The PC Software for mobile devices, love ‘em or hate ‘em, are still here and perhaps for quite a while. Despite the fact that Nokia constantly declares their devices “mobile computers”, there are many task that can only be done or are facilitated by the PC software. Just think of reinstalling the latest firmware, editing many contacts or managing your files using the file manager on a much larger screen.  PC Suite, Nokia’s software interface between the mobile and PC was replaced by the bloated, media-oriented OVI Suite, but Now that Nokia is dropping the OVI brand, what should happen to their PC software?

1.Return to a task oriented interface

PC Suite’s interface was simple and based on specific tasks: if you wanted to edit contacts you would choose the contacts icon. There was a on-screen calendar and it even showed the amount of charge left. A specific icon for the file manager, images and backup. The same can be said about other commonly used tasks. Not only was the UI simple, but it was useful.

In comparison OVI Suite fills almost half of the available space with suggested apps and good chunk is taken up by massive icons showing media, contacts or files on your computer. While other task are almost hidden behind tiny icons. There’s nothing wrong with media, but dedicating almost the entire available space to media, not only makes it less useful, but it almost seems to almost suggest that those other hidden tasks are not as important.

Such a media-centric interface might look and might be useful if you only use your device for media consumption, but that’s rarely useful in the real world where you can to have instant access to feature like back or know that on Monday there’s soccer practice. That’s exactly what PC Suite managed just fine.

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Two updates are now available: one for OVI Suite and the Real Golf. OVI Suite has now been updated to version 3.1.0.74 while the Real Golf has been updated to version 1.2 (3). It’s great to see how almost all aspects of Nokia devices and software can be updated via either OVI Suite and SW Update on the devices. Only thing missing is the ability to detect and update third party software. As it stands there is no way of being automatically notified of updates for third party software. Currently only Nokia’s own software components, software or games notify you when there’s an update. Fire up your OVI Suite and start updating.

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One features that many modern desktops and laptops have, is the ability to do a bit-for-bit factory restore. Basically restoring the machine to the very exact same state it was when it came out of the box with all it’s pre-loaded applications, settings and other customizations through either an included DVD or separate partition on the hard drive. So how does this apply to the mobile space? Let me tell you.

As it currently stands, I’m not aware of any consumer friendly way to restore Nokia’s current Symbian^3 devices to the exact out-of-the box state, without causing any negative effects. The N900 is one exception to this rule, with a procedure that restores it to the exact factory defaults, but this method is exclusively for the N900, which you can find here, but it’s far from the ideal one-click option that I would consider “consumer friendly.” Any mobile enthusiast would agree that a complete factory default is critical feature for these devices: I know many mobile users that like to restore their devices from time to time, clearing out “junk” and bringing back that smooth operation you had when you first got your device. Or maybe you’re selling your device or giving it to family member or friend, having the ability to do restore your device will not only give them that fresh out-of-the box software, but it will remove all private data and those other customizations that isn’t really relevant for them.

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Eltima software has released their Syncmate software, a new solution for Mac and Nokia Synchronization. The software is currently limited to Nokia S40 and is offered in two editions: Free and Expert. 

With the Free Edition you can sync Contacts and Calendar data, view incoming and 
outgoing messages directly, all directly from your Mac. The Expert version, adds a few extra, including: Call History, SMS management, SMS export to txt, csv and html files and autosync.

The folks at Eltima were nice enough to give us 4 free licenses for the expert edition. Just leave a comment below, telling us what additional features you would like to see. The winners will be randomly selected.

This is a quick heads-up to let you know that Nokia Ovi Suite 2.1 has now graduated and can now be downloaded here. Those running the BETA should get a notification to upgrade to the latest version 2.1.0.87.

What I can’t understand is why the Nokia N900 still isn’t supported. The N900 is currently an orphan without any love from either PC Suite or OVI suite.

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Do you own a Nvidia CUDA-enabled graphics card? The entire list of supported cards can be found here. If so, there’s a much quicker way to encode your video into a format that’s suitable for playback on your Nokia devices, especially the 5800 XpressMusic and N97 with those large screens.

Up until now, most of the power of a graphics card has been used for gaming. As it turns out, modern graphics cards (GPUs) with their parallel multi-core architecture can in some cases perform certain task faster than even the fastest CPU! Enter the guys from Elemental Technologies with their CUDA-enabled application called Badaboom.  Badaboom uses the general purpose parallel computing architecture found in modern Nvidia GPUs to encode video at an accelerated pace, in many cases beating even the CPU!

If you’re familiar with video encoding, you’d know that it can be long process, that uses most of the CPU’s power, slowing down overall performance on even the fastest CPUs. By using the GPU, the encoding process is not only done in a shorter amount of time, but also it frees the CPU for other tasks.

Encoding the video

Before performing any tests, it’s important to know that the Nokia 5800 accepts video in:

-MPEG4-SP, 30fps, VGA

-MPEG4-SP, 30 fps, nHD

-MPEG4-AVC, 30fps, QVGA

-WMV9, 30fps, QVGA

Badaboom comes with a few device presets like PSP, Zune or iPod, but  you can also customize the video output settings. Although there’s no Nokia preset, any device preset that has a QVGA output like the iPod Classic, Nano and Zune should work just fine with the 5800 XpressMusic. I also tried a customized video output at nHD and VGA resolutions without any luck. This makes sense since Badaboom uses MPEG4-AVC and with this format the 5800 is only capable of playing back at QVGA resolution. Badaboom does work as advertised: video is encoding is done shockingly quicker, with my CPU usage never going above 20%! This meant that I could perform other task without noticing any system slowdown.

Would I recommend Badaboom for 5800 and N97 owners? It depends. If you don’t have CUDA-enabled Nvidia GPUs you are of course out of luck here. Those that  just want to do the occasional video encoding should look elsewhere, like the free SUPER video encoder. But if you plan on encoding lots and lots of video and you own one of these GPUs than Badaboom is a must!

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Just recently I decided to move from PC Suite to the new OVI Suite. OVI Suites sports a few features that PC Suite lacks and a hidden one that I recently found out about are the DNLA (UPnP)-based Home Media Server capabilities. This basically comes down to using your UPnP based device, in this case either the N95, N95 8GB, N82, N78, N96 and probably the N85 and N79 to share and control your media among your PC, notebook or other UPnP devices. All of this is wirelessly done via WLAN. Previously Nokia recommended the Home Media Server by SimpleCenter as a separate add-on, but this functionality is now finally fully integrated into OVI Suite. With this added functionality OVI suite with its online services is quickly becoming a very impressive all-in-one solution. In case you don’t have OVI Suite and are still using PC Suite, you could always use the Nokia recommended SimpleCenter software or Windows Media Player 11.

To access the feature in OVI suite, go to Tools and select “Home Media Server.” Here you can select the folders you want to share or turn media sharing OFF altogether. The latest version of OVI suite can be downloaded right here.

Panoman is not unkown to us here at the Nokia Guide as we covered it during the launch of the N82 back in Novemeber 2007 .  The guys behind Panoman have released an updated version 3 that’s compatible with basically every S60 3^RD edition equipped Nokia device. This should come as good news for all of you who emailed me about not getting this app included with your N82 and this should give you N95 users the chance to try this out. Panoman basically allows you to take a series of pictures and and automatically stitch them together creating a single panoramic image. Panoman 3 brings a host of new features, adressing one of the most commonly asked for feature: support for higher resolutions! With support for higher megapixels this could bring a twist to contenders for the Nokia Creative monthly awards of the great and beautiful images posted on the Flickr N95 User Group.

Panoman 3 has also improved stitching quality quite dramatically and exposure differences between adjacent frames are smoothly blended. Other new features include:

- Exposure correction: PanoMan can automatically correct
- White balance: you can alter the balancing according whether it is sunny or cloudy
- Sound: play a sound with every frame captured
- Storage: store images on the phone or memory card

If your a N82 user with Panoman 2 and would like to update to the new version, or maybe you’re a N95 owner and want to try it out? Head on to the Panoman page and get your copy. I’m getting my copy this week, so expect a review pretty soon.

Nokia’s “Download Software” (software for the PC) has been getting new additions and totals more then 15 apps! So I wasn’t surprised when the Orb software showed up on that page. Orb lets you access your music, photos, and videos stored on your PC from a compatible Nokia device. With Orb, you can also get access to your home webcam on your Nokia device. Nokia also released an updated version of their PC Suite now at version 6.84. What has been changed? They have added some enhance to improve performance and stability and it now notifies you when new add-on applications are available. But to me the most important feature added is the ability sync files and folders! The Orb software can be found here and the update PC suite can be found here.