Nokia Xpress Beta app for Lumia phones

Technology

Nokia Xpress Beta app for Lumia phones

Close

Nokia Xpress is a cloud technology that powers a lot of Asha devices.

04 October,2012 01:19 pm

Nokia isnt stopping with its soon to be available Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 high-end smartphones. The Finnish handset maker has been experimenting with the Nokia browser for its S40 range of devices that compresses data before it reaches your device, thereby cutting down on data consumption.This technology is now coming to all of Nokias Windows Phone Lumia devices and it is called the Nokia Xpress. That said, for now, it will come with a beta tag.Nokia Xpress is a cloud technology that powers a lot of Asha devices currently in addition to all the previous S40 devices. Xpress for Lumia works with Nokia Xpress on the cloud and delivers a fast and an efficient experience by minimising the data consumed, in turn saving some battery power for you to get through the day.Nokias Beta Labs blog mentions greater details of the apps capabilities. For starters, it features a magazine mode that lets you view web-based content in a neat magazine layout. You can also tap on any word in an article and get a contextual search instantly on Bing, YouTube or WikiPedia.Xpress for Lumia also has a one-click language translation feature that can instantly translate your web page to the desired language of your choice, which is a great addition for travellers to help them get local information on the web.The app also allows you to store any page you have visited for a later read in offline mode. A feature called QuickLinks, automatically adds tiles for your frequently visited sites on the QuickLinks screen and orders them based on frequency of visit.Another interesting feature is the ability to download videos and other web content directly to SkyDrive, without consuming extra data. The videos can then be downloaded on to any device with SkyDrive.One may consider this as a niche app. Those with monthly data plans of 2-5GB wont find it of mush use. But certain markets that offer premium data rates or if youre on international roaming, this app is definitely worth it.Nokia brought the Xpress browser to the recently launched Asha 308 and Asha 309 devices. At the launch, the company also unveiled the Nokia Nearby web app that helps people discover new places by searching nearby locations and presenting the options on a map. A new web-based tool, Nokia Xpress Web App Builder, also debuted to help publishers create web apps for Asha Touch devices.