Qik Premium: video downloads, higher quality, Nokia only for now
Qik has finally gotten around to charging its customers this week with the announcement of Qik Premium, a new service that employs both a new phone client and some tweaked back-end stuff to offer users a handful of new features. The biggies appear to be MPEG-4 video downloads straight from the uploaded segments on Qik's site and some sort of higher-quality transcoding algorithm with faster playback that won't be available to standard, non-paying folks. That's not all, though -- Qik Premium is the gift that keeps on giving, because they're working on the ability to upload videos from your phone's in-built camera app next. To kick off Premium on the right foot, Qik's going back to the platform where it started -- Symbian -- for a new release for S60 that's available now in the Ovi Store; long-term pricing is an open question, but for the month of March, they're running a $4.99-a-year special.
