Ovi Store Blues

I love the Ovi Store for simplifying what used to be an exhausting method of purchasing Symbian apps. Before the Ovi Store, purchasing a Symbian application was an exhausting cycle of:

1. Searching for your app online and with luck, landing directly on the developers website or the many online marketplaces which include Handango, PenReader, or Handmark, etc.
2. Purchasing that app using their payment processor of choice. Remembering to keep that email invoice safe by printing out the receipt or permanently storing in your e-mail inbox in case when you replaced your phone and needed to reinstall the app. With Handango, you would get charged a download fee if 30 days have passed since your first purchase so you not only have to keep your invoices, you have to save a copy of the installation file (.sis or .sisx).
3. If you’ve replaced your phone, installing your purchased app involves the following:
   • Email the developers with your purchase details and IMEI number.
   • Wait anywhere from 24hr – 4 days for a response with a link to the new installation file
   • Unfortunately for Nokia users & developers, there are 3 “versions” of Symbian that they may have to support if they wanted to cater to all markets.If you’re lucky, you might not get charged extra if you moved from a non-touchscreen phone like the Nokia E71x to a touchscreen phone like the Nokia N8.

Needless to say, I’ve become a digital packrat with copies of (almost) every Windows (Mobile), Android, Symbian application I’ve ever purchased. So, I was very relieved when the Ovi Store came out because I finally had a source that would *always* be available for me to download from. When you purchase an app on the Ovi Store with either a credit card (you’ll have to pop out your SIM for this option if you are in the USA) or operator billing (i.e. you get billed when you get your monthly phone bill), you get an email receipt of your purchase and the Ovi Store stores this information so that reinstalling your app is as easy as clicking the “Download” button that will appears on apps you’ve purchased or downloaded before.

Unfortunately, there is a fly in this ointment. Did you know that if you click the “Download” button 5 times, you will be prevented from further downloads of the app that you paid for? I experiment with my phone a lot by using a lot of Nokia Beta Labs applications and other .sis/.sisx files that I find online. Rather often, I run into issues that I have no idea of troubleshooting and for me, reformatting is the easiest option. With my latest reformat, I was greeted with this message when I attempted to download Angry Birds, the $1.99 application I purchased and blogged about here:

Exhibit #1: Angry Birds

Exhibit #2: SoundHound


The notification reads: “You need to update this application to a newer version that is compatible with your current phone model“. For crying out loud, SoundHound was one of the first applications I bought for my Nokia N8 and I freaking blogged about that in this article about Ovi Maps Improvements and Some Recommended Apps on the Nokia N8!

Before I did the kneejerk “tweet about how horrible the Ovi Store is and threaten to blog about it” thing, I did the following:

1. I opened up a support request here: http://support.ovi.com/osc/home
2. Then, I sent a tweet to @NokiaCareUS and asked for their intervention.
   .bbpBox32208253072965630 {background:url(http://a1.twimg.com/profile_background_images/70457218/twitter-janetalkstech.png) #9AE4E8;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block}

   @NokiaCareUS I reformatted my #N8 2x in the 24hrs and I’m getting a “max # of download attempts reached” msg for Angry Birds!less than a minute ago via TweetDeckJane Ullah
   janetalkstech

To Nokia’s credit, @NokiaCareUS got back to me and shortly afterwards, sent me a direct link to download my Angry Birds installation file! As for my SoundHound app, I couldn’t find my email invoice. Expecting the trust bar to be raised higher for a $4.99 app, I went ahead & re-purchased it. This time, I printed my email invoice. 🙂

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Moral lesson of this very late blog post: Hitting the “5 installs” limit on the Ovi Store is not a death sentence. Open a support ticket or send a tweet @NokiaCaresUS (make sure you follow them so you can provide personal information privately).