Nokia Mobile Search on S40 and S60 devices

Rating: active idle is alive

by Bena Roberts

Yesterday I attended the Nokia mobile analyst day to embrace Nokia’s Mobile Consumer Internet Services. As a specialist on mobile search, my take on the event was very specific. But what I found is that increasingly each sub-segment of any mobile strategy in mobile demands search and discovery.

Nokia brandished new mobile devices such as Xpress Music phones and also the n-gage. But I am not a device analyst and it’s the services and the linkage that really caught my eye.

The user interface is essential for the Nokia Xpress Music devices. For the first time the mobile content search is available as a client on these devices and all new S40 and S60 devices moving forward.

The mobile search on the S40 devices will be from Yahoo! and Windows live (search and IM). The mobile search on S60 will be Yahoo! (search and images search); Windows live (all services) and local search.
So basically the current downloadable client will become a feature on the active idle screen.

I tested this a few times yesterday and did a couple of content searches using the on device search function (available on S60 devices only).

I will do a full review of this and an analysis of Nokia content search vs Abaxia’s idle screen search (going to be launched on Orange) in the next issue of The Mobile Search Analyst.

For another account of the evening see: msearchblog.

Related News:

1. The Idle Screen
2. Idle Screen Mobile Search: Nokia and Google mobile search client for S60 devices
3. Lunch with Orange and Abaxia
4. Mobile Search Analyst
5. Telefonica Yahoo!