S60 Blogger: Yahoo! Go V3 For Symbian

So, with much fanfare at CES 2008, Yahoo released the latest version of their Yahoo Go application for S60 devices, taking it up to V3. There was much anticipation beforehand, with people hoping that Yahoo had seen the errors they made in V2 (namely it being a Java app), and gone 'back to basics' and developed a native S60 app (a la V1). So did they take heed with all the bad that was written about V2? Did they Horlicks! Here is a quote from their press release: "Thanks to the feedback from many of our Yahoo! Go 2.0 users, this new product is designed to deliver more of what consumers want". Now, I'm sorry, but at no point did I ever read, from anyone, their pleasure at using the fanatastically brilliant V2 Java app, so why go and develop another? Was it the usual case of senior management being told what they want to hear from those below them?

I think the writing was on the wall right from the start. I would have expected that when it was announced, it would at least be available to download, wouldn't you? Nope, it wasn't. All we were greeted by was a "Please come back later" type message. Do you see what I'm saying here? Not a good start. Oh, and whilst I'm at it, I'll also moan about the 'US Only' release. Why oh why, do we keep having these regionalised releases of various things. It sucks. It also antagonises consumers. Luckily, as it happens, their 'US only' stamp on the download page wasn't really worth it, as I was able to download it in the UK.

Yahoo!'s press release is chocked full of big selling lingo, such as "Sets new standard for the mobile internet", "solidifying Yahoo!s leadership", and my personal favourite, which I am going to pick apart here, "Get Exactly What You Want".

Taking this latter quote, and loading up Yahoo! Go, I browse the carousel to find one of the options says the following:

Wow! Yahoo! must be good! They somehow know what my favourite websites are, and claim that I can add widgets of them. Fantastic. If this works, I'll eat my hat. One of my favourite websites is Jaiku.com. So I do a search for a jaiku widget.... none. Righto. Ok, maybe that was a step too far. I'll try an easier, bigger player, website and this one will definately work. Facebook.... widget search.....nope! Err hang on a moment here. Yahoo! said that I could get exactly what I wanted, and add widgets from my favourite websites and they seem to be falling flat here.

I know, I know what you are going to say about these widgets need to be developed, so give it time, it's still in BETA etc etc. To bastardise the good old Top Gun quote "Your Press Room is writing cheques your app can't cash".

It's like being told in a car dealership that their new model can run on water straight from the tap. Great! Thinks you. Only to find out after you have test driven it, that it will be able to run on water one day, they just haven't built the engine to do so yet, so until then, you will need to run it on petrol.

Anyway, enough of that now, lets have a short look at the actual application. It takes around 10 seconds to load up. That precisely 8 seconds after I lost interest. It uses up 5mb of RAM on my N95. That may be fine for me running V20 firmware, but for the large percentage of users running branded firmware, they are going to be running into 'out of memory' errors very soon. The carousel looks very nice, but the labels above the icons take far too long to appear. It's got mail, and news blah blah blah, just like V2, but it also has a fantastic icon to hear the latest Hollywood Buzz. Ooo, how enthralling! For interest purposes, I delved into this, just to see what it was all about. Well, I did a lot of reading, but not a lot, in fact no hearing whatsoever.

I'm getting more irritated by the app everytime I try and use it, so I'm going to stop.