07 May 2009

Yet Another NBL Update
Nokia Friend View Gets Support For 5th Ed

A touch optimized version of experimental Nokia's Friend View application is now available for 5th Edition of S60 platform.

Client is sucessufully tested on on the Nokia 5800 XM and should works just fine on forthcoming Nokia N97 as well.

I've briefly tested it on my 5800 and it indeed works just fine with touch controls but it is still not true finger friendly application and there's a plenty of room for improvements in usability and interface and first of all we need to get rid of these small UI controls that require stylus!

Anyway, in case you have already installed a 3rd edition version of the you should first uninstall it and then install the touch version.

Depending on where you live or travel, on your schedule and mood, you can adjust the Friend alerts’ meeting zone (options: More: Settings - Friend Alerts & Meeting zone) to define how close your friends should be to get alerted.

This update also brings some minor bug fixes and various small enhancements that are probably not very visible to many but meaningful nevertheless. Nokia Friend View is a location and micro-blogging service that helps you stay in touch with your close friends. It let’s you share where you are and how you feel from home, work, or on the go. With Friend View it is easy to meet up at only a moment’s notice.

FAQ & concerns

Maps & Cache: Friend View does cache maps in your phone’s memory card, so they are not downloaded more than once (unless you clear the cache yourself). There sometimes can be some slowness of the previously cached maps shown on screen, and this has led to a possible misconception about the loading of maps.

Also, as some of you have noticed, we’re following the Sports Tracker look-and-feel in order to share map content.

Our map content cache is shared with this version of Sports Tracker. This is the reason why Friend View maps are different than Nokia Maps, which may be on your phone already.

Location & Standby: If you have Location Sharing ON, your GPS (precise location) or Network-based (approximate location) are updated to the server and shared with your friends periodically. And while Friend View is in the background (or standby mode), your location is still updated but this happens less often.

In this way your phone saves battery. So far, Friend View does not load information from the server while it is kept in the background, it only updates again when it comes to foreground (a blinking icon on top-left corner indicates searching network) . Your location might seem old , when the application comes from background to foreground, until the foreground application re-acquires your position from GPS or network based location.