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Exclusive Video: Visiarc’s “Mobile Documents” for Nokia

This one was a total exclusive. Peter and his team of mobile gurus from Visiarc have had a chat with our friend Rafe from All About Symbian — but as far as I know, we’re the first to publish an in-depth video overview of what could, potentially, be some earth shattering stuff. This is the kind of thing I could see Google buying and re-branding as a Gmail client.

Take ten minutes, get yourself a coffee and sit and watch Peter’s walk-through demonstration. To begin with, expect to think ‘oh, that’s neat’. Toward the end, I hope you’ll start to think ‘ahhhh, now this is rather smart’.

And remember, everything you’re seeing is being done via a GPRS connection. We tried filming this whole thing three times outside at the Mobile World Congress and each time Peter’s 5800 Nokia kept on dropping wifi signal. So we reverted back to GRPS.

And it still works phenomenally well.

Here’s the video:

47 COMMENTS

  1. I still swear by the fact that the Gmail client is one of the three most powerful applications available for mobile devices today, the other two being Google Maps and Opera Mini. With Gmail you can search through gigabytes worth of email, view conversations as conversations, it's just powerful.

    You poked fun at Google buying this company, well this is what the Gmail application is, but instead of being for text based documents, it is for actual files.

    Good luck with their patent request for server side attachment manipulation, I've been doing that for a while now. Just go to the mobile version of gmail in your browser, find an attachment you sent to someone, click forward, change the subject line and the text in the field and boom: server side attachment manipulation.

    Granted what I described above is a kludge, it can still be done. File manipulation is not possible yet with the current Gmail application from Google.

    Now that I think about it … they should buy it and rebrand it!

  2. This is amazing and GPRS! I wonder what it takes on the server side. I assume a local service. Truly impressive. Oh and my girlfriend works for this company in a way…

  3. Excellent – like all good stuff it just works, and gets out of the way.

    So nice to see this on what will be by far the biggest touch platform in the world, S60 Touch. I also can't imagine the experience being any better on an iPhone (sorry but being able to pinch zoom is not significant enough), so it knocks the argument that iPhone offers a better UI experience.

    With deployed S60 handsets in the hundreds of millions (rather than the 17 million of iPhone) these guys should do well 🙂

  4. Very cool; glad I waited until the end of the day to check this out. Ironically, I just pressed my Internet Tablet back into duty in order to do just what this app is proposing, but I’m doing it much in a more cludgy manner.

    Really liking the performance. Would make for a heck of a change to the default email and document viewing apps on S60, BB, and WinMobile devices that’s for sure.

  5. *Shaking my head in disbelief*

    Firstly because no matter how many times we saw this app, it still impressed..
    (video)

    Secondly because anyone might think that an application significantly improves the UI to the point of being better than an iPhone.
    (comments)

    A-MAZ-ING.

    Nice work Ewan, I'm really glad we got Visiarc on the record.
    Loving that there's still great mileage in the MWC content too…
    (with Rome and now Prague to follow suit)

    Showing the big boys how it's done… 😉

  6. > Secondly because anyone might think that an application significantly improves the UI to the point of being better than an iPhone.

    You're right, it doesn't improve the overall UI to being better than an iPhone, how could it? – I almost think you're deliberately misreading the comments 😉

    But it does show that an iPhone level of UI experience is perfectly possible on other platforms – i.e. the IPhone is the current standard setter, and this app is now a standard setter on S60 Touch, proving iPhone like experiences are possible, that the iPhone is not automatically always better and with an incomparable UI experience, and that other apps, and indeed the general system UI on S60 touch, have no real excuse for not matching an iPhone level of UI experience. It's about design and engineering rather than being fundamentally impossible. Which S60 touch owners should be pleased about, app vendors pleased but challenged by, and Apple nervous about (as the UI is rapidly becoming the only significant thing the iPhone has going for it vs. other platforms).

  7. The iPhone *does* offer a better UI experience than *anything* S60 have ever done.

    That's a fact.

    'an iPhone level of UI experience' – What?! On a 5800? Are you mental? You've used one right?

    I'm *really* sure Apple are quaking in their boots…

  8. Great video. And just goes to show why Nokia ain't that obsessed with the iPhone fad.

    Though the argument about S60 being deployed on hundreds of millions devices is a dud. Nobody'll be using S60 FP1,2,3 phones in 3 years so there goes all these 100ds of millions… And this was FP5…

    There's a joke, that probably sounds much better in Russian, but I'try to translate it:

    There are two bulls standing on the hill. A young and eager one and the old and experienced. And there's a heard of cows at the bottom.

    The young one can not stand still, is jumping around and nudging the old one:

    “C'mon pops! There's a whole heard of gals down there. Move it! What a chance! Did you see that one on the right!! WOW!! I Want here! NO, look at that one, the third on from the left! What a butt! Ooooh I want her!!!! NO, NO, NO, THAT one in the middle!!!! The one I dream about!! C'mon pops! We are wasting our time! We'll miss our chance if we won't start moving right now!!!”

    The old bull watches the youngster, smiles and says:

    “Relax son. Breath deaply. RELAX,I tell you!… Now. We will just stay still for a while. Then we'll just calmly start walking down the hill. Easily get down there, next to them …..

    AND THEN WE”LL F&^%&N GONNA HAVE THE WHOLE HEARD TO OURSELVES!!!!!!! “

    Well, ever since iPhone was announced, Samsung (F490, anyone?), LG and many others remind the of that young bull. And Nokia…

  9. Clearly we’re speaking different languages… 😉

    > The iPhone *does* offer a better UI experience than *anything* S60 have ever done.

    I wouldn’t go that far, but I’d agree with your general gist, as regards the system UI. My point is *THE APP*. It’s easily up to iPhone UI standards, even over GPRS. Thus showing it can be done on S60. Thus showing others can do it too, with decent design and engineering. Thus showing there’s no excuse for Nokia not to be able to do it on the system UI.

    Yes, on the 5800. As this site you write for just demonstrated. In the video. Above. 😉

  10. > Though the argument about S60 being deployed on hundreds of millions devices is a dud. Nobody’ll be using S60 FP1,2,3 phones in 3 years so there goes all these 100ds of millions… And this was FP5…

    So you’re assuming all those owners of S60 FP1, 2 and 3 will definitely not replace them with handsets running a later S60 release, that all or most will go to a completely different OS from other manufacturers? Hmmmm…..interesting theory…. (!?!??)

  11. 5 minutes in the demonstration the connection turns over to 3.5G and are not longer GPRS…. A few seconds later it slows down to “only” 3G, but still, much faster than GPRS. Actually, during the video the connection speed changes all the time.
    Over all, I'm pretty proud to be a Swede when I see software’s like this. 😉

  12. No, I am not assuming anything like that at all. Their next handset may as well be Nokia/Symbian based.

    What I am assuming is, that for now, most of these S60 owners do not really care that it's S60 phone. What they care is that it is Nokia and it has cool features. And will make their next purchasing decision based on that.

    BTW, I also heard that S60 is being merged into next Symbian Foundation OS release and will be phased out as a brand. If this is true, there won't be the any S60 phone to buy in the next few years

  13. We're quibbling about semantics here 🙂

    The point is, and I don't see how you can deny it, for the forseeable future there will be hundreds of millions of S60, or S60-compatible phones (no way will any future merger ditch S60 compatibility given the current user base and technology investment). Compared with the low double digit millions of iPhones. I know which is the more important software platform by far 😉

  14. Hi, I'm working for a telecom company in South East Asia and i'm very exciting at your post, and so i've make it a digg 🙂 viettelviettel adsl
    Granted what I described above is a kludge, it can still be done. File manipulation is not possible yet with the current Gmail application from Google.

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