Ovi is Nokia’s cloud of (mostly free) internet services, comprising contact and file backup, calendar, photo and video sharing, mapping, music and more. Although it has just one name, Ovi is actually a collection of separate applications – and soon to be an entire standalone application store a la Apple’s App Store or the Android Marketplace.

The Ovi Store isn’t set to launch until May of this year but that doesn’t stop you from get more from the services on offer now. We’ve taken a look at Contact and Calendar, finding them easy to setup, use and manage.

The best place to start is at www.ovi.com, where you can register your phone and set up synching, which is free. This is pretty easy, with the website sending you a text message to add Ovi to your standard S60 Sync menu option (make sure you include your country code!).

Synching over 1000 contacts to the Ovi cloud took under a minute ising a Nokia N81’s Wi-Fi connection. Viewing the contacts via the Ovi web portal showed they copied across accurately, although my Groups had not been copied across at all – despite there being a Groups option on the web. Addresses were also copied slightly strangely, ending up under the Business tab. The Calendar function worked exactly as you expected, synching events one or both ways.

For both functions, searching entries was fast and easy, and the web portal also makes it easy to add entries manually. Unfortunately, you can’t import contact or calendar entries directly to Ovi’s web page from Outlook or other web services like Gmail.

Ovi might not be the ultimate cloud service, but signing up to it is a no-brainer. It’s free, easy to use and gives you a reliable back-up of your data should the worst happen and you lose (or drop) your mobile. Importantly, the website feels secure and is very, very simple to use.

Details
Size: Web service/Share is 1.3MB
Price: Free
Download Ovi Contacts