This, the Nokia X9, is by far the most advanced and sexiest Nokia I have seen since the release of the Nokia N97. As good as the images look, this is just a concept made by a really talented Nokia lover. Whether Nokia will grab this idea and launch this baby is unlikely to see. Did you recognize the perfect twitter and facebook integration? The big players like Nokia, Apple and Samsung should really take a look at this.

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For all you Formula1 fans I’ve found the official Formula1 application. This application displays information supplied to the teams from every session of the Grand Prix weekend. Thus you always have the latest results, stats and all information you need. Point your browser either to mobile.formula1.com/download to download this freeware application or download it straight on SymbianWorld. This application works on all S60 devices like the Nokia N97, X6, N95, E90 or the Sony Ericsson Satio.

S60 5th Edition Download (N97, 5800, X6, Satio, Vivaz)

S60 3rd Edition Download (N95, E72, E71)

The main timing screen lets you track the progress of every driver, from their position and best lap time to their latest sector times and lap count. Other features include a track status indicator, informing you of yellow/red flags and safety car phases, plus straight-line speeds and text commentary.

The circuit data screen lets you know what conditions the drivers are facing out on the circuit, with the current air and track temperatures, rainfall, air pressure and humidity levels, plus wind speed and direction. Graphs also allow you to see how conditions have changed throughout the session.

The Official Formula1.com 2010 Application isn’t just about the current race. Other features include results for every session of the current season, the season calendar, timetables for every Grand Prix and the current championship standings.

David Rivas, VP of Technology Management at Nokia,  demoed Symbian^3 in San Francisco. Of course he used a emulator to show the new Version as there is no Symbian^3 device announced yet. This new version of the old OS should help Nokia redefining themself. I have seen this demo a few weeks ago and I am looking forward to the first device running Symbian^3. Take a look at the video and let us know your take on this.

The YouTube for S60 that everyone has been waiting for is here. Version 2.4 now lets you to log-in to your YouTube account and access all your favorite videos, subscriptions and playlists directly on your handset. This new update also brings a new search query suggestion tool and a new homescreen user interface that is optimized for larger screens.

Other features added to this update include the search query suggestions tool, that brings up relevant suggestions as you type in the YouTube search box. There is also a new homescreen user interface optimized for larger screens and displays all the new account orientated features for easy access.

To download the new YouTube app on your Nokia S60 handset, simply point your device browser to m.youtube.com/app.

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The Nokia C5 is the very first device coming from the new C-Series. Basically. the C5 is smartphone for the massmarket. It features HSPA, S60 3rd Edition, big keys, a 3.2 megapixel camera as well as A-GPS. Moreover, it comes with free pedestrian- and carnavigation.  On top of that, the C5 cost only 169€. 169€ for a full navigation system and a smartphone is a awesome deal! Here you can see some pictures:

Finding destinations using Ovi Maps is very easy now, with the search more precise than ever. There is one slight weakness however, when trying to access a location using coordinates, as the option isn’t so apparent. Now although navigating with coordinates is hardly an everyday scenario, there may be times when you’d like to find or navigate to a location using just the coordinates. So heres a quick guide on how to go about this on your Nokia smartphone.

What you’ll need to do first is access the Landmarks application from the main menu. It may be available through the ‘Applications’ sub-menu in some phones. Then simply add a new landmark choosing the ‘enter manually’ option.

Here you will be presented with a list of different information you can input for this new location. If you scroll near to the end you will see the Latitude and Longitude options. Enter the information and hit ‘done’.

The settings are automatically set in degrees, minutes and seconds, and if you wish to change them to decimals for example, you will need to access the ‘Positioning Settings’ from the Landmarks homescreen.

At this point you will be given an overview of the location information you have entered, in this case the coordinates for the Eiffel Tower, Paris. Once you ensure all the details are as they should be, you can exit the Landmark application and open up Ovi Maps.

In Ovi Maps hit the ‘Favourites’ option from the main menu where you will find ‘Synchronise’, Places, Routes and ‘Create New’. In the ‘Places’ tab you will find your saved ‘Landmark’ you setup earlier.

Click on the location and you will be given the option to view details of the location, show the location on the map or navigate to the location in the variety of different ways.

You can find more guides and how to’s in our Tutorials section.

Since the release of Skype for Symbian, I was not quite sure whether to stay with Nimbuzz or to switch over to Skype. The point is, that it’s hard to run both apps at one time since the Nokia N97 is a bit short on hardware resources as you will know. When I tried to run both apps and work with the phone at the same time, I experienced program shutdowns and so on, so I had to decide.

I’m using Nimbuzz for Skype- and Facebookchat, so switching to Skype would be a step back and there would have to be serious reasons for me to do it.

So, at first glance, the choice seems to be easy. Nimbuzz features not only Skype but also WindowsLive, Googletalk, Facebookchat, Twitter and so on plus Nimbuzz occupies about 1Mb less ram on my N97.

So why should one ever “downgrade” to “only” Skype?

Homescreen Widget

Well, first of all, Skype features a homescreen widget which is nice to have. Not only do you have direct access to Skype, you also get notifications on new messages (”you missed 1IM”), can see your current status message and – very important to me – you can see, if Skype is even online.

The current Nimbuzz version features popup-notifications which is nice too, but can get annoying if you are writing an email for example because the popups will cover all other open programs. In addition to that, you won’t see if Nimbuzz is open at all unless you look in the Taskmanager and if so, you still don’t know, if you are online.

This get’s us to the real problem with Nimbuzz. I experienced Nimbuzz to freeze for short periods of time, log out of Skype or Facebook (or don’t even log in) and even to shut down in the background frequently. Thus, I found myself wasting time by checking, if Nimbuzz was still up and running and if so, if it was online…

Skype on the other hand seems to be quite stable and as I said, you can see if you are online and if you missed an IM at a glance. It works, and it is handy – that’s how I like it. I have to admit that Skype is far from perfect, too. It’s more or less the first version of this app and there are a few bugs that have to be fixed, but compared to Nimbuzz, Skype is simply the more stable and better programmed choice.

Nimbuzz

Feature wise, the two apps are quite similar when it comes to “skyping”. You can run multiple chats, save the histories, send and receive files etc.. Regarding Skypecalls, there does not seem to be much difference, but I don’t use it very often, since my operator does not allow Skypecalls. I was trying it via W-Lan and experienced the calls with the Skype app to be better sound wise. On the downside, Skype needs some time to re-open longer chats but you will have nearly all your favorite Skypesmileys and -sounds.

Skype

After all, I found myself choosing Skype over Nimbuzz. In theory, Nimbuzz is the perfect social messaging tool which should cover nearly all your needs, but practically it’s just not stable enough. So if you can abandon the other services Nimbuzz offers, I think you’re gonna be more happy with Skype.

To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed, that Nokia failed to integrate Skype into OVI Contacts since OVI Contacts seems to work quite well and is perfectly integrated in the UI. You can see if your friends are online in the phonebook and even on the homescreen in the “favorite contacts”-widget plus you can jump directly to your chats via the popup-menu at the top right of the screen. So Skypeintegration on OVI Contacts would be my wish for the future.

What did you experience with these two apps and what do you think about (the future of) OVI Contacts? Share your thougts below…

One note for those, who want to install Skype: I experienced the installation to be quite difficult because the install-program would close down after accepting “access to phone data”.  I had to set my system-language to English (requires restart) to complete the installation. After that, I switched back to German and had no problems ever since.

There is no doubt that with so many devices on the market today and only rearranged digits to represent them, one can easily get confused with which is which. Newer devices with lesser numbers may also misguide consumers when searching for the latest handset. This issue was also confirmed in a recent poll conducted by Nokia.

This is the very reason why Nokia has decided to rethink its ’series’ branding, and put more meaning into naming its handsets. Nokia’s ’series’ brand will now begin to represent a clearer classification of devices and segment solution based priority in handsets more prominently.

To start off, the more popular N-series will consist of feature packed devices to drive mobile innovation forward. These devices will be the flagships of tomorrow consisting of high end smartphones and mobile computers.

The E-Series range will continue to represent Nokia’s business devices, with a portfolio of smartphones packed with business solutions, and housed in a range of form factors with solid build quality. These devices will have the battery power and processor speeds to surpass its market’s needs.

Nokia’s X-Series will focus on the music centric market, with solutions specifically for the younger generation. These devices will not only provide owners with huge quantities of storage for their media, but also with quick an easy solutions to consume this media, presumably with dedicated music keys.

Finally there is the newly introduced C-series which will tie all the loose ends and cater for the socially entertained amongst us. These devices will be cheap and compact, with numerous solutions to allow users to remain connected at all times.

Over the next few months however, Nokia is still expected to continue releasing numbered devices as it has done in the past, to follow through with its existing roadmap. But as the year goes on, we will start to see fewer devices with the old naming convention and gradually all the devices will either have the letter N,E, X or C before them, followed by a a digit to individualise its identity.

Will this end all the confusion? Well, there are a few ways to look at it. Firstly, you could embrace the idea and hail Nokia’s clarification method. But with competing manufacturers all moving forward in delivering a combined class of devices, whether this strategy will work for Nokia, still remains to be seen. Drop your thoughts in the comments below and share your take on Nokia’s new naming convention. Do you feel this is a step forward for the clarification processes for consumers, or is it just another way for the manufacturer to segment and conquer every market?

The Ovi Mail team has just released Ovi Mail 2.0, with which your Ovi Mail contacts and Ovi Contacts are merged into a single contacts list. You can view, edit, delete or create your contacts from Ovi Contacts or Ovi Mail. You can also sync your device phonebook with Ovi Contacts and Ovi Mail.

The following use case is now supported with the changes in Ovi Mail 2.0:

Save a contact and view from device:

1. User opens an email from a friend in Ovi Mail on the web and sends a reply back
2. Ovi Mail shows a dialog box asking if he wants to add the person to his address book. User says yes and fills in the entries and clicks on ‘Add contact’
3. Within a few minutes, the new contact appears in Ovi Contacts on the web because Ovi Mail now is integrated with Ovi Contacts
4. User decides to sync his phone to get the newly added contact on his phone. User can either initiate a sync from device or from Ovi Contacts on the web to sync his contacts
5. After the sync completes, user views the Phonebook on the device and the name of the friend and the newly added email address appear in the Phonebook on the phone

You can download the new Ovi Mail 2.0 here.

Today Skype and Nokia jointly announced the release of Skype for Symbian, a Skype client for Nokia smartphones based on the Symbian platform, the world’s most popular smartphone platform. Skype for Symbian will allow Nokia smartphone users worldwide to use Skype on the move, over either a WiFi or mobile data connection (GPRS, EDGE, 3G). It is now downloadable for free from the Ovi Store or from the website. Currently we do not know whether non-Nokia Symbian devices like the Sony Ericsson Satio or Vivaz Pro are supported as well. What we know, however, is that all Nokia Symbian devices, whether a N95 or the N97, are supported.

Skype for Symbian enables Nokia smartphone users to:

• Make free Skype-to-Skype calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world*
• Save money on calls and texts (SMS) to phones abroad
• Send and receive instant messages to and from individuals or groups
• Share pictures, videos and other files
• Receive calls to their existing online number
• See when Skype contacts are online and available to call or IM
• Easily import names and numbers from the phone’s address book

“It’s great to see two of the most innovative and disruptive software solutions come together to extend options for consumers. The Skype VOIP and communications solution is unprecedented in its capability to allow consumers to take advantage of the power of the internet as a communications medium, and the types of products that you can build on Symbian that harness the power of the platform’s imaging, content, and internet capabilities is unprecedented. I cannot wait to see how quickly consumers realize the benefits of this combined solution.”

Nokia has finally drawn its curtains on the new Cseries portfolio with the announcement of the Nokia C5 – a smartphone optimized for social networking and sharing. The compact device includes access to Nokia’s range of mobile services, such as free navigation, in one affordable package. The Nokia C5 is expected to cost around EUR 135, before taxes and subsidies.

With direct access to favorite contacts on the device homescreen and Facebook status updates visible from the phonebook, the Nokia C5 keeps people connected with the ones who matter the most. Accessing social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, is fast and easy, while instant messaging and email accounts from Ovi Mail and other email providers are available through Nokia Messaging. Loaded with a 3.2 megapixel camera, a 2GB memory card that comes in-box and high speed data connection for effortless uploading of photos and videos to various online communities, the Nokia C5 delivers an outstanding sharing experience.

The Nokia C5 boasts a cool new feature in its phone book, where you can see your friends status updates directly from Facebook. You can also update your Facebook status easily and share your location with Ovi Maps 3.0.

The homescreen will show off your favourite three friends for easy access to calling and messaging whilst Nokia Messaging enables you to keep in touch on IM using Google Talk or Windows Live Messenger.

Storage is the mircoSD variety with support for up to 16GB cards – the Nokia C5 will come with a 2GB card in the box, plenty of room for storing music and with the built in stereo FM radio and 3.5mm AV connector, not to mention the Stereo IHF speaker, it should sound good too.

The device is small too, measuring just over 12mm thin and 46mm across (and 112mm high). Battery life is good for up to 12 hours talktime (GSM) and it’ll stay on standby for a whopping 26 days between charges.

Available in white and warm grey, the Nokia C5 will be available in the second quarter of 2010 globally in Europe, Eurasia, SEAP, China and MEA. The anticipated retail price, before applicable taxes and subsidies is €135. It looks rather nice too.

Source

The Nokia Music Store recently received a major face-lift and is now more commonly referred to as Ovi Music, which is now offering DRM free music (for the a la card store only). This means all the tracks you download will be DRM-free, MP3 files that you can now play on a PC, Mac or any personal music player! Currently it’s available in just a few countries but more countries will be added soon. Moreover, as part of the change to Ovi Music, the search capability has been enhanced  so it’s easier than ever to find the music. In the following video, Steve Steward talks about the new Ovi Music as well as Comes With Music:

The guys over at Stuff Magazine have got their hands on the Sony Ericsson Vivas and Vivas Pro. The Vivaz Pro is the QWERTY keyboard version of the Vivaz and it still retains all the features of its sibling, barring a few key differences. The Vivas has an 8.1MP camera whereas the Vivaz Pro packs in 5.1MPs and therefore a smaller sensor to make way for it’s slide out keyboard. The Vivaz Pro is also 2mm thicker, but the best part however, is they both pack 720p HD video mode, putting it up against the likes of Samsung’s i8910 HD. Julian Whitehorn gives a quick overview of the Vivas Pro in his hands-on demo after the break.

Source – Stuff.tv

The Nokia Beta Labs have today released Ovi Maps Beta for Mobile (3.04), which is supposed to make exploring new places and getting to your destination easier and faster than before. This new Beta release is mainly to improve the performance of the service. With Ovi Maps for Mobile you can also share your location with friends on Facebook and let them know what you are up to. Your status update, photo and location appear on your Facebook page and your location can be viewed on the map within the Ovi Maps Facebook Application.

Main highlights of the v3.04 release

• Improved positioning speed and accuracy
• Map zooming with faster speed
• Improved search for cities with zoom out to city level

To download all the latest data for Ovi Maps Beta for Mobile (3.04) the Beta Labs reccommend you to use Map Loader. It will automatically detect which version of maps you have and update your device accordingly. Simply follow the on-screen instructions.

Source – Nokia Beta Labs

Earlier this month, the Symbian Foundation officially showcased its Symbian^3 OS, with its hardware accelerated performance power and intuitive user interface. Although we are still yet to see a Symbian^3 powered handset, the Symbian Foundation is also working hard on getting Symbian^4 ready for the market. Symbian^4 seems to be very much a mixture of Maemo as we know it and Symbian^3. Check out the UI demonstrations after the break.

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Snowboard Hero is, as the name already hints, a snowboard game with severl game-modes. You can choose between speedrun, freestyle and a race. Basically, it is supposed to run on S60 3rd Edition devices only, however, it’s also possible to run it on touch-enabled devices. In this case you would have a onscreen-keyboard to control the game. If you own a Nokia N97 or a N97 Mini you can disable the onscreen-keyboard by going  to settings. Then open the App Manager,go to installed apps and find the game. Finally go to options, suite settings, on-screen keyboard and than change to OFF.

Download the game to your Nokia N96, Sony Ericsson Satio or your Samsung Omnia I8910 HD and enjoy the game.

However, in Barcelona, Powermat also demonstrated the ultimate solution to this issue, in the form of a Powermat battery. Hopefully this battery is something manufacturers will consider to distribute with their devices as it encases the whole Powermat wireless charging technology inside it, eliminating the need for an additional battery cover. Simply replace the phone’s original battery and no-one will know any different. This solution will be available in June 2010 and comes at a suggested retail price of $24.99, bargain!

Of course Powermat is approved by all the major manufacturers such as Samsung, Nokia and Apple, and so you can use the Powermat solutions without the fear of loosing your warranty or damaging your device in any way. The Powermat’s Radio Frequency Identification will instantly know what to charge, how long to charge it for and when the device’s battery is full. Moreover, Powermat can charge your device as fast as the standard charger that came with the device.

We used the term phone sparingly as Powermat can also charge music players, handheld game consoles, electronic readers, GPS devices, Bluetooth headsets, netbooks and even laptops. The Powermat technology has been miniaturized to a level where it can be embedded into virtually any device, as well as walls and table top surfaces. The Powermat technology is fast, efficient and safe to use, revolutionizing the way consumers charge and power their devices. As soon as we get a review unit in, we’ll put a more in depth review, so make sure you subscribe to our RSS Feed or catch us on Twitter @SymbianWorld.

You cannot wait for the first Smbian^3 devices to be launched? Well, in order to sweeten the wait a little bit we introduce a Symbian^3 theme for your S60 3rd and 5th Edition phone. Just go ahead and download it.

The fourth quarter of 2009 ended quite positive with a increase of 8.3 percent. In 2009, smartphone sales reached 172.4 million units, a 23.8 per cent increase from 2008. Athough Symbian and Nokia are still market leader, they lost approx two (Nokia) and five per cet compared to the previous year. Also Sony Ericsson’s market share decreased two per cent.

“We certainly welcome Gartner’s predictions around the renewed vitality of the mobile device market. Earlier this month, we not only announced the latest version of the Symbian platform, Symbian^3, but also that the source code for our platform is now fully open source. The latter announcement represents ten years of investment and billions of dollars worth of code – all of which is now available for download and development by the developer community, for free. This will foster even greater creativity and innovation in the mobile industry, as now any individual or organisation can take, use and modify the code for any purpose. We look forward to keeping apace with Gartner’s prediction for double digit growth for the mobile industry in 2010.” Lee Williams, Executive Director, Symbian Foundation

Smartphone sales to end users continued their strong growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, totalling 53.8 million units, up 41.1 per cent from the same period in 2008.  Smartphone-focused vendors like Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) successfully captured market share from other larger device producers, controlling 14.4 and 19.9 per cent of the worldwide smartphone market, respectively.

At this year’s Mobile World Congress Nokia wasn’t present with a booth at the Fira. Instead, it propped up its tent a few hundred meters away, making its own little version of Nokia World – Nokia’s biggest event of the year. This is why most attendees expected a major announcement with either a new flagship device or a stunning successor. However, as Niklas Savander, Executive Vice President of Services at Nokia, took to the stage, everybody in the audience knew that this announcement would be focused on services rather than on devices. Now although at first it may seem a little strange or rather disappointing, it highlights Nokia’s new attitude and strategy.

The Finnish manufacturer said last year that they will not announce as many devices as they did in the past, instead they plan to concentrate more on services built around the Ovi brand. This does not mean that Nokia will stop manufacturing new devices, but only that there will be less handsets made by Nokia.

If we take a look at Apple for instance, one can see how successful a company can be with such a small portfolio of handsets. Nokia in contrast, is offering a much wider range of devices, catering for almost every individuals preference. Nonetheless, it was really disappointing for many not seeing a new handset or at least a new service.

It is true that the merger of Maemo and Moblin to MeeGo is an important and logical step, but besides that there was no other new announcement. With Samsung, HTC and Motorola all introducing new and capable devices, Nokia will definitely need to announce a major smartphone within the next few months, otherwise they will lose more and more ground.

Nicolas Savander’s presentation was packed full of figures related to the current Ovi services. One of the most astonishing figures was that of the new Ovi Maps, which was downloaded more than 3 million times in less than a month. This is a staggering figure considering that there is only a handful of devices supported. This with the likes of Nokia Music, shows that Nokia is rapidly scaling their services to more and more countries and consumers. And thus far this is not the end as these services are constantly evolving.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the Ovi Services.

Ovi Maps:

As already highlighted, the new Ovi Maps has been downloaded more than 3 million times and there is more than one download each second, 100000 every day. This reflects on Nokia’s effort put into this product. It was actually a long and hard way from the acquisition of Gate5 to this announcement, and as one can see, it has already payed off for Nokia. This service is Nokia’s flagship service and with more and more devices being launched with GPS and with a price point below 200€, like the Nokia 5230, there are more and more potential users. Indeed, this is an aggressive strategy which needs to be sorted out not by Nokia but by Tom Tom, Garmin and all the others players, because the new Ovi Maps not only features drive and walk navigation in 74 countries and 46 languages, but also traffic information at no extra cost!

Ovi Mail:

A million people open an Ovi Mail account every month which is more often than not their first online identity, bringing the total number of accounts created to more than six million in just over a year. Working closely with operators, Nokia Messaging – Nokia’s push email service, is now signed up with over 70 operators and growing constantly.

Ovi Store:

Although the Ovi Store is not perfect yet and cannot compete against the Apple App Store, it still manages to generate more than one million downloads per day. Most of the downloads come from India, Russia, UK, Italy and Indonesia. In 2010 the aim is to have more language support along with better billing support and ultimately more apps. This is an area one needs to keep an eye on as it is a market in which Nokia is still behind and it is becoming one of the main factors for consumers looking to buy a new phone.

Ovi Music:

The Nokia Music Store recently received a major face-lift and is now more commonly referred to as Ovi Music, which is now offering DRM free music( for the a la card store only). Currently it’s available in just a few countries but more countries will be added soon. Comes With Music grew to 27 markets with its arrival in the Middle East. People that own a Comes With Music device can download as many free tracks as they want. The average person using Comes With Music downloads 500 free songs in the first few weeks of using the service, which would generally cost around 450€ from iTunes.

“Our global footprint means we have scaled fast, reaching a really significant number of people using a variety of different phones and smartphones. We started the year with a bang with our free Ovi Maps navigation launch and we have just announced the pilot of Nokia Money running in one of India’s largest metropolitan areas. Going forward, we are increasing the speed and concentrating on developing a magic experience for the people that use our services.” Niklas Savander, Executive Vice President of Services at Nokia.

This attitude, that hardware is not the most important factor in the current industry, is quite hard to grasp at first, but it becomes more obvious looking at the wider picture. Nokia plans to pave they way in which consumers use their devices in the future.

Sony Ericsson was the only manufacturer that announced a new Symbian based handset during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The new Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro is an advanced version of the Vivaz, which was announced just a week prior to MWC. Apparently there are just two main differences between these two Symbian devices - a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and the downscaled 5-megapixel camera. Other than that these two devices are completely identical.

The main highlight of the Vivaz Pro is the 720p HD video-recording capabilities. Of course, this is nothing new since the Samsung I8910 HD features it already. However, there is even more about the video recording other than just the HD quality. When compared to the other smartphones, the focus of the camera on the Vivas Pro constantly adapts. Basically what this means is that everything you record is extremely sharp, whether it be a text in front of the lens or the house a couple of meters away. Even some standalone cameras with video recording functionalities don’t support this.

Although the Vivas Pro’s five-megapixel camera makes it a great camera and video recoding device, there is only a single LED flash on the back. The Satio for instance has a LED and Xenon flash which improves the image quality drastically. A Xenon flash on the Vivaz Pro would’ve made it a real winner.

On the right hand side of the device you will not only find a dedicated camera key but also a dedicated video recording key, so that you can jump straight to your desired mode without the need to switch from camera to video mode or vice versa.

The Vivaz is based on Symbian S60 5th Edition, with some Sony Ericsson based functions and customizations. One of which is the homescreen with five different panels which you can personalize as you wish.

As social media is becoming more and more significant, Sony Ericsson preloaded the Vivaz Pro with a Facebook and Twitter application. In combination with the full slide out QWERTY keyboard, using Facebook and Twitter on the Vivas Pro is a very enjoyable experience. The keyboard has four rows with relatively large keys. Finding the pressure point is easy and one can get used to the keyboard fast. On the right hand side you will find the four arrow keys as well as the enter and backspace buttons.

In terms of the size the Vivaz Pro measures in at 109 x 52 x 15 mm, not too big, and slightly smaller than the Nokia N97. It is built mainly out of plastic and there are no highlights in order to make it look and feel more desirable.

The Vivaz Pro does not support kinetic scrolling in the menu or in lists. We don’t have any information whether this will be added in future updates but thus far there is no sign of kinetic scrolling.

We must note that Sony Ericsson have finally decided to use a proper 3.5mm audio jack and microUSB port. This has always been a major hassle and a major reason to not buy a Sony Ericsson. Leaving the proprietary jack behind and replacing it with the current standard is a great step forward. The Sony Ericsson Vivas Pro is expected to be released in Q2 2010 with a price tag of 490€.

Skype for Symbian S60 3rd Edition has finally made its way out of beta, and brings with it support for s60 5th Edition handsets. If you spend any amount of time roaming or if you habitually use your mobile for most phone calls the announcement that Skype is now rolling out for Symbian is really good news. Available at launch for Nokia phones, Skype will become available on other Symbian powered models soon.Skype for Symbian will allow you to:

• Make free Skype-to-Skype calls to other Skype users anywhere in the world
• Save money on calls and texts (SMS) to phones abroad
• Send and receive instant messages to and from individuals or groups
• Share pictures, videos and other files
• Receive calls through an online number
• See when Skype contact are online and available to chat or call
• Easily important contacts from the native phone address book

The initial Skype for Symbian client is compatible with Nokia models N96, N79, N85, 5320, 6210 Navigator, 6220, N78, E71 and 5800, N97, N97 mini, x6 and 5530. Skype will introduce a version of Skype for Symbian working with other smartphones including E63, E66, N82, N95, E51, N95,  N95 8GB, N81, N81 8GB, 6121, 6120, 5700, 6110 Navigator, E90, N76, 6290.

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With a great user experience, an aggressive global rollout plan and a focus on local relevance, Nokia felt that it was time to commend some of the landmark the Nokia services have achieved. Taking a look at the Ovi umbrella of services, Nokia particularly highlighted the success of its Location, Music, Store, Messaging, Money and Life Tools services. Full press release after the break.

“Our recipe for success has some pretty simple ingredients: delighting consumers. Yes, we are in more places, serving more people, with more great content and services. True, more than a million apps are being downloaded a day from our store; Comes with Music is now available in over 25 markets; and every second of the day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, another person downloads our new Ovi Maps app. These are great achievements, but our goal is to delight hundreds of millions of consumers around the world – and we are well on our way,” says Niklas Savander, head of Nokia’s services business.

“Our global footprint means we have scaled fast, reaching a really significant number of people using a variety of different phones and smartphones. We started the year with a bang with our free Ovi Maps navigation launch and we have just announced the pilot of Nokia Money running in one of India’s largest metropolitan areas. Going forward, we are increasing the speed and concentrating on developing a magic experience for the people that use our services.”

Nokia highlighted landmark achievements for its key service areas:

Location: Launched in late January, the new Ovi Maps features drive and walk navigation in 74 countries and 46 languages, as well as traffic information in many. All new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include this great service – at no extra cost.

- More than 3 million Ovi Maps downloaded to date
- More than one download per second, 24 hours a day; around 100,000 downloads a day
- Rich functionality and the best mobile maps coverage in the world

Music: Last week, Comes With Music grew to 27 markets with its arrival in the Middle East. People that own a Comes With Music device can download as much free music as they want from Ovi Music and, unlike other online music services, can keep them on their device forever. Music downloaded from the Ovi Music à la carte menu is also DRM-free.

- Ovi Music is in 33 markets, making Nokia the world’s most scaled global digital music provider
- The average person using Comes With Music downloads 500 free songs in the first few weeks of using the service, which would cost about EUR 450 from iTunes
- More than nine million tracks in the Ovi Music catalogue

Store: Launched in May 2009, multiple upgrades and experience improvements have improved the browsing and search experience, leading to a significant increase in the number of downloads. In 2010, Ovi Store will have more languages, billing support, improvements and of course, lots more apps.

- More than one million downloads a day
- The number of people shopping on the store doubles every month
- Fully localized store in 18 countries supporting 30 languages, and serving 90 percent of Store visitors with their local language
- Integrated mobile billing from 60 operators in 18 countries

Messaging: A million people a month open an Ovi Mail account, often their first online identity, bringing the total number of accounts created to more than six million in just over a year. Working closely with operators, Nokia Messaging, Nokia’s push email service, is now signed up with over 70 operators.

Nokia Money: Global financial services initiative starts in India
In partnership with YES BANK, a commercial pilot of the global mobile financial services initiative has started in Pune, one of the largest metropolitan areas in India. The service in Pune, called Mobile Money Services by YES BANK, brings financial services to the consumers’ mobile devices.

“The Nokia Money initiative based on Obopay’s platform is initially targeted at growth markets and designed to work in partnership with multiple network operators and banks, involving distributors and merchants in a dynamic open ecosystem to seamlessly provide the new services. YES BANK is our first partner in India to bring this service to market,” said Teppo Paavola, VP and general manager of Mobile Financial Services at Nokia.

- Initial phase: consumers will be able to transfer money to another person just by using the person’s mobile phone number, pay utility bills as well as recharge their prepaid SIM cards (SIM top-up).
- Later, consumers will also be able to pay merchants for goods and services.

Nokia Life Tools:
Nokia Life Tools is providing rural subscribers with livelihood and life improvement services, including agriculture and education services. Subscribers primarily depend on the agriculture trade and live around the poverty threshold – which makes parting with one or two dollars each month for a mobile service a substantial investment. Since its launch in mid-2009, around one million people have already subscribed to the service. Nokia Life Tools is available in India and Indonesia, and will roll out to more markets this year.

Press Release

The first day of the Mobile World Congress is over and all major announcements have been brought out to the media. We’re going through the key-announcements which are relevant to the Symbian world. Due to the lack of time we’ll cover these and many other topics in the next days. Nonetheless, here are the major announcements:

Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro:

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro is the only symbian-powered device that has been announced at this year’s MWC. On its feature list you can find a 3.2-inch display, GPS, W-Lan and a full qwerty-keyboard. Additionally it records videos in HD quality.

Symbian introduced Symbian^3:

Although Symbian had a tiny stand they introduced Symbian^3 that is entirely open source. Symbian^3 brings with it some key features yearned for by Nokia users for sometime now; multi-touch with support for pinch and zoom, single tap throughout the UI and more intuitive multi-tasking. First  S^3 devices will come out this year. Moreover, Symbian joins the Open Screen Project, more on this in the following days.

Nokia – no devices but services and Meego:

Surprisingly, Nokia actually didn’t announced any hardware at all, despite of the big event. Rather, the focus was on the services and Meego. Meego is a merger of Maemo and Moblin and is a Linux-based software platform designed to work across a range of hardware architectures and devices including mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, mediaphones, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems. In terms of services Nokia have showed some interesting stats of their current services. One of which is, that the new Nokia Maps have been downloaded more than 3 Million times, this in less than a month. Ovi Music, that have been launched in Russia and in a few other countries yet, just has been introduced, It includes that the purchased songs will be DRM free(this does not include Comes With Music). All this highlight Nokia strategy as becoming more and more an internet, hardware, software and services company.

More on this and many other topic to follow in due course

Symbian^3 is the first fully open source version of the Symbian platform, and the second release of the Symbian platform by the Symbian Foundation. It extends Symbian^2 in many ways, including graphics support for advanced layering and effects, full HDMI support for a great television playback experience and improved data performance – ideal for streaming high definition audio and video. View the full press release or our blog for more information.

There’s a lot to benefit both users and developers in Symbian^3!

The most important improvements to the user experience:

• Networking An improved networking architecture, ideal for streaming high definition audio and video
• Multimedia Full HDMI support with HDCP to provide a great high definition video experience when plugging your mobile device into a television
• Graphics Re-architected to harness the full power of graphics hardware acceleration and provide support for advanced layering and effects
• Usability Improved single tap support to make the UI more fluid and easy to use

More Symbian ^3 Screenshots

S^3 also introduces major advances, which include:

• HDMI support
• Music store integration embedded within the radio
• More efficient memory management
• A new 2D and 3D graphics architecture
• The industry-leading networking architecture, ready for 4G networks
• One-click connectivity
• Usability enhancements
• Intuitive Homescreen

Read More – Press Release – Source

Symbian^3 – S^3 – is the first entirely open source release following the platforms transition to an open source license on February 4th, 2010. Symbian^3 brings with it some key features yearned for by Nokia users for sometime now; multi-touch with support for pinch and zoom, single tap throughout the UI and more intuitive multi-tasking. S^3 will also include support for HDMI, so users can plug their device into a TV and watch a 1080p movie. The new graphics architecture will use hardware acceleration to offer users a much improved user interface and the new homescreen supports multiple pages for widgets, enabling the user to just flick between each one. Check out the video demonstration after the jump.

[Via]

Today, at Sony Ericsson’s press conference, just one day prior the Mobile World Congress 2010 kicks off, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro has been announced. In it’s roots it’s pretty much the same as the Vivaz, that have been announced a week ago, but with two differences – a full qwerty-keyboard and a 5 megapixel camera instead of 8. Running on S60 5th Edition it comes equipped with a 3.2-inch touch-screen, WiFi, GPS and a five megapixel camera. On top of that, the Vivaz Pro records HD videos and comes, as already highlighted, with a full slide out qwerty-keyboard. The Vivaz Pro will b e available in Q2 of this year

February 14, 2010 – Barcelona – Sony Ericsson Vivaz™ pro, announced today, adds a QWERTY keyboard to the touch screen offering, delivering a user experience optimised for messaging and entertainment. The full QWERTY keyboard allows consumers to communicate quickly and efficiently via email, SMS or social networking updates.

Just like flagship phone Sony Ericsson Vivaz™, announced in January, Sony Ericsson Vivaz™ pro allows consumers to produce and broadcast their best experiences in HD video. The open platform also allows users to personalise their entertainment experience by downloading great applications through PlayNow™ and the Symbian Developer Community.

“Having announced Sony Ericsson Vivaz™ in January we are now adding a sister phone that includes a QWERTY keyboard along with the touch screen for a superior messaging and entertainment experience,” said Daniel Sandblom Marketing Business Manager, Sony Ericsson. “Sony Ericsson Vivaz™ pro meets the increased consumer demand for QWERTY devices without compromising on any entertainment features.”

Sony Ericsson Vivaz™ pro features the new design philosophy ’human curvature’, which will become a consistent feature of the Sony Ericsson portfolio going forward. Designed to mirror the shape of the human body, and at the same time delivering a precise and compelling way of interacting with the phone, Sony Ericsson Vivaz™ pro is instantly recognisable.