by What’s Cool About Nokia Headlines — May 9, 2008 @ 3:09 pm
I don´t know if it is a bug or is just a behavior “by design”, but even when you disable automatic updates in the configuration menu the content background updater try to connect to the network (wireless or 3G) at regular intervals, I could assume that it impacts battery life, even if not it will be useful that the feature to disable automatic updates works as expected.
My device is a N95-3 firmware version 11.2.009.
Comment by Juan — May 9, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
I wouldn’t call the background downloader “intelligent” - it’s rather quite stupid, downloading full 17 MB every 30 minutes, emptying the battery in a few hours, and causing a huge phone bill. This all even if the program is not running. And it doesn’t seem to speed up the program at all, so what’s the point?
Add to this that the program is still horribly slow (”sorting headlines” yawn…) and the new interface is the most unintuitive ever, topped with the ridiculously annoying ads and lack of quality content.
The name change Channels -> Headlines tells all about the lack of vision for this service. It has now apparently become yet another bad, limited, and slow RSS reader. Uninstalled.
Comment by kanta — May 10, 2008 @ 10:34 am
For the least few days, headlines is just unable to connect… I uninstalled, reinstalled, used different connections…
No way…
Pffffffffffffftttttttttttttt !
The new version was anyway less stable than the previous one on my E61i and was crashing several times a day…
Comment by Tom — May 11, 2008 @ 2:27 pm
yes, have the same problems, the program isn´t downloading any data. What´ s wrong suddenly, you have server problems?!?
have to say, that i like headlines altogether very much. its nice to have full articles, which i can read offline in a very well designed platform. eg widsets just sucks, as i only get some few headlines and not the full articles. i dont mind the ads at all, they are not popping up when i read the actual articles. i think it is a good alternative to all the fast food rss readers.
BUT, please get the button “upgrade service automatically” working, as i really don´t want headlines to connect 5 times a day to download many megabytes and drain my battery. and are you actually getting some more content in your boat?
c
Comment by Christian — May 11, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
Same here, unable to add any headlines or update. Only the ads are working. They are nerving and its not like I am getting any quality content which is not available free via any RSS feed. Why should I receive ads and get nothing in return?
Comment by Steve — May 11, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
It keeps trying to connect to the Internet even though the update is set to manual in the settings. It does so, even if you haven’t executed the application, because its update server executes at startup. Very obtrusive and annoying.
I uninstalled it found again my peace of mind…
Comment by Vassilis — May 13, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
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Pingback by Nitrio Mobile Blog » Blog Archive » Nokia Headlines launched: Nokia Channels rebranded and reloaded — May 14, 2008 @ 6:58 pm
I am using E90. This app is very slow and sluggish - it missess keycommands.
).
I find it easy to use, and the UI is (for me, at least) somewhat intuitive.
But this app really needs far more speed and usefull content - like this it is of no use for me (I cannot stand a thing that missess commands that I give to it
Comment by Arsi — May 17, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
So yeah, interesting app, same problem as a few above. I don’t want the app downloading content in the background. So I changed the settings. And… it didn’t accept. Although I deactivated automatic updating, it kept connecting each 30 min. And downloading a huge load of stuff I don’t have a clue where it went. Mind you, there’s 100Mb worth of downloads I need to find where it is (because my memory card shows it has 100Mb less than yesterday, the logs show Headlines downloaded this amount but I really don’t know what would make 100Mb worth of content). I don’t care about the adds, actually I need then, as I work with mobile marketing and advertising. But please, fix this bug.
Comment by Terence — June 4, 2008 @ 1:23 pm
Headlines does seem to like any other connections (email, web etc.), since it asks to close all those connections as soon as I start the program. Headlines is also extremely slow: when I see an article I like nothing happens when I select it. It seems to download the same updates again and again unsuccessfully. I cannot turn the updates off and selecting an offline status is confusing (don’t know offline is selected and when it is supposed to update recularly). It would be nice if I could choose how often it updates or not at all. Also, when I press an article to read it would be nice if it was already on the device. Or even better if it was possible to have only the headlines on the device and after when I select an article, the device would download it. And please add more international content (for example german newspapers).
Comment by Tomi — July 10, 2008 @ 2:21 am
I’ve been using this app daily for months, and as it’s been updated it’s got better and better. I just flashed my ROM and now it’s gone. I’m very very sad it appears not even to be downloadable “as is”!
Comment by Nettie — July 31, 2008 @ 9:40 pm
Dear All
Today I got the notification when starting the app. that Nokia headlines is not working anymore. When trying to delete the app. the phone hangs (Nokia E90), how to get it off my phone ?
Thanks.
Comment by Eric — September 7, 2008 @ 11:17 pm
Eric, never heard about such problem… Did you try to remove it from your Application Manager?
If it doesn’t work, try rebooting the phone and removing the app again (from Application Manager).
If it still crashes, I hope I don’t have to go as far as to recommend re-flashing the firmware via www.nokia.com/softwareupdate (urgh…)
Comment by Tommi Vilkamo — September 9, 2008 @ 8:27 pm