Nokia users are using Nokia PC Suite since god knows when. It is a software I first used with a Nokia 6600 4 or 5 years back. It looks still the same, except for the updated icons maybe. Nokia was lacking behind Microsoft when it comes to a Mobile phone’s desktop counterpart application. They tried to succeed with Noka Ovi Suite 1.0 which was created in WPF for Windows XP, Vista & Windows 7 but it lacked SMS & Contact Management feature & Instead gave Music, video, photo management instead. Seriously Nokia, a phone is for making calls also.

Recently Nokia released Nokia OVI Suite beta 2.0. This time it is made using Qt Framework due to which it is very slim is size compared to over 200 MB for WPF based Nokia Ovi suite 1.0. Lets not talk about Nokia PC Suite 7.x as UI wise it was garbage. Though it was pretty fast & used to do everything fine. Development in Qt also gives Nokia the ability to port Ovi Suite to Linux & Mac OS. Since Nokia is a device vendor, the best way for them to make money & capture market share is to make there product available on all OS.

Sony Ericsson released SE File Manager & then Media Manager which bought a nice UI & experience. Nokia just one upped them with Ovi Suite 2.0. Things are clearly laid out in the new Ovi Suite.

Ovi Suite copy

The home tab has everything you will usually need. It shows a glance at all your contacts, SMS, Pictures & Music on the device. You can also connect the phone to internet for using GPRS/3G on your PC using this Ovi Suite. Nokia is touting Ovi suite as the only connectivity application you will ever need & they are not wrong. It can even update the phone’s firmware, applications from Nokia etc.

I don’t use Outlook anymore but it even supports syncing your contacts & notes, calendars with Outlook or some other colander. You can add contacts using Ovi Suite & it will sync it with the Phone next time when you sync it. I disabled automatic sync because then it takes time to get usable after starting.

Keep in mind that Ovi Suite has 2 contact lists. One is of your phone which can be seen after clicking the small arrow below the contact list which will then open the contact list of your Phone. What I did was to make changes to my contact list in my Computer once, then connected the phone via bluetooth & copied all the contacts to the Phone by dragging & dropping on the phone’s list.

Contacts

SMS is in the form of threaded SMS. Now I am someone who cleans his Sent items folder so its of no use for me. But for those who don’t, its actually good. You can also make smart filters which will sort SMS they way you define. Not just that, you can see SMS by Contacts or a list of all SMS. It also shows the SMS saved in the “My Folder” of SMS application. Though I prefer the old PC suite way in which it used to show SMS saved in folders inside “My Folder” in a tree view. I am filing a bug, hope Nokia is able to incorporate that feature.

SMS

You can also use Ovi Suite to sync your Music, but I prefer Windows Media Player for that which automatically converts music to WMA & my Phone as well as PC are in Sync. For some reason Ovi suite doesn’t converts songs, it just copies them as they are.

If you have Ovi Suite connected to your phone via Bluetooth then it shows a notification when there is a new SMS or Call in the system tray too.

From what it seems, Nokia is trying to bring an experience unrivaled by any other Phone manufacturer. They now have there own music store too which makes sense as people are using more & more there phones for there music needs as well as video. Having an all in one Suite like Ovi Suite can make the N Series phones just more user friendly. You can download Ovi Suite 2.0 from Nokia Labs