Two Windows Phones will be unveiled then. The Nokia Lumia 900 will get its international launch, after being so far limited to AT&T in the US, and there will be a new entry-level Windows Phone called the Lumia 610 too. This may or may not be the Lumia 730 we heard about earlier (names can easily change, after all). Though that device’s 8 MP camera can hardly be called ‘entry-level’ even in this day and age, so perhaps the Lumia 610 is an entirely new design. If so, it will probably be the cheapest Nokia Windows Phone yet (its name seems to suggest that too). And if that will be the case, then it will surely run Windows Phone Tango, the newest iteration of Microsoft’s mobile OS, which brings support for lower-end hardware. Which the Nokia Lumia 610 should have, supposedly. So there’s your full circle.

As for the Lumia 900, since it will be launched bearing the same name, we don’t expect it to be any different than AT&T’s version, save for the probable exclusion of LTE support, since that technology isn’t particularly prevalent outside of the US just yet.

The famous successor to the Nokia N8 will also be unveiled during MWC. This camera flagship will be called the Nokia 808 PureView, and it’s quite clear that its camera will be its main feature. This device will run Symbian, just like we previously told you it would. That has to be because Windows Phone still can’t handle all of Nokia’s high-end imaging magic – there’s no other plausible reason, plain and simple.

Recent rumors and mumblings across the blogosphere said that this would be the last Symbian smartphone to be launched by Nokia. In that case, it surely will be quite the swan song for that particular operating system. Belle will probably be on board the 808, or maybe Nokia will surprise us with an even newer version (if there will ever be one, of course). We’ll see.

We’ve seen a purported sketch of the 808 PureView in December (when we thought it would arrive as the 803), and it certainly packs quite a hump for that camera, so it’s bound to be good – also seeing as how the N8 is still the world’s cameraphone king even today, after more than a year from its release.

Nokia will also announce three S40 phones at MWC – the Asha 302, Asha 203, and Asha 202. The Asha 302 was leaked earlier as the successor to the C3, and it will probably be Nokia’s cheapest QWERTY phone ever. As for the other two Asha phones, your guess is as good as ours at this point.

So there you have it. The summary of Nokia’s upcoming device launches. All of this is certainly pretty plausible, but this is a rumor after all, so treat it accordingly.

• Nokia Asha 201 now available at Vodafone UK for £45 on PAYG, Lumia 710 might be on offer too
• Swisscom mentions Nokia Lumia 900 launch date, says it actually meant to talk about Lumia 710
• CDMA Nokia Lumia 800 lands in China in March, Lumia 710 and Lumia 900 to follow
• Rumor: Nokia Lumia 910 with 12 MP camera will be available in Europe in May
• Nokia Lumia 800 (Sea Ray) and Lumia 710 (Sabre) leaked again

The operator is going to discontinue three devices before the end of this month, and a big name in March. The HTC Flyer, Nokia E6, and BlackBerry Torch 9860 have all apparently run out of time at Orange, since their End-of-Life is at the end of January. So by the day after tomorrow, don’t expect to see either of these in stores (unless they still have some unsold units lying around, that is). Needless to say, if you want any of these three phones badly (and on Orange), act fast, otherwise you may be disappointed.

Due to be discontinued in March is the iPhone 3GS. That will leave only the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S in the operator’s portfolio, which is certainly decent enough for Apple fans in the UK. Yet if for some reason you absolutely want an iPhone 3GS, you should plan to get yours before March.

These things do periodically happen in the mobile world, as the operators are getting ready to sell new devices, sometimes some of the old ones need to go. It’s only natural.

Via PocketNow

• Orange to launch iPhone in ten more countries
• Apple launches iPhone Your Life mini-site
• Apple delays white iPhone 4 again, won’t be available until “later this year”
• White iPhone 4 Being Tested With T-mobile 3G
• Apple iPhone 4S pre-orders: 1 million in the first 24 hours

Yet someone in Nokia’s Vietnam office may have jumped the gun and announced that date prematurely. For a few hours, there was a Web page available on Nokia’s Vietnam domain which clearly listed that the update would arrive on February 8.

That page has since been taken down, but the Facebook post on Nokia Vietnam’s account linking to the page remains intact (at least it is now). In that post, the February 8 is again clearly being mentioned. As for why the page at Nokia.com.vn isn’t anywhere to be found anymore, we’re guessing that this information wasn’t wrong, it simply was published too early. At least we’re hoping that’s the case. February 8 as the start of the rollout for the Belle update sounds very good to us, especially since Nokia could have waited until the 29th (and it wouldn’t have been the first time for Nokia making a deadline by a few hours).

As was rumored before, it looks like the Belle update won’t be downloadable over-the-air – you’ll have to use Nokia Suite to install it on your phone. That really is a pity, especially now that even Apple discovered the OTA update, to go back in time like this. Apparently that has something to do with the fact that the update is huge in size, but still, we wish this will be a one-time thing only.

Via Nokiapoweruser, Engadget, MyNokiaBlog

• Symbian Belle update will be out for existing Nokia smartphones in early 2012
• Nokia gives up on Symbian (the brand), promises Belle update for February
• Nokia’s Symbian Anna devices get a new bug fixing software update
• Nokia 603 leaked. Symbian Belle update to start on October 26?
• Microsoft Apps for Symbian Belle smartphones coming soon

Today, Nokia has added the 801T to its Developers portal. And everything you may want to know about this new smartphone is covered. So let’s dive right in.

The Nokia 801T will come with:

• Symbian Anna
• 680 MHz processor
• 4-inch ClearBlack LCD touchscreen
• 8 MP ‘full focus’ EDoF (extended depth of field) camera with 720p HD video recording
• VGA front-facing camera
• 230 MB built-in ‘C drive’ storage (Symbian fans will know what this is)
• 8 GB ‘mass storage’
• 256 MB of RAM
• microSD card slot with hot swap support
• quad-band GSM, TD-SCDMA support
• GPS
• Bluetooth 3.0
• NFC
• 3.5 mm headset jack
• 1,300 mAh battery
• Dimensions: 125.2x65x12.75 mm
• Weight: 170 g

It’s quite similar to the Nokia X7, albeit with that all-important (for China) TD-SCDMA support. Alongside the specs, we also get more pictures of the device from more angles:

Not that bad looking. We still have to wait some more for pricing information, as well as a clear release date. Though we are guessing that Nokia will aim to have the 801T on the market pretty soon, before the Chinese New Year shopping frenzy gets started. We’ll keep you posted.

Via MyNokiaBlog

• Nokia X5 and C5 TD-SCDMA phones officially announced
• Nokia quietly unveils the C5-00 5MP with S60 3rd Edition FP2
• Nokia N801T with Symbian Anna and NFC announced in China
• Nokia Sea Ray has (some of) its specs leaked
• Cheap Nokia X2-01 and Nokia C2-01 announced

The Nokia N801T runs Symbian Anna, and features a 4 inch display, mobile TV (there’s even an external antenna), NFC, 3.5mm headset jack, Nokia Maps, and a stainless steel case. We can see a front-facing camera, and there’s probably another camera of at least 5MP on the back.

The N801T could be released in China before the end of the year. Its price is not known for the moment.

Via Nokia (Chinese), My Nokia Blog

• Nokia C7 starts shipping as the world’s second Symbian^3 smartphone (video)
• Nokia X3 officially gets a CDMA / EV-DO candybar version (not for Verizon, but for China)
• Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type announced, the second S40 touchscreen phone (video)
• Nokia 700 Zeta press photos appear, don’t impress
• Nokia X7 and Nokia E6 announced, new Symbian Anna in tow

And now we have one more new Nokia-branded thing. An operating system, no less.

Today is Wednesday, December 21, 2011. Please mark this date in your calendar. It is today that Symbian has died. Finally and officially.

And, perhaps telling of the importance ascribed to it inside Nokia these days, that announcement was buried inside another announcement.

Nokia decided not to call Symbian Symbian anymore. The newest version of the OS, Symbian Belle, will be known from now on as Nokia Belle. Of course the OS is still there, alive and kicking (at least until Nokia’s transition to Windows Phone will be complete). It’s just that it won’t be called Symbian anymore.

This may have been done because the Symbian brand itself was pretty much worthless anyway. After many years of being basically shattered by the media, it just had to go. Although Nokia has been associated with Symbian (obviously), it’s clear which is the stronger brand. And it has prevailed. This may be an interesting attempt to shed a new light on Symbian-powered devices (make them more appealing to people who hate Symbian because the media told them to hate Symbian), or simply to get rid of the appearance that Nokia works with many different operating systems. From now on, for branding purposes, Nokia devices will either run Windows Phone or they won’t. Nokia Belle is something that you and I know is a smartphone operating system, but that bit of information may be irrelevant to many of those who’ll buy such a handset.

Alongside the brand change, Nokia finally announced when the Belle update will be out for existing devices which are currently on Symbian Anna (the N8, E7, E6, X7, C6-01, C7, and Oro). And, just as expected, it won’t happen this year. The update will come in February, probably around the end of the month if you ask us (that’s Nokia’s usual M.O., plus it’s when Mobile World Congress will happen, and we’re guessing that the Finnish company will announce the availability of the update then).

Nokia has also let us know that new N8, C7, and C6-01 units are now being dispatched across the world from factories running Nokia Belle. So if you buy one of these devices soon, you may end up getting one with Belle preinstalled. These units will arrive in China first, apparently, and they’ll make their way to other countries after that. There’s no clear time frame though.

• Nokia 603 leaked. Symbian Belle update to start on October 26?
• Nokia Belle update may be coming on February 8
• A new Nokia camera flagship with optical zoom to succeed N8 this spring. Still runs on Symbian
• Nokia 700 now available at Vodafone UK, free from £26 per month
• Skype app for Nokia Belle (Symbian) available for download

Today though, All About Symbian got word from the Finnish phone maker that the Symbian Belle update won’t arrive in 2011. Nokia didn’t say anything more specific than ‘early 2012′, but there are indications that at least in some parts of the globe the update will become available in February.

Let’s hope so. Symbian may be ‘dead’, but millions of people have bought one of the aforementioned devices which are now running Symbian Anna, and because they bought phones running a ‘dead’ platform, they certainly deserve to get this UI-changing update.

• Nokia Belle update may be coming on February 8
• Nokia 603 leaked. Symbian Belle update to start on October 26?
• Nokia’s Symbian Anna devices get a new bug fixing software update
• Nokia gives up on Symbian (the brand), promises Belle update for February
• Microsoft Apps for Symbian Belle smartphones coming soon

The update will bring your phone to version 20.2011.40-4 of the software. It’s a 218 MB download, and you can install over-the-air with no need for a computer to apply the update, although the procedure apparently does take a long while, so make sure you don’t start the update if you’re in a hurry.

The big things that this new version brings are music controls on the lockscreen, improved multitasking with better memory handling, and NFC tag reading capabilities. You can now shoot photos and videos with color filters (black & white, sepia, vivid, negative, solarize). Swype is now preinstalled, and Mail for Exchange sync is faster, noise cancellation is in too, swiping down to close apps is now on by default, and new indicators for charging and calendar are shown on the standby screen.

Some apps have also received updates. Such is the case with the Twitter app which now supports picture uploads to Twitpic, the Facebook app, Nokia Store, Ovi Music, Galaxy on Fire 2, Nokia Drive, Angry Birds, AccuWeather, NFS Shift, Real Golf 2011 and even the User Guide.

The update will gradually roll out to all regions. If your phone hasn’t yet notified you that it’s available, you can manually check by going to Settings > Manage Applications > Updates.

The rather old Nokia X6 has also received an update of its own, though in this case it’s not as big. It does, however, bring the Web browser found in the Symbian Anna release to the X6. A similar update has been available for the past few weeks for the 5800 and 5530, and now it’s here for the X6. Alongside the new browser, after you install the new software version you’ll find Nokia Maps 3.06 preinstalled, a better overall browsing experience, support for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), and support for non-ASCII characters such as Arabic or Chinese.

After updating, your Nokia X6 will be on software version 40.0.002. The update may not be available in your region or for your device yet, though it should reach all phones bought unlocked pretty soon. As usual, if a carrier meddled with your phone’s software, it’s up to it to allow this update through. And that may or may not happen.

Via The Handheld Blog, ZOMGitsCj, and Nokioteca

• Nokia 5800 and 5530 get new features via software update
• Nokia’s Symbian Anna devices get a new bug fixing software update
• Nokia X6 gets a software update to version 32
• Nokia E72, E52, N97 mini and other Symbian smartphones receive new software updates
• Verizon starts Motorola Droid Android 2.1 updates today

It’s now been almost three years since the Nokia 5800 started shipping, and it’s great to see Nokia still support this device. Granted, it was probably its best-selling touchscreen phone before the N8, but three years is a lot in the mobile world and the manufacturer could have just chosen to forget about the 5800.

But it didn’t. Therefore software version 60.0.003 is now rolling out for the 5800. The software version on its way to the 5530 is 40.0.003, but these are essentially identical in functionality, so we’ll only mention the changes they bring once.

Both phones will now have the Symbian Anna browser (version 7.3.1.33), Nokia Maps 3.06, support for international domain names, support for non-ASCII characters such as Arabic or Chinese, and a better overall browsing experience.

As usual, it may take a while for the updates to become available in your region, and that’s especially true if your phone came carrier-branded. Like all Nokia updates, these will reach your phone over-the-air, and you don’t need to use a computer to install them if you don’t want to.

Via SymbianTweet here and here

• Nokia E72, E52, N97 mini and other Symbian smartphones receive new software updates
• Symbian Anna for Nokia N8, E7, C7 and C6-01 available starting now
• Nokia’s Symbian Anna devices get a new bug fixing software update
• Nokia N9 gets a pretty big software update, X6 not forgotten either
• Nokia E66 and Nokia E71 software updates released

Anyway, during that announcement Nokia did say that it expects these phones to be available very soon, and the 700 is no exception. In fact, you can now pick one up from Vodafone UK.

The operator will give you a Nokia 700 for free if you sign a 24-month contract which costs at least £26 per month. For that amount of cash you’ll get 300 minutes, unlimited texts, 500 MB of mobile data, and 1 GB of BT OpenZone Wi-Fi each month. There are, of course, more expensive options for you to choose from, all the way up to £51 per month.

Or you can get a £20.50 per month plan, which comes with 100 minutes, 500 texts, 250 MB of data, and 1 GB of BT OpenZone Wi-Fi each month, but in that case you’ll have to pay £99 upfront for the phone.

It’s your choice. To go through all the options, head over to Vodafone’s website now.

• UK: HTC Wildfire S now available for free at Vodafone and Three in multiple colors
• BlackBerry Torch 9810 now up for pre-order on contract in the UK, free from £31 per month
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini and Mini Pro up for pre-order in the UK on contract, free from £15/month
• UK: Samsung Galaxy S II now available at Virgin Mobile, free from £40.85 per month
• HTC Desire S now available at Vodafone UK, free on contracts starting at £30 per month

Until then, though, here’s a neat bug fixing release that will take your phone to software version 025.007. It comes in at 1 MB, so it’s easy to download and apply. Nothing new is in this update, yet that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t install it as soon as possible. It may fix some nagging bugs, as well as enhance stability and performance.

The update comes over-the-air and is already available for some product codes. As usual, your phone may not get the update right now, but later. And if you have a carrier-”customized” version of a device, you may never get this update – that’s all up to your carrier.

Via All About Symbian

• Nokia 5800 and 5530 get new features via software update
• Symbian Anna for Nokia N8, E7, C7 and C6-01 available starting now
• Nokia N9 gets a pretty big software update, X6 not forgotten either
• Microsoft Apps for Symbian Belle smartphones coming soon
• Symbian Belle update will be out for existing Nokia smartphones in early 2012

The smartphone is the Nokia 603, which arrived sooner that we’d expected. Like the Nokia 600, 700 and 701 before it, the new Nokia 603 runs Symbian Belle. According to Nokia, the handset is “designed to appeal to first time smartphone users and those upgrading from older products.”

The 603 features a 3.5 inch ClearBlack display with 640 x 360 pixels, HSPA (up to 14.4Mbps), Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, NFC, GPS, free turn by turn navigation, Bluetooth 3.0, 5MP camera with 720p video recording at 30fps, 1GHz single-core processor, and a 2GB memory card pre-installed.

The Nokia 603 will be available in black and white, with several optional back covers (you can see them above). The smartphone will be out this quarter for about €200 ($275) before taxes and subsidies – certainly not a bad price for a device with that set of features.

To accompany the 603, Nokia has introduced the Luna Bluetooth headset – a “uniquely designed in-ear device with NFC pairing capabilities.”

The Nokia Luna Bluetooth headset will also be out this quarter. It will cost €69, coming in five color versions: black, white, green, cyan, and fuchsia. More details here.

Via Press release

• Nokia 500 with Symbian Anna and 1GHz processor announced (video)
• Nokia intros Mobile TV (DVB-H) headset for Symbian^3 smartphones
• Nokia E72 White Edition coming later this month (in Malaysia first)
• LG Optimus Black to come with changeable back covers
• Nokia announces Nokia 6600 Slide

Nokia World is the company’s annual ‘big’ event where all its major launches have happened for the past couple of years or so. This year’s Nokia World will take place in London on October 26 and 27 and it’s then when Nokia is expected to unveil its first Windows Phones.

However, it looks like the company hasn’t yet forgotten about Symbian, at least not completely, and so it will also announce the Nokia 603. This smartphone will run Symbian Belle, the latest version of that operating system, and will come with specs very similar to the previously launched Belle devices such as the 600, 700, and 701.

The Nokia 603 will have a 1 GHz processor, a 5 MP EDoF camera (‘full focus’, as Nokia likes to call it), a touchscreen with a resolution of 360×640 (which is what Symbian has been stuck with ever since S60 5th Edition), Bluetooth, HSPA, and Wi-Fi. The 603 will apparently come with microSIM support, and with interchangeable back covers.

No details have been leaked about when the Nokia 603 will be available in stores, or how much it will cost. Yet if we go by its specs, it should probably receive a price in the lower-midrange echelon of the market.

In other Nokia-related news, an interesting rumor has been making the rounds across the interwebs today. It says that the update to Symbian Belle for devices that are currently running Symbian Anna (so the Nokia N8, E7, C6-01, X7, C7, E6, and 500) will start rolling out on October 26.

Which, of course, is the first day of Nokia World. Now that would be nice, for Nokia to announce something like “and the Belle update is out… now!”. It would get Nokia fans clapping, and for the rest of the world, the sooner the update arrives – the better. It’s just a bit hard to believe. Traditionally, Nokia has been more into delaying such releases than any other company, so we’ll only believe it when we see (and hear) it.

Even if the update won’t come out this month, it’s almost certain that we’ll hear something more specific than “from Q4 onwards” about its release time frame. So if you have one of those pre-Belle Symbian smartphones, don’t throw it away just yet. The Symbian Belle update will breathe new life into your device, and who knows… lack of ‘star’ apps aside, you may even grow to like Symbian once again. One can hope. At least you can like it until you’ll be able to purchase one of Nokia’s new Windows Phones. That’s clearly what  the company would like you to do.

Via SymbianTweet and Nokia Tweet

• Nokia gives up on Symbian (the brand), promises Belle update for February
• Nokia’s Symbian Anna devices get a new bug fixing software update
• Symbian Belle update will be out for existing Nokia smartphones in early 2012
• Microsoft Apps for Symbian Belle smartphones coming soon
• Nokia 700 now available at Vodafone UK, free from £26 per month

Of the three, the Nokia 701 is apparently already available to buy in India. It’s recommended sales price is Rs. 18,999. The Nokia 600 and Nokia 700 will be in stores in India sometime during next month, thus missing Nokia’s initial estimate of being shipped in the third quarter of the year (yet if we’re honest, no one was expecting the company to ship them to all parts of the world so soon).

All three devices run Symbian Belle, which is the newest version of the mobile operating system, and the one that comes with a pretty big user interface revamp. Whether or not it’s too late in the game for that to count remains to be seen. All the phones have a 1 GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM. The Nokia 600 and 700 have 3.2-inch touchscreens, while the 701′s is 3.5-inch. Camera-wise, it’s a 5 MP affair for both the 600 and 700, while the 701 has an 8 MP shooter.

The Nokia 600 has a recommended sales price of Rs. 12,999, and the Nokia 700 is priced at Rs. 18,099. Nokia would clearly like for these devices to capture a sizeable chunk of the Indian midrange smartphone space, but it’s unclear yet if they’ll manage to pull that off.

Via FoneArena

• Nokia 5230 touchscreen phone announced; costs only €149
• HTC 7 Mozart launches in India on Tata Docomo
• Asus Eee Pad Transformer goes to India, priced at Rs. 32,999
• Nokia E7 launches in India, recommended price is Rs. 29,999
• Nokia C7, C6-01 and X3-02 Touch and Type launch dates for India revealed

The handset comes with a 3.2 inch (360 x 640 pixels) AMOLED ClearBlack display, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, 5MP camera, 720p video recording, 1GHz processor, and 2GB of internal memory.

You can register here at T-Mobile UK to find out more about “pre-ordering, prices, plans and everything else you need.”

The Nokia 700 will also be available unlocked in the UK, although it looks like this s going to happen only starting October.

• Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 launching in India in December
• HTC HD7 (Schubert) poses next to the Samsung Galaxy S. HTC Mozart coming in late October?
• HTC Desire HD, Nokia C7 and LG Optimus One coming to T-Mobile UK
• Nokia 700 (with Symbian Belle) priced in the UK. Nokia 500 coming this month to Portugal
• Unlocked Samsung Galaxy S Plus can be ordered now in the UK

That said, if you are interested in picking up an unlocked Nokia E7 in the US, listen up. Amazon has just made the device significantly cheaper than it was before. In fact, the E7 launched in the US having a recommended price of $679 and has been sold by Amazon for $649 so far.

Not anymore though. The Nokia E7 can now be yours if you agree to shell out just $404 for the silver version, or (strangely) $404.99 for the blue one. They’re both in stock at Amazon, and sold by the retailer itself. Free shipping is also thrown in.

That’s clearly a more reasonable price for the Symbian-based smartphone, yet we’re still not sure how many people will buy it on the new price per features ratio alone. Still, if you want to get one, go to Amazon and place an order for either the silver or the blue model now.

• Nokia E63 and Nokia 1006 for the US
• Nokia N8 could get a sixth color soon (maybe red)
• Nokia E7 also available in the US at Amazon for just $649
• Nokia E6 now available in the UK, Nokia X7 in the US
• Nokia E6 can be pre-ordered at Amazon for $446, shipping in “one to two months”

Play.com asks £259.99 ( €302) for the 700, saying it’s “due for release on October 21.”

MobileFun is also taking pre-orders for the new Nokia smartphone, letting you choose between the white version (here) and the grey one (here). It’s asking a bit more for the handset, though: £279.95 (€325).

The Nokia 700 features a 3.2 inch ClearBlack AMOLED display with 640 x 360 pixels, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC support, 5MP camera with 720p video recording, 1GHz processor, and 2GB of internal memory.

In other Nokia news, the Nokia 500 (which has most of the features the 700 offers, but runs Symbian Anna) is going to be released in about two weeks from now in Portugal. Nokia Portugal is officially asking €229.90 for the 500. I assume the phone will be released in other markets pretty soon as well.

Via My Nokia Blog

• Nokia 700 with Symbian Belle coming to T-Mobile UK this month
• Nokia N8 with Symbian^3 and 12MP camera officially announced; €370 in Q3 (video)
• Nokia N801T with Symbian Anna and NFC announced in China
• Nokia C6, C3 and E5 in hands-on photos, videos
• Nokia 500 with Symbian Anna and 1GHz processor announced (video)

The applications will include Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Lync 2010 Mobile, Microsoft Document Connection, and Microsoft PowerPoint Broadcast. They will be rolled-out to Symbian Belle smartphones (Nokia 600, Nokia 700, Nokia 701), as well to Symbian Anna smartphones that are about to be upgraded to Belle (N8, C7, E7, C6-01, E6 and X7).

According to Nokia, the update which brings Microsoft Apps will be offered starting late Q4 2011 – by that time, the Finnish company should also launch its first Windows Phone Mango handset(s).

Another update, apparently scheduled for 2012, “will introduce Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint as native applications for the first time outside the Windows platform.”

Via Press release

• Nokia 603 leaked. Symbian Belle update to start on October 26?
• Symbian Belle update will be out for existing Nokia smartphones in early 2012
• Nokia gives up on Symbian (the brand), promises Belle update for February
• Nokia’s Symbian Anna devices get a new bug fixing software update
• Nokia, Microsoft sign deal to bring Office Mobile to Symbian smartphones

And today the other three phones on that list have officially seen the light of day, for Nokia decided to announce the 600, 700, and 701, alongside Symbian Belle, which they’ll all be running once they hit the streets.

Let’s start with that. All three smartphones are due out this quarter, meaning before the end of September. Now clearly only ‘select markets’ are getting them then, in pure Nokia fashion, but still – a bit more than a month between announcement and release? That’s something every Symbian/Nokia fan was dreaming about… back when there still were Nokia/Symbian fans out there.

Symbian Belle is coming a bit earlier than everyone expected, which may mean that Nokia has worked hard on getting it out as soon as possible, especially with the ‘great’ sales Symbian devices have had lately. After all, Symbian Anna has started going out as an update for the N8, C7, and so on just one week ago. Oh, and speaking of that – according to Nokia, older Symbian^3 and Symbian Anna devices will get updated to Belle “from the fourth quarter onwards”. Which, translated from Nokia-speak, probably means a limited release at the end of December, with a global rollout in the first quarter of 2012. But we’ll see. Anyway, the important thing here is that, as expected, older devices will be updated.

Symbian Belle itself brings the new(ish) UI that Symbian has desperately needed for so long in order to fend off critics. Ironically, this update comes after the platform has been killed by Nokia’s management and newfound Windows Phone ambitions.

There are now six homescreens, widgets can finally come in different sizes and now allow more interactivity, there’s a new notification menu that’s highly reminiscent of Android’s and that in iOS 5 (and adds toggle widgets to quickly switch things on and off), the application launcher has been updated with a new ‘Add to homescreen’ option as well as easier organization features, the status bar is finally thin and has redesigned icons, visual multitasking is also improved, there’s a new font, and a new lockscreen which displays missed call, messages, and email information. The bottom softkeys are gone, their place being taken by some icons: from right to left, Back/Exit, Custom 1, Custom 2, and Menu/Options. The Custom options can be whatever the app maker wants them to be, only one of those can show up, or neither. So there’s a bit more flexibility.

Apps have also gotten updates in Belle, most notably the browser and the music player. There’s also a new and improved software updater, and better NFC functions built-in. Here’s a video that quickly goes through the new features:

Now let’s see the phones. First up we have the Nokia 600, which is a music-oriented device. It comes with an internal FM radio (so no need to have headphones plugged in to use it), an FM transmitter, and what Nokia claims is its loudest speaker yet. It’s also got a 1 GHz processor, a 5 MP camera with 720p HD video recording, GPS, Wi-Fi, pentaband 3G, NFC, a 3.2-inch 640×360 touchscreen, microSD card support (with a 2 GB card in the sales package), and a 1200 mAh battery.

The Nokia 600 will be available in Black, Lime, White, and Pink for €180 before taxes and subsidies.

Next up, we have the Nokia 700. It’s the smallest smartphone ever according to Nokia, which is basing the claim on the handset’s volume of just 50cc. The Nokia 700 is made out of a combination of glass, aluminum, and plastics.

The Nokia 700 has a 3.2-inch 640×360 ClearBlack AMOLED touchscreen, a 5 MP camera with LED flash and 720p HD video recording, GPS, Wi-Fi, pentaband 3G, NFC, a 1 GHz processor, microSD card support (a 2 GB card is included), and a 1080 mAh battery. The Nokia 700 will become available in Cool Grey, Silver/White, Coral Red, Peacock Blue and Purple for €270 before taxes and subsidies, and may be the only one of the three phones announced today to be stocked by carriers in Western Europe.

The Nokia 701 is basically an updated C7, which keeps the overall form factor of its predecessor while adding a 1 GHz processor and what Nokia claims is the brightest screen on any smartphone in the world. The screen isn’t AMOLED, but a 3.5-inch 640×360 IPS LCD unit. Aside from these features, the 701 also has an FM transmitter and receiver, NFC support, an 8 MP camera with LED flash and 720p HD video recording, GPS, pentaband 3G, Wi-Fi, 8 GB of internal storage space as well as a microSD card slot, and a 1200 mAh battery.

The Nokia 701 will be out in Steel dark, Silver light, Amethyst violet and White. It will cost €290 before taxes and subsidies.

• Nokia 603 with Symbian Belle and Nokia Luna Bluetooth headset announced
• Nokia Asha 200, 201, 300, and 303 with S40 get announced too
• Nokia 500 with Symbian Anna and 1GHz processor announced (video)
• Nokia N8 with Symbian^3 and 12MP camera officially announced; €370 in Q3 (video)
• Nokia X7 and Nokia E6 announced, new Symbian Anna in tow

The updated should be available this week in lots of countries around the world, including: Belgium, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, the UAE, and the UK.

First seen on the Nokia X7 and Nokia E6, Symbian Anna brings lots of improvements over Symbian^3. Among them, we must mention: fresh user interface, enhanced Nokia Maps, faster browser, virtual portrait QWERTY keyboard, split-screen view, email enhancements, and NFC support (only on the Nokia C7).

Since this is a large update, Nokia recommends that you download it via Ovi Suite.

A new Symbian Anna handset – the Nokia 500 – should be released later this quarter. After that, we’ll probably see only Symbian Belle smartphones.

More details in this press release, or at Nokia Conversations

• Nokia X7 and Nokia E6 announced, new Symbian Anna in tow
• Nokia N8, C7 and C6-01 Symbian smartphones get a software update
• Nokia N8 has received the highest number of pre-orders in the company’s history
• Nokia E72, E52, N97 mini and other Symbian smartphones receive new software updates
• Verizon Motorola Droid 2 gets a software update

Digital music fans in the US have been awaiting the Spotify launch for years, and it landed on our shores just in time for this feature. They took a cue from Google with an invite-only rollout for their free service, but the Premium service (which we tested) has been available from the get go. We took a crack at their ballyhooed mobile app and did our best to answer the question: “Can this European darling possibly live up to the hype?”

Mobile Platforms

iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows Phone 7, WebOS

Library Size

8 million DRM-free Ogg Vorbis tracks. Tracks can be streamed at 96 or 160kbps on the mobile app(user-defined in preferences). Desktop tracks are streamed at 160kbps, and premium subscribers can enable high-quality streams of 320kbps for select tracks.

The Shuffle Test

Ed.- we took 10 songs shuffled from our iTunes library and checked how many each service had.

10/10 – Roxy Music – 2HB (Y), Big Star – Life Is White (Y), Sufjan Stevens – Jacksonville (Y), The National – Slow Show (Y), Daft Punk – Da Funk (Y), Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter (Y), Big Punisher – Dream Shatterer (Y), John Legend – It Don’t Have to Change (Y), Desaparecidos – The Happiest Place on Earth (Y), The Notorious B.I.G. – Ready to Die (Y)

Software (Stability)

We experienced a slight delay each time we booted up the Spotify app. We also had a few crashes, but for the most part the streamlined app ran smoothly; we’d much rather wait a few seconds upon startup for a browsing experience sans delays. We would frequently get messages informing us that our device was full, but there were no unexplained error messages or interruptions in playback.

Software (User Interface)

Spotify aspires to replace iTunes—the most popular online music store–as the place you acquire, store and playback music on your computer. It’s design and interface share much in common, though Spotify eschews showy UI elements like Cover Flow displays in favor of a more streamlined experience. It lists all your iTunes playlists as well as every song in your iTunes library, and even syncs your iPhone/iPod wirelessly. Especially appealing to Android users who use iTunes, it allows wireless syncing with Android devices, something iTunes does not.

Album art never gets displayed larger than a couple hundred pixels on the desktop app, but even the fullscreen view on the mobile app’s “Now Playing” screen didn’t seem to bog down the app.

A quick tap of the album art brings up a menu that allows for browsing of the current track’s album and artist, and options to share the track via email, Spotify, Facebook or Twitter (on the desktop app, any artist, album or track can be dragged and dropped into other application windows, like an IM or an email). Songs can also be starred or added to a playlist from the same screen. Shuffle and repeat buttons supplement the basic playback controls, but the scrubber bar had no measurement of the stream’s buffer.

Playback

The streaming speed over Wi-Fi was excellent; playback almost always started within two seconds of selecting a song. We rarely experienced a delay or pause in playback due to buffering, even with other bandwidth-heavy applications running on the same network.

The experience over AT&T’s 3G network was a different one entirely. Streams would take about 5-6 seconds to start, and we felt like we could hear each time we crossed from one cell tower to another, as the music would frequently pause for a few seconds if we were listening while moving. Verizon’s 4G network performed a little more admirably, but we still experienced gaps as we moved from tower to tower.

Recommendations (Finding New Music)

As far as social integration is concerned, Spotify and Facebook attached at the hip. Users can add any Spotify user to their “People” list, but the easiest way to populate it is by linking your Facebook account. Users can hide the Facebook friends whose music tastes they do not wish to view, but adding friends to Spotify happens automatically when they connect their accounts.

While it is certainly possible to build a “People” list without Facebook, it’s difficult to know which of your friends are on Spotify without it. And without any sort of playlist charts (showing the most popular playlists on Spotify) or an artist/Spotify staff-curated section, your playlist selection is only as good as your friends’.

What users can do is see releases that are new to Spotify that week, as well as the top played tracks on the service. The “Feed” tab shows users when their friends subscribe to a new playlist; your default friend, “Spotify,” serves to issue notices and announcements from Spotify’s staff. We loved how a popular playlist could easily go viral; when your friends like one of your playlists and subscribe to it, their friends see that in their feed, and can subscribe to the playlist as well. Users can also create collaborative playlists with their friends, and though they can’t be published, they can be shared directly with any user.

Despite the aforementioned caveats, the Facebook-centric sharing system was easily our favorite way to find new music out of all the services we tested. Our first friends to adopt the Spotify platform were our tech-savvy music nerd friends, and they proved to be an excellent source of new music and quirky personal playlists. Because Spotify can import playlists that already exist on users’ computers, it’s easy to quickly populate your Spotify profile with snapshots of your taste in music. But those especially acute and obscure playlists can be a tease, as Spotify will only let you look at (but not listen to) music that isn’t in its licensed library.

Offline Playback

Available only to Premium subscribers, offline playback can be enabled for tracks on both the desktop and mobile applications. We loved that it automatically syncs via Wi-Fi when both apps are open, and quickly at that.

On the mobile app, songs are organized in the “Playlist” tab into four sections: “Starred,” “Inbox,” “Local Files” and “Playlists.” The “Playlist” portion of the list is comprised of users’ iTunes playlists as well as each playlist they’ve subscribed to on Spotify.

Because it can sync both “starred” Spotify tracks (tracks selected for offline playback) as well as tracks from your local library, it may be wise to abandon syncing music via iTunes or other side-loading methods to maximize storage space.

Price

Free (invite-only, advertisments), $4.99/mo Unlimited (no ads), $9.99/mo for Premium (mobile access)

Verdict

We liked most things about Spotify’s mobile app and service. It may not be the prettiest app, but there was absolutely no excess, and the experience was pleasant. The biggest knock against Spotify may be the lack of depth in its features list, but we must say that everything Spotify does do, it does extremely well. We would have liked to see a more rounded out social experience, connecting us with users who we may not necessarily know already, but could possibly share common musical interests with. In its current state, avenues to find new music within Spotify are limited by the musical tastes of your friends–great for the cognoscenti, not so much for Joe the Plumber.

Overall, our personal experience with Spotify was overwhelmingly positive. We found ourselves compelled to use it more than almost every other service, and we loved sharing playlists with our friends. While it didn’t quite make No. 1 on our list, we could easily recommend the Premium service to most users, and think that everyone should have at least a Free account.

Link: Spotify

For more on our mobile cloud music feature, and to read reviews of the other services, click here.

• RIM gives BlackBerry Messenger Music soft launch in closed beta
• Unwired View’s Mobile Cloud Music Showdown – Locker Services, 5th Place: MP3tunes
• Mobile Cloud Music Showdown – Subscription Services, 7th Place: Grooveshark
• Spotify for Symbian available for download
• Unwired View’s Mobile Cloud Music Showdown – Locker Services, 3rd Place: mSpot

Founded in 2006 by students at the University of Florida, Grooveshark has morphed through various iterations over the past few years. It is one of the few services to have users upload content to be consumed by other users, and its founders even started “Grooveshark University,” an incubator for entrepreneurial talent. Their ability to think outside the box is documented, but what does that mean for the Grooveshark of today?

Mobile Platforms

iOS (requires jailbreak), Android, Blackberry, WebOS, Symbian

Library size

As all content on Grooveshark is user uploaded, there are no concrete #’s on library size. Files are transcoded to 192kbps DRM-free mp3, and songs must have a sample rate of 44100hz and bit rate of at least 128kbps in order to be uploaded.

Grooveshark’s library is a wild card; because songs aren’t individually licensed by deals with labels, the breadth of the library is as wide and varied as the taste of the users that upload the music. For fans of independent and obscure artists, Grooveshark has the most impressive library, and it’s not even close. Not only did it have every song on our shuffle test, but it also had various mixtapes and self-released albums that no other service had.

The problem with the library is not the scope, but rather the consistency. Because of the infinite number of sources of the music, quality tends to vary, as does the accuracy of the metadata. Archivists may take issue with Grooveshark’s haphazard grouping, especially on the mobile app (the Web player is a bit more refined).

The Shuffle Test

Ed.- we took 10 songs shuffled from our iTunes library and checked how many each service had.

10/10 – Roxy Music – 2HB (Y), Big Star – Life Is White (Y), Sufjan Stevens – Jacksonville (Y), The National – Slow Show (Y), Daft Punk – Da Funk (Y), Rolling Stones – Gimme Shelter (Y), Big Punisher – Dream Shatterer (Y), John Legend – It Don’t Have to Change (Y), Desaparecidos – The Happiest Place on Earth (N), The Notorious B.I.G. – Ready to Die (Y)

Software (Stability)

While using the mobile app, we didn’t experience any catastrophic app failure. It did sputter a couple of times, but was stable for the most part.

But when we tried to upload our own music in an attempt to provide some uniformity amidst the chaos that is the Grooveshark library, we got mixed results. Most of the songs we tried to upload via the web-based uploader failed, telling us there was issues uploading due to “Problem with server.” There was no option to attempt to retry. We imagine this could be the reason for the multitude of incomplete albums house on Grooveshark’s servers.

Software (User Interface)

The Grooveshark desktop app is available to subscribers of “Plus” and “Anywhere” plans; uploading and playback for free accounts is done on through a Web-based interface.

The mobile app is tailored to a specific type of user. Anal-retentive music fans who like to catalog their music meticulously will find the app to be frustrating. It is designed to quickly make on-the-go playlists, as opposed to finding a favorite album and listening to it from beginning to end. As you play songs and browse for new ones to add to your queue, there are three options for song selection. Those craving instant gratification can select “Play Now,” those who choose not to interrupt the flow can click “Play Next” and Zen mixtape artists can continue to tack on songs to the end of the playlist with “Play Last.” It’s very difficult to search and find an album to play in its entirety, and there are no album suggestions, just lists of what artists and songs are “Popular.” While the Web player and desktop app allow for more logical organization, the mobile app seems to have abandoned the concept of the album.

Even trying to organize and navigate a personal collection can be troublesome. Songs can be added to “My Music” to more easily locate favorite tracks to stream. But we didn’t like how the “My Music” section couldn’t be searched; we were forced to manually browse through our collection. The “Favorites” tab, however, can be searched and sorted by the date they were selected as favorites. The “Now Playing” screen shows album art (when provided by the uploader), and also features a scrubber bar with a buffer indicator in addition to basic playback controls. We also liked that there was a voice control option in the “Search” function.

Playback

The streaming speed we experienced with the mobile app was one of the slowest of the services we tested, averaging from 7-12 seconds to load the first song over Wi-Fi; 4G fared worse. There were a couple of occasions where the album art delayed playback of a track, but a quick press of the play button forced the song to play without waiting for the album art.

Recommendations (Finding New Music)

When they tire of playing DJ and adding new songs to the queue, users can click the Radio button from the “Now Playing” screen to have Grooveshark select your next few tracks. It’s no Pandora, however, so expect the latest top 40 rather than genetically curated gems. We found the suggestions to be generally uninspired.

Facebook users can link their accounts to Grooveshark, and friends’ playlists and recent activity can be viewed. The feature is not available on the mobile app, however, and it’s buried in the Web player.

Offline Playback

Songs can be selected for “offline playback” from the menu for each song (mobile only). All offline tracks can be played in succession or organized by date added, artist name and song title. There isn’t a shuffle or loop option, but once the songs are added to the queue users can re-organize the order in which they songs are played manually.

Price

$6/mo for “Plus” (no ads, desktop app, premium support) or $9/mo for “Anywhere” (mobile access). Users can take surveys to accumulate “points” that can be used to upgrade their service.

The Verdict

There were two features of Grooveshark that had no peer amongst all of the services we tested for this feature: Grooveshark’s library and its on-the-go playlist functionality. The breadth and scope of the user-submitted library is vast and reaches obscure corners of music, hosting tracks that no other service has. The organization is a bit chaotic, but if you’re searching track by track it is easy to be impressed Grooveshark’s knack for having that song you thought they couldn’t possibly have. Because of the lack of uniformity, the library lends itself to custom on-the-go playlists, something Grooveshark does very well.

But if you like to collect albums, not singles, and are looking for an application that organizes your collection intuitively, you need look elsewhere. We were also disappointed by Grooveshark’s ability to recommend new music to us; the Facebook implementation never made it to the mobile app, and the “Radio” feature was a joke. We liked the offline playback implementation, in part because the streaming speeds left much to be desired.

If you’re a playlist-making fiend who likes to consume your music a la carte and free of the context of an album, Grooveshark might be perfect for you. Otherwise, it’s likely you will find it lacking.

Link: Grooveshark

For more on our mobile cloud music feature, and to read reviews of the other services, click here.

• Best Buy quietly launches Music Cloud
• Unwired View’s Mobile Cloud Music Showdown – Locker Services, 4th Place: Best Buy Music Cloud
• Unwired View’s Mobile Cloud Music Showdown – Locker Services, 2nd Place: Google Music (beta)
• Google Music drops Beta label, still free, adds a store and Google+ sharing
• Mobile Cloud Music Showdown – Subscription Services, 4th Place: Zune Pass

In the meantime, though, Rogers has started selling the Nokia X7. In fact it’s now available to order from the carrier. Rogers asks $29.99 for an X7 with a new three-year contract, $79.99 with a two-year agreement, and $149.99 with a one-year commitment. With a monthly plan, you’ll have to pay $249.99 for the Nokia X7, and $299.99 if you’d rather get the phone without any contract whatsoever.

If you’re interested, head on over to Rogers and place an order.

The Nokia X7 is one of two devices currently on the market to run Symbian Anna, the latest iteration of what was once the best selling smartphone operating system on the planet. The Nokia X7 has a 4-inch ClearBlack AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass, an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and HD video recording, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, 1 GB of built-in memory (further expandable via a microSD card slot), and a 1300 mAh battery.

Via MobileSyrup

• Nokia X7 now available at Three UK, free from £30 per month
• Nokia X7 and Nokia E6 announced, new Symbian Anna in tow
• Nokia X7 will be available from Three UK in June
• Nokia E6 now available in the UK, Nokia X7 in the US
• Nokia C6-01 and Nokia C7 Symbian^3 smartphones announced at Nokia World

The smartphones are the MeeGo-based Nokia N9 (which was officially announced last month), and the Symbian Anna-based Nokia N5, aka Nokia RM-701 (which hasn’t been announced yet).

Both the N9 and N5 come with US-friendly 3G connectivity (850 / 1700 / 1900 MHz), so, theoretically, they could be launched by AT&T or T-Mobile. But I kind of doubt the two carriers want to waste their time with handsets based on platforms that will disappear in a few years.

Anyway, in case you’re interested, the FCC has published the N9′s User Manual, as well as some internal photos of it. You can see it all here.

The Nokia N9 should be available in select markets starting September – it remains to be seen if the US is one of these markets. We don’t know when and where the N5 will be available, but more details should be unveiled soon. ‘Till then, here is what the FCC has disclosed about the N5 (there’s not much to see though).

• 5800 XpressMusic user manual and teardown now viewable
• Nokia N9 and MeeGo will be supported “for years”
• Nokia N8 officially on pre-order in Italy (for €469), should arrive in September
• LG Prada Link appears on FCC web site
• Is this what the Nokia N803 (N8 successor?) looks like?

The official-looking Nokia 700 obviously resembles the device seen in said live images. It has a different color, though – white with silver on the back – but that shouldn’t be a surprise, since lots of Nokia phones come in a variety of hues.

As previously reported, the new Nokia Zeta 700 should feature Symbian Bella, a 3.2 inch AMOLED screen with 640 x 360 pixels, NFC, 5MP camera with LED flash, front-facing camera, and a 1Gh processor.  A large speaker is situated at the bottom of the 700, which may mean Nokia will want to market it as some sort of a multimedia phone. Overall, this seems to be a pretty good handset, although it has nothing to impress us with.

Like the other leaked Symbian Bella smartphones, the Nokia 700 Zeta will probably be released in September. Reportedly, its price will be around €290.

Via The Nokia Blog

• Clear photos of the MeeGo-based Nokia N9 leaked?
• New MeeGo tablet and Intel Atom-based MeeGo smartphone show up
• Nokia N5 with Symbian Anna leaked. Nokia N6 and N7 also coming soon?
• Nokia C6-01 to run Symbian^3?
• 4 new Nokia Symbian Belle phones leak, pictures included for the Nokia 700 ‘Zeta’

According to Reuters, the ex-flagship N8, the C7, and the newly-released E6 have all got cut prices of around 15%, while other models have received smaller price cuts.

I’m not entirely sure if the new prices are effective in stores as of now, but I’ve checked Amazon UK and Amazon Germany, and all three handsets seem to be cheaper than ever: the N8 costs £311.06 in the UK and €320,45 in Germany; the C7 costs £263.99 in the UK and €267,84 in Germany; and the E6 (pictured below) costs £302.38 in the UK and €358,45 in Germany.

I assume Nokia’s future Symbian handsets (N5, 700 Zeta and the others) will be aggressively priced, too. Later this year, the company will launch its first MeeGo smartphone (the N9), as well as its first Windows Phone handsets – which, hopefully, will bring back Nokia’s lost glory.

• Nokia E6 and X7 also on pre-order in Finland, will ship on June 10 and June 17
• Samsung discontinuing Symbian support as of December this year
• Nokia N8 and C3 to be launched in India in mid-September. Nokia C6 coming in October
• #MWC10: €100 Symbian smartphones promised for later this year
• Samsung Corby II S3850 and Chat 335 officially launched in Germany

The Nokia X7 was eventually going to be sold by Three in the UK, we’ve known that ever since April, when the operator contributed a leak of the device. Since then, the X7 was spotted on Three’s official Coming soon page with an estimated release in June.

Now the Nokia X7 may have missed that time frame, but not by much, as it’s now become available at Three – both online and in stores.

The operator will give you an X7 for free if you choose to commit for two years and get a contract that will cost you £30 per month. For that amount of cash you’ll be getting 500 minutes, 5,000 texts, and 1 GB of data each month.

Alternatively though, you could choose Three’s The One Plan, which will cost you £5 more per month, but will give you a lot more: 2,000 minutes, 5,000 Three-to-Three minutes, 5,000 texts, and All-you-can-eat data.

Three also sells the Nokia X7 on Pay as you go for £379.99, but you’ll need to choose a £10 or £15 add-on when you check out.

So if you’re interested in picking up a Nokia X7 from Three, you can do so by clicking here.

The Nokia X7 has a 4-inch ClearBlack AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass, an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and HD video recording, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, 1 GB of built-in memory (further expandable via a microSD card slot), and a 1300 mAh battery.

• HTC Sensation XE now available at Three UK, free from £30 per month
• LG Optimus 3D now available at Three UK, free from £35 per month
• Nokia 700 now available at Vodafone UK, free from £26 per month
• HTC Desire S now available at Vodafone UK, free on contracts starting at £30 per month
• HTC ChaCha now available from Vodafone UK

The price comes with free shipping, and will net you an unlocked, unbranded, SIM-free Nokia E6 which you can use on both AT&T and T-Mobile, including on “4G” or 3G, thanks to this phone’s pentaband 3G radio.

The Nokia E6 is the first Symbian-powered device to have both a full physical QWERTY keyboard and a touchscreen in the candybar form factor. This is one combination that has presumably been requested by consumers, since RIM is also getting ready to launch devices in this form factor. And while some argue that the touchscreen is way too small to be of any real use, others think this is the perfect compromise between the touch-based ‘new world’ out there and the need to be able to quickly write emails and texts. Which one is it? You be the judge.

The Nokia E6 also comes with a very high dpi screen, thanks in part to how small it is. The Nokia E6 has a 2.46-inch 640×480 capacitive touchscreen, a full physical QWERTY keyboard underneath that screen, a 600 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM, 1 GB of ROM, 8 GB of internal storage space expandable via microSD card, an 8 MP camera with dual-LED flash and 720p HD video recording, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HSPA, GPS, and a 1500 mAh battery. The Nokia E6 runs Symbian Anna, the latest version of the operating system.

• Nokia C7 and E73 now available from Videotron in Canada
• Nokia E6 now available in the UK, Nokia X7 in the US
• Motorola Pro will be available in the UK in July
• UK: HTC 7 Pro now only £229.99 at Play.com, SIM-free and unlocked
• Canada: BlackBerry Bold 9900 now available at Mobilicity, comes with three months free BIS

The Nokia C5-00 5MP is basically the C5-00 with a few things added, and a few others changed. First off, as its name implies, the phone has a 5 MP camera, whereas the C5-00 has a 3.2 MP unit. Both use the EDoF technology, and hence aren’t autofocus, but ‘full focus’ as Nokia likes to call them.

The new C5-00 5MP also has double the RAM of its predecessor (256 MB and not 128 MB), and more internal storage space (270 MB and not 50 MB). The C5-00 5MP is, at 95 grams, also a bit heavier than the C5-00 which weighs 89.3 grams.

Everything else about this device has stayed the same, including the fact that it runs Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 (S60 3.2.2). The Nokia C5-00 5MP is going to be available sometime in the third quarter of this year, which means before the end of September. It’s possible that it will replace the C5-00 and sell for the same price, which, with the new specs, makes this device great value for money if for some reason you’d like a ‘classic’ Nokia candybar and don’t like touchscreens.

Here’s a quick refresher of the other specs of the C5-00, now the C5-00 5MP: it has a 2.2-inch 240×320 screen, GPS, Bluetooth, a 3.5 mm headset jack, an FM radio, quad-band GSM, dual-band WCDMA (900/2100) with 10.2 Mbps HSDPA and 2 Mbps HSUPA, and a 1050 mAh battery.

Via All About Symbian

• Nokia E71x to hit AT&T with S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2
• Nokia C7 and E73 now available from Videotron in Canada
• Nokia C6-01 hands-on preview at #NokiaWorld
• Nokia 8800 Gold Arte surfaces, dressed in leather and (of course) gold
• Facebook for Nokia E72 and E71 available now

The updates will bring the new Nokia browser v7.3 (which comes pre-loaded on Symbian Anna smartphones), allowing users to enjoy an enhanced browsing experience, and providing support for non-ASCII letters and for international domain names.

Symbian 3.2 devices will also get Ovi Maps 3 SR4 (with indoor positioning through Wi-Fi), while Symbian 5.0 devices receive Ovi Maps 3 SR6 (which adds check-in services and public transport lines to your favorite social networking sites).

Here’s the list of Symbian 3.2 (non-touch) handsets that will be updated:

• Nokia E72 (pictured below)
• Nokia E52
• Nokia E5
• Nokia C5-00
• Nokia 6700 slide

And the list of Symbian 5.0 (touch) devices:

• Nokia C6-00
• Nokia C5-03
• Nokia 5230
• Nokia 5235
• Nokia 5250
• Nokia X6
• Nokia N97 mini
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
• Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

Nokia C6-00 and Nokia 5230 owners should be able to update their devices starting today. The rest of the handsets will be updated “in the next few weeks.”

More info is available  at Nokia Conversation.

• New Ovi Maps beta: check-ins, real time traffic info and public transport
• Nokia enables free navigation on the E71 and E66
• Nokia enhances Ovi Maps, intros Ovi Maps Player API
• Nokia Ovi Maps 3.0 out of beta; Ovi Contacts now supporting touch phones
• Fring adds support for more handsets, Nokia N86 8MP included

So here’s the thing. Four new upcoming Symbian smartphones have leaked. And with the Nokia N5 we saw yesterday, that makes…five. Rough specs for the new devices were obtained by Flashfly and then posted by The Nokia Blog. The information was then corroborated and added to by the famous Russian journalist Eldar Murtazin on Twitter.

It looks like Nokia is seriously considering changing its naming convention for smartphones yet again. The new phones may not belong to any ‘series’ (such as N, C, X, or E), but have names made entirely out of numbers, old-Nokia style. Only three numbers, not four. So that you’d be able to tell a smartphone (three numbers) from a non-smartphone (four numbers), I guess.

First up, we have the Nokia 700, or Zeta. This is the only one of the four devices that we can actually show you, since GSMArena has received photos of the phone. Here they are:

The Nokia 700 will have a 1 GHz processor, will come with a 3.2-inch 360×640 AMOLED touchscreen, a 5 MP camera with LED flash, NFC support, and an FM radio. The Zeta will be just 8.8 mm thick, and its recommended retail price will be around €290. Nokia proudly boasts (see below) that this will be the thinnest smartphone ever, but let’s wait for the next iPhone to be unveiled and we’ll see about that. And the tipster who sent the photos above claims that the device’s thickness will be 10mm, so maybe things are still fluid regarding this design. It will also be quite a light phone at around 80 grams, and have a 1080 mAh battery. The Nokia 700 will run Symbian Belle, the next iteration of the OS to follow Anna.

The Nokia 701, codenamed Helen, will have a 1 GHz processor as well, and 3.5-inch 360×640 ClearBlack AMOLED touchscreen, an 8 MP ‘full focus’ camera, and it will also run Symbian Belle. Its expected price is €300 and it should be the successor to the C7 (perhaps even to be called C7-01).

The Nokia 600, or Nokia Cindy, will have a 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen, a 1 GHz processor, a 5 MP camera, and will come with NFC support and an FM radio. It will be aimed at the youth and will have a focus on entertainment. The Cindy will come with apps such as Skype, Shazam, YouTube, F-Secure, Vlingo, and a PDF reader preinstalled. The prospective price right now is €260, and the 600 will be the replacement for the Nokia C6-01.

Finally, the Nokia 500 or Fate will have a 1 GHz processor, a 3.2-inch touchscreen (non-AMOLED), a 5 MP camera, FM radio, and a price tag under €200.

All the phones are due to be launched in the third quarter of 2011, most likely sometime in September. The prices quoted above aren’t final and may suffer changes before the handsets hit the streets.

To be honest, if it wasn’t for Eldar’s tweets about these devices and the leaked images showing the 700, I would have been very skeptical of the spec-sheet leaks. I mean, just look at the one discussing the Cindy and the Fate. The first line describing the Cindy has the words “build in” – that’s just not right. Also, the Fate apparently has a 5 MB (!) camera. I know English isn’t Nokia’s first language, but still… either someone was very sloppy with spelling, or those aren’t real. That’s what I would have said. But now with a bit of confirmation from two other sources, I guess some Nokia employees either don’t know the difference between a megapixel and a megabyte, or simply don’t care about spelling. Similarly, someone in Nokia either doesn’t know English, or simply doesn’t care what goes onto official spec listings inside the company. All rather sad really.

So will these devices make you think that Symbian is not dead after all? Will anyone buy them? I don’t know right now. Do you?

• Nokia 700 Zeta press photos appear, don’t impress
• Nokia C5 leaked; still not clear what the Cseries is all about
• Nokia 5530 XpressMusic specs unveiled
• MeeGo-based Nokia N9 (RM-680) to feature Snapdragon CPU? Not likely
• AT&T’s fall WP7 lineup revealed: HTC Titan, Samsung Focus S, and Samsung Focus Flash

Anyway, one thing you really can’t say about Nokia is that it doesn’t support its Symbian phones with minor updates. The X6 was announced in September of 2009, and here it is getting updated in June of 2011. Granted, the update doesn’t bring any earth-shattering new features.

It does, however, update the phone’s built-in applications, improves overall performance, and makes the X6 more stable by “minimizing errors and lags”. In other words, many bugs have been squashed, some performance tweaks have been made, and minor new app versions were added.

Not a bad deal for X6 owners. To get the update, go to Settings > Tools > Software update or just dial *#0000#, hit Options > Check for update, and go from there.

Via SymbianWorld

• Nokia E7 gets a minor software update
• Nokia issues another OTA firmware update for Nokia N78, v12.046
• Nokia E72 gets a firmware update to v54
• Sprint Samsung Epic 4G Touch gets an update that fixes its loss of signal issues
• AT&T Motorola Atrix 2 gets a software update, many bug fixes and performance enhancements

Not a US carrier, though. Rogers will launch the X7 in Canada at some point during this summer. Unfortunately, that’s all the information about the Nokia X7′s Canadian adventure for now. We don’t have a more certain release date, nor do we have any sort of details about pricing.

But those are bound to reach us sometime soon, after all it’s already almost “summer”, isn’t it? It will be interesting to see how well the X7 will sell in Canada, considering that it runs Symbian. Maybe people will find its intriguing design reason enough to buy it, or maybe they’ll decide to wait for Windows Phone 7 devices from Nokia. Time will tell.

• Nokia E7 coming to Canada (Rogers) this spring?
• Nokia to layoff 4,000 employees by the end of 2012, transfer Symbian software activities to Accenture
• Rumor: Nokia Lumia 900 headed to Rogers in May
• Bell will launch the HTC Sensation in Canada
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”

Amazon is the ingenious retailer who didn’t want to disappoint the aforementioned fans, and has listed the Nokia E6 for a cool $446. That, of course, will get you an unlocked, unbranded, SIM-free device that hasn’t been tinkered with by a carrier in any way, shape, or form. Some like them that way.

The Nokia E6 will work on both AT&T and T-Mobile, and you’ll be able to use all their connectivity options (GSM, EDGE, 3G, “4G”) since the E6, like all recent Symbian smartphones, comes with a pentaband 3G radio that makes it pretty much the definition of a world phone. Of course, like with any GSM-based phone, you won’t be able to use the E6 on Sprint or Verizon.

Amazon says that it will start shipping the E6 in “1 to 2 months”, which is uncharacteristically vague, but there you have it. If you’re dying to get your grubby mitts on the E6, then run to Amazon now, place your order, then patiently start waiting. A month, two – who cares, when you’ll be able to play with Symbian Anna?

• Nokia E6 now available in the US for $439 SIM-free, unlocked, sans contract
• Nokia E7 also available in the US at Amazon for just $649
• Unlocked Nokia E7 now just $404 at Amazon
• Nokia X7 pre-orders start in the UK, shipping before the end of June
• Compal to start delivery of Windows Phones to Nokia in September. 2 million units ordered for Q4 2011

In a brief statement, Nokia said “We are planning to close our channel structure and focus our resources on key trade customers.”

It joins planned closures of other online Nokia stores around the world, and appears to be a company-wide strategy by the firm. Particularly in the UK it makes sense, as most people generally go straight to the operator or online retailers to purchase a smartphone.

It also indicates a major slide in popularity for Nokia smartphones, with sales hit by the popularity of other competing platforms such as Android and the Apple iOS. Recent efforts such as the Nokia E6 and the N8 haven’t exactly set the world alight.

And of course, Nokia’s decision to combine with Microsoft in using Windows 7 as its main operating system must have had some effect, as Redmond’s marketing muscle may have left Nokia-only websites as somewhat redundant.

Whatever the case, it is a sign of how the mobile landscape is changing, with Apple’s online store going from strength to strength. Nokia may have to look towards Google, which itself shut down its own online store in favour of working with brands like HTC and Samsung to shift Android handsets.

• Apple and Google blow away RIM in US market share
• You can now try out Windows Phone on your Android or iOS device
• LG president says Windows Mobile is “rather unqualified in mobile interfaces”
• Nokia Lumia 710 now available in the UK and Canada, free with contract in the US
• LG agrees to pay Microsoft royalties for every Android device it sells

Nokia lets Indian customers pre-order the E6 for 17,999 INR (about $400, thus much less than in the UK, where the smartphone costs more than $500).

You can go here to pre-order the new E6 right now – you’ll be able to choose between three color versions: black, white or white.

The E6 is Nokia’s first candybar to feature both a touchscreen display (2.46 inches, 640 x 480 pixels and a full QWERTY keyboard. It also features Symbian Anna (just like the Nokia X7), HSPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, free navigation, 8MP camera, 720p video recording, 256MB RAM, 1GB ROM, and 8GB of storage space.

Via FoneArena

• Symbian-based Nokia E6 and X7 start shipping
• Nokia E6 now available in the UK, Nokia X7 in the US
• Nokia E6 now available in the US for $439 SIM-free, unlocked, sans contract
• Nokia N8 on pre-order in the US: $549, coming in late September
• Nokia C6, C3 and E5 in hands-on photos, videos

First off, the QWERTY + touch E6 is now in stock at Nokia UK. The smartphone is available in white, black, and silver, and can be yours for £349 SIM-free, £339 on Pay as you go, and free if you decide to sign a new two-year contract with a UK operator. You need to get a contract of at least £25 per month in order to get the phone for free. Also, shipping is free if you get the handset SIM-free.

So if you want to be one of the first people in the UK to own a brand new Nokia E6, just head on over to Nokia UK now and order yours. Be advised though that Nokia’s own store is generally a bit more expensive than other retailers. However, right now it looks like that’s the only place where the E6 is in stock, so if you can’t wait, go for it. If you are patient, you may want to check other online retailers in a couple of weeks or so – you may just get the device cheaper.

The Nokia E6 has a 2.46-inch capacitive touchscreen, a full physical QWERTY keyboard underneath that screen, a 600 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM, 1 GB of ROM, 8 GB of internal storage space expandable via microSD card, an 8 MP camera with dual-LED flash and 720p HD video recording, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HSPA, GPS, and a 1500 mAh battery.

On the other side of the pond, almost half a year after seeing its AT&T version cancelled, the Nokia X7 has become available in the US from STM Miami. To get one, you need to shell out $535.95, and the only color currently in stock is Dark Steel. Now granted, that price is a lot more than the average American is used to pay for a smartphone, but this will, obviously, get you a SIM-free, unlocked device. If you’re interested, go to STM Miami and order your new X7.

The Nokia X7 has a 4-inch 360×640 capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass, a 680 MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM, 1 GB of ROM, an 8 MP camera with dual-LED flash and 720p HD video recording, microSD card support, Wi-Fi, HSPA, GPS, Bluetooth, and a 1300 mAh battery.

Via GSMArena

• Nokia E6 now available in the US for $439 SIM-free, unlocked, sans contract
• T-Mobile myTouch 4G and Samsung Galaxy S 4G free with contract for limited time
• HTC Sensation now available in the UK for free with £25 per month contract
• Sprint HTC Evo Shift 4G now free with new two-year contract
• SIM-free Motorola Atrix will be available in the UK on August 2 for £489.99

The X7 is now on pre-order at Nokia’s own online shop in the UK, with shipping promised before the end of June (yes, that is exactly as vague as Nokia’s shipping deadlines usually are). This being Nokia, please assume that means June 30. Even so, if you pre-order now you’re less than a month away from the magical moment when you’ll be one of the first people in the UK (and the world!) to hold a smartphone running Symbian Anna. That’s got to be worth something.

Whether or not it’s worth £399 is your choice of course. That’s how much Nokia is asking to give you the X7 SIM-free. You can also get it on Pay as you go for £369, or on a variety of operator contracts that start at £25 per month. In that case, the phone will be free.

To see all the options and pre-order your Nokia X7 now, just go to Nokia UK.

Via SoMobile

• Nokia E6 can be pre-ordered at Amazon for $446, shipping in “one to two months”
• Nokia E6 and X7 also on pre-order in Finland, will ship on June 10 and June 17
• Symbian-based Nokia E6 and X7 start shipping
• Nokia X7 will be available from Three UK in June
• Nokia E6 now available in the UK, Nokia X7 in the US

The Nokia C7 can be yours for $89.95 on a “reduced price with a monthly service fee of $40 or more”. Alternatively, you can just buy the phone outright for $439.95.

To order yours, go here at Videotron.

The Nokia C7 has a 3.5-inch 640×360 capacitive touchscreen, a 680 MHz processor, 8 GB of internal storage space expandable via microSD, an 8-megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, GPS, and a 1200 mAh battery. The Nokia C7 runs Symbian^3.

The Nokia E73 is also available now at Videotron, for those who aren’t into touchscreens and like their phones with full physical QWERTY keyboards. The E73 can be yours for $49.95 on that reduced price option (again, requiring a monthly service fee of at least $40). If you want to buy the E73 outright, you’ll have to shell out $199.95.

If you’re interested, order your E73 from Videotron here.

The Nokia E73 has a 2.4-inch 320×240 display, a 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash, a secondary VGA camera for video calls, 250 MB of internal storage space expandable via microSD, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, 3G, and a 1500 mAh battery. The Nokia E73 runs Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2.

Via MobileSyrup here and here

• LG Optimus 2X now available from Videotron in Canada
• Nokia E6 now available in the US for $439 SIM-free, unlocked, sans contract
• Cheap Samsung C414 clamshell featurephone now available at Videotron in Canada
• Nokia E6 now available in the UK, Nokia X7 in the US
• Canada: Videotron launches cheap LG Wink slider and red BlackBerry Curve 3G

As you’ve probably already heard by now, the E6 is the only Symbian candybar to have a touchscreen display (2.46 inches, 640 x 480 pixels) and a full QWERTY keyboard. The handset also features HSPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, free navigation, 8MP camera with 720p video recording, and 8GB of on-board memory.

Nokia E6 costs about €400 and should be available in Europe, Asia (including the Middle East), and Africa.

The Nokia X7, with its 4-inch, 640 x 480 display, is about €30 – €40 more expensive than the E6. Customers will be able to find it in Europe, India, China, and “other Asia/Pacific countries.”

Nokia has also announced that owners of the N8, E7, C7 and C6 will receive an upgrade to Symbian Anna “in the coming months”. All right, now how about some news on those Windows Phone Mango handsets, Nokia?

Via Nokia Conversations

• Dual SIM Nokia X1-01 announced. Nokia C2-00 starts shipping
• Symbian Anna for Nokia N8, E7, C7 and C6-01 available starting now
• Nokia X6 now shipping and available in “select markets”
• Samsung Corby II S3850 officially announced, it’s like an Android-less Galaxy Mini
• Nokia Q2 2011 results: profit declines, only 16.7 million smartphones sold

The above seems to me like it’s a pretty accurate representation of the messages Nokia has been sending since February 11 of this year, the day when it announced that Windows Phone will be its primary smartphone platform in the future, and that “Symbian becomes a franchise platform” (don’t even try to understand, that phrase still makes absolutely no sense whatsoever).

Subsequently, we’ve heard here and there that Nokia’s great WP push will come in 2012. Hence, everybody kind of assumed that Symbian will be End-Of-Lifed (read: shot, killed, put out of its misery, etc.) around 2012 or 2013, with massive sales declines starting next year. At least that was the theory, that people will continue to buy Symbian devices this year, and they’ll only stop buying Symbian phones to buy Nokia Windows phones.

Yeah, right.

It turns out, surprisingly for Nokia and Mr. Elop, that smartphone buyers have internet access and can read news. So they found out about Nokia’s February announcement, and are slowly deciding not to buy Symbian anymore – because why invest in a ‘burning platform’ after all?

So this is funny, in a way. Nokia first declares Symbian dead, to make the ‘Western’ media happy (and by Western you should clearly read based in the US and UK). Then it realizes that if Symbian is dead, like, right now, then Nokia’s sales numbers and profits will abruptly go down. Hence all the no, it’s not really dead, okay it is, but not now, etc. attempts to spin this.

Amazingly, today is the first time we’ve actually heard a target for Nokia’s ending of support for Symbian. So all those 2012-2013 assumptions I’ve described above were just that – assumptions. Nokia didn’t bother to issue any official word on this until today, when Stephen Elop did in an interview for Nokia Conversations China (yes, Nokia Conversations China. At least the interview is in English. Wait, why is the interview on Nokia Conversations China in… English? I don’t know either, but this is hardly the avenue to announce such important things – in fact, this should have been announced on February 11).

So it’s like this: Nokia will continue to support Symbian until “at least 2016″ – about five more years. “Support” in this context means software updates, services, apps, the whole shebang.

At first, that seems like a drastic change from what Nokia has implied in the past (read: an end-of-Symbian coming a lot sooner). And sure, having devices supported until 2016 (though obviously the devices being released this year will not be) is nice. However, that still doesn’t tell us when exactly Nokia will sell its last Symbian handset. Supporting the platform until 2016 almost certainly doesn’t mean that you’ll see new Symbian phones pop onto the market in 2016, maybe not even 2015. If Nokia remains committed to how it’s been supporting Symbian phones up until now, that means that we could see the last Symbian device launch in 2014. Perhaps a low-end offering could even be launched in early 2015, since Nokia doesn’t usually support cheaper devices for more than 12-18 months. But that will clearly depend on whether the market will want a new Symbian smartphone in 2015, and my guess is it won’t.

If people are being turned off by Symbian’s demise today, imagine how they’ll feel in 2015. Heck, imagine where the smartphone world will be in four years! I mean, four years ago today the original iPhone was not shipping yet. Just think of how much has changed in four years – basically anything can happen in the next four.

And with Symbian not getting any low-level improvements from now on, I doubt that it will be able to compete with Apple’s and Google’s one new OS release each year. Or even Microsoft’s development pace. All of these mobile OS makers (and even RIM) may bring many new features to the table in the next four years, features that Symbian just won’t be able to match (which, indeed, will be the supreme irony, as in the past, one of the key strengths of Symbian compared to its competition was the sheer number of features it had).

Imagine that in 2014 we’ll have iOS 8 competing with Android 7 (probably) and Windows Phone 8.5 or 9. And by that time, Symbian will have slowly but surely become, at least in market share, quite irrelevant (you know, the US pundits were right! They were just a few years early).

An interesting fact is that the projected volume of Symbian devices yet to ship has apparently remained unchanged, as Elop didn’t even mention it in this tell-all interview. So that means that Nokia still intends to sell 150 million more Symbian handsets. That’s going to be 150 million devices over what… three years? Four? Who knows? Does Nokia even know?

Nokia’s Q1 2011 numbers have it selling about 24 million smartphones. That’s about 8 million per month, or 96 million per year – though those numbers are falling very, very quickly.

While it’s impossible to tell right now if the 150 million number will be reached by Nokia by 2016, 2015, or 2014, things will become a lot clearer towards the end of this year, and especially at the beginning of 2012, when Nokia will already have at least a couple of WP devices on the market. We’ll then see how much Symbian’s market share has been eroded by Android and iOS, and also if WP will do anything to further diminish it.

To sum up Elop’s statement: buy Symbian smartphones. Don’t worry. Just buy them.

Of course, less and less people will do that. And Nokia knows that. And it can’t really do anything about it. Scratch what I said above. This isn’t funny, it’s sad. Ah well, maybe WP will indeed be something worthwhile… next year.

Here’s the entire interview with Mr. Elop embedded for your viewing pleasure:

Via AllAboutSymbian

• Elop says Nokia’s first Windows Phones are on track for Q4
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”
• Dow Jones: “Market speculation” suggests Samsung to buy Nokia
• Nokia has gone from Designed in Finland to Designed in California in less than two years
• Nokia stops smartphone sales drop in Q3, but it’s now No.3 behind Samsung and Apple

The T7’s approval doesn’t mean anything to US customers, though, because the smartphone is a TD-SCDMA one, thus it’s made for China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier (it serves about 600 million customers).

Obviously running Symbian, the Nokia T7 features a 640 x 360 display and an 8MP camera, and it doesn’t have HDMI.

Nokia has yet to announce the launch date of the T7 – not that we care too much, but at least now we’ve solved the mystery surrounding the phone.

• Nokia N8 (Vasco?) might be announced on April 13
• Nokia C7, C6-01 and X3-02 Touch and Type launch dates for India revealed
• Nokia Ovi Store now serves 5 million downloads daily
• Nokia X2 coming soon; Nokia X9 concept shows up
• Nokia C7 with Symbian^3 previewed by MR (yes, the unannounced C7)

The Oro is nothing more than a luxury edition of the Nokia C7, so it has the same features: 3.5 inch AMOLED display, HSPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, 8MP camera, 8GB of on-board memory, and so on. It is coated with scratch-resistant 18-carat gold, its battery cover is encased in leather, and its home button is made out of real sapphire crystal.

There are two version of the Oro: Nokia Oro Dark and Nokia Oro Light.

Nokia plans to sell the Oro starting Q3 in select European markets (including Russia), the Middle East, and China. The handset is targeted at users who are looking for “products with a build quality and superior materials that attest to their success and social standing.” Yes, that means rich people.

Nokia says the Oro will cost at least €800 (about $1,250). Until the smartphone hits the market, here’s a video preview of it:

Via Nokia Conversation

• Samsung i8910 Omnia HD Gold Edition announced
• Nokia X6 now shipping and available in “select markets”
• Nokia 6700 classic Gold Edition announced
• Nokia C3-01 Gold Edition gets unveiled as a budget gold-plated featurephone with 1 GHz processor
• White Samsung Galaxy S II coming to O2

Well, it turns out that they’re also up for pre-order in Nokia’s home country of Finland. Finnish retailer Markantalo has the Nokia X7 listed for EUR 405. That’s cheaper than both in Germany (EUR 459) as well as Portugal (EUR 489). Granted, pre-order prices are hardly reliable, but we can still get a pretty good idea of pricing trends when the devices actually start shipping. Speaking of which, the Finnish retailer will start shipping the Nokia X7 on June 17.

The Nokia E6 costs EUR 398 in Finland, with an estimated shipping date of June 10. Again, that’s cheaper than the pre-order price we’ve seen in Germany, where the smartphone goes for EUR 429.

The aforementioned release dates may only apply to Finland. In other words, these handsets may be out over there a bit before they will be seen elsewhere in Europe, but even so, the delay usually isn’t very big, so we should expect both newest Symbian devices to reach stores throughout Europe before the end of June.

• Nokia cutting prices on N8, C7, E6 and other smartphones
• Nokia X7 pre-orders start in the UK, shipping before the end of June
• Nokia E6 and X7 can be pre-ordered in Germany, Portugal
• Nokia N8 available around September 30 in Europe?
• Nokia N8 now on pre-order in Germany and France: €479, €459

We know as much since the operator has decided to update its ‘Coming soon’ page and add the X7 to it. Furthermore, we now also know the when: Three will have the Nokia X7 sometime in June. That’s not really specific, but even assuming it’s going to happen at the end of the month, that still means that you’ll be able to get your hands on Nokia’s Symbian Anna-powered device in about six weeks. Sure, there’s still some waiting to do, but not all that much.

That is, if you (or anyone, for that matter) are still anxiously waiting for a Symbian device in this day and age. The numbers of such people seem to be getting smaller and smaller by the day.

Anyway, here’s a quick refresher of the X7′s specs, in case you’ve forgotten anything. It’s got a 4-inch ClearBlack AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass, an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and HD video recording, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, 1 GB of built-in memory (further expandable via a microSD card slot), and a 1300 mAh battery.

Via DialToSave

• Nokia X7 now available at Three UK, free from £30 per month
• Nokia X7 with Symbian Anna now available at Rogers
• Nokia X7 and Nokia E6 announced, new Symbian Anna in tow
• Nokia C6-01 and Nokia C7 Symbian^3 smartphones announced at Nokia World
• Nokia E6 now available in the UK, Nokia X7 in the US

Fido is asking $275 for the phone without a contract, with prepaid service, or with a “monthly plan only, no agreement” arrangement. For those of you allergic to shelling out loads of cash at once, there’s also the option of getting a two-year agreement, in which case the Nokia C6 can be yours for $50.

This certainly isn’t for the smartphone-addicted (at least not in the North American definition of the term smartphone), but it may be a good fit for someone who previously had a featurephone. The C6 has got a 5-megapixel camera with VGA video recording, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS, and a 3.2-inch touchscreen to complement that QWERTY keyboard. Heavy texters may also love this device, for that keyboard looks quite nice.

Anyway, if it’s for you, jump over to Fido and order yourself a Nokia C6 now.

Via MobileSyrup

• Nokia C6 will be sold in Canada by Fido for $275 sans contract
• Samsung Linx is a cheap QWERTY slider now available at Fido in Canada
• Canada: Samsung Galaxy Q officially launched by Fido
• Nokia C7 now available in Canada from Wind Mobile
• BlackBerry 9100, Nokia X3, SE Aspen and more coming to Fido Canda

The pink N8 is targeted at women – Nokia doesn’t specifically mention this, but since the handset comes with a Little Pink Diva Theme and an ELLE fashion app, thing are already pretty clear. Plus, pink is a girly color not matter what you say.

The features of the pink N8 are the same you’ll find in the other N8 models: 3.5 inch AMOLED touchscreen display, Ovi Maps with free navigation, HMDI, 12MP camera, and so on.

Nokia didn’t say when and where the pink N8 will be launched. It will probably be out pretty soon anyway.

Via Nokia Conversation

• Sony Ericsson Vivaz now also in pink
• Nokia X6 16GB, Nokia E72 coming to Canada
• Sony Ericsson W350 pink edition released
• Nokia 5230 touchscreen phone announced; costs only €149
• Nokia C7 starts shipping as the world’s second Symbian^3 smartphone (video)

The Finnish company plans to “to reduce its Devices & Services non-IFRS operating expenses by 1 billion euros for the full year 2013 in comparison to the full year 2010” – to accomplish this, it (also) needs to reduce its workforce. Thus, Nokia will layoff about 4,000 employees by the end of 2012, most of them currently working on Symbian and MeeGo projects in Finland, Denmark, and the UK.

To find out more details on the future layoffs, you can go here and here.

Nokia has also announced that it would transfer about 3,000 employees to Accenture, sometime before the end of this year. As part of the deal, Accenture would provide Symbian software development and support to Nokia – until Symbian will go extinct, of course.

Accenture will also “provide mobility software, business and operational services around the Windows Phone platform to Nokia and other ecosystem participants.”

Back in the summer of 2009, Accenture bought Nokia’ Symbian Professional Services unit, and then contributed to the development of Symbian^3.

To find out more on the new agreement between Nokia and Accenture, see this press release.

As a reminder, Nokia’s first Windows Phone handsets should be out in late 2011, or early 2012.

• Nokia selling Symbian Professional Services to Accenture
• Samsung invites unhappy Symbian developers to bring their talents to Bada
• Motorola to ditch Symbian, bet on Android and outsource WinMo phone production
• SK Telecom joins other tech companies to speed up Linux platform development for mobile phones
• Elop: New full touch UI is coming to Nokia S40 phones

The update brings 15 new Easter Eggs levels filled with… eggs, and pigs wearing bunny ears.

You can download the update starting today on iOS, Android, Symbian, and WebOS devices.

Apart from updating the game, Rovio – which recently released the brand new Angry Birds Rio – also announced that it would “soon launch the biggest alternate reality game with Angry Birds ever”, which will ask users to “seek for clues around the world to discover the secrets hidden in Angry Birds Seasons.” Well, that sounds intriguing.

Until we hear more about this alternate reality game, you can watch a preview of Angry Birds Seasons Easter Eggs in the video below:

Via Rovio

• Angry Birds Rio for Android will debut via Amazon Appstore
• Ads-free Angry Birds for Android to come next month
• New Angry Birds Rio coming in March to iPhone, Android, Ovi Store (video trailer)
• Angry Birds for Android passes 2 million downloads, crashes GetJar servers
• Full Version of Angry Birds for Android Out in 2-3 Weeks

The news comes five months after Nokia announced that Ovi Store reached 3 million daily downloads. More than 40,000 apps are currently available in the store, and about 1,000 new ones are launched each week.

Reportedly, about 15% of the daily downloads in Ovi Store are made on Nokia’s four latest Symbian smartphones: N8, C6-01, C7, and E7.

Although it chose Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform, Nokia still plans to sell about 150 million Symbian handsets, so there is certainly room for Ovi Store to grow. Plus, of course, let’s not forget that Ovi Store now includes apps for Series 40 devices (which will likely be around for many years to come).

Via Press release

• 3 million downloads served by Nokia Ovi Store daily
• Samsung dethrones Nokia in featurephone sales (in Western Europe)
• Nokia offers Skype for Symbian via Ovi Store
• Nokia’s Ovi Store reaches 2.3 million downloads per day, 70 developers have 1 million plus downloads
• Shocker: Nokia officially adopts Windows Phone as its “primary smartphone platform”