Nokia has announced a software update to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic to further improve the performance and add new functionalities to the device. The software update is immediately available for download on Nokia Software Update website (http://www.nokia.com/softwareupdate)

Improvements in the new software version include faster data download from Internet, improved e-mail experience, better search experience with in-device search. Many additional features are also included in the software update:

- Faster user interface and faster download times
- New camcorder features: second camera support for still image capture in addition to video calls, burst mode that allows people to take multiple pictures one after another without needing to repress the picture taking button
- Mobile Dictionary: built-in dictionary functionality with voice playback of words utilizing text-to-speech technology, support for 38 languages
- Application Update: with Application Update people can check for available updates for applications and update them directly in the device. Applications can also be kept up-to-date by setting the checking to automatic.

http://www.nokia.com/

Joined by many of our existing partners, the Symbian Foundation will be on stand 8A77 in the Fira Hall 8 from February 16-19. We will participate at various MWC activities throughout the show, including the Mobile Application Developer Garage and WIP Jam: Day for Developers, and Lee Williams will deliver his view of open source in mobile (details below). We invite you to come and join us.

“We’re in a unique position to continue the rapid growth of the most competitive open software platform. Every single member of our community has a chance to influence the way we evolve and develop our offering,” said Lee Williams, Executive Director, Symbian Foundation. “The foundation will provide, manage and unify the platform but it’s the community which will make it great.”

“We already have fantastic support from across the industry and Mobile World Congress will provide an excellent forum to meet and share ideas, perspectives and insight with both new and existing supporters, with the ultimate aim of benefiting our community members.”
Seventy-eight industry partners have now pledged their support in making this vision reality; Atelier, Bank of America, Gemalto, HP, Imagination Technologies, Mobica, MySpace, Nanoradio, OMRON SOFTWARE, Qualcomm, SanDisk, SESCA, SiRF Technology and VirtualLogix all add their endorsements to the other companies already announced.

“Atelier is very excited about the Symbian Foundation initiative,” said Pascale EDOM, CEO of Atelier. “From a pioneer in the use of Symbian OS we have become a leading independent vendor in telephony integration. We believe that the Symbian Foundation with its open platform will attract more players and will generate many innovative new products. Atelier intends to join the foundation and support our customers and the foundation’s members as its platform evolves.”

“The Symbian Foundation’s platform will allow us to further enhance the mobile banking experience for our customers,” said Douglas Brown, SVP, mobile product development at Bank of America. “The Symbian Foundation’s  commitment to choice and open industry standards  will ensure Bank of America’s ability to offer more value added services to our industry leading 2 million active mobile banking user base.”

Since plans for the Symbian Foundation were announced, hundreds of organizations have registered their interest in joining the foundation via the website at www.symbianfoundation.org.

Nokia plans to scale down Salo production with temporary lay-offs to align with market demand – operations continue uninterrupted

As part of its previously announced plans to increase cost-efficiency and adapt to the market situation, Nokia today announced plans to close its mobile devices R&D site in Jyväskylä, concentrating mobile devices R&D in Finland at its sites in Tampere, Oulu, Salo and the Helsinki metropolitan area. Nokia also plans to scale down Salo production with staggered temporary lay-offs, aligning production with market demand while continuing operations without interruption. Nokia will begin consultations with employee representatives about these plans.

Ramping down R&D in Jyväskylä

Nokia’s operations in Jyväskylä focus mainly on mobile device product development and marketing. Nokia plans to gradually ramp down the site and close it by the end of 2009. The planned change concerns all of the approximately 320 employees working at the Jyväskylä site. The majority of employees at Nokia Jyväskylä work for devices product development, but the site also has some marketing activities and global support functions. Nokia plans to concentrate its mobile device R&D in Finland at existing sites in Tampere, Oulu, Salo and the Helsinki metropolitan area.
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Nokia has completed its acquisition of bit-side GmbH, a privately owned Berlin-based professional services and software company with 39 employees. The deal was initially announced on January 27, 2009.

By acquiring bit-side Nokia will strengthen and accelerate its mobile development for Nokia Maps.

The 7510 features a push-button flip, disappearing glass front display, 2.0 megapixel camera with video recorder, microSDHC expansion slot, HTML browser, Bluetooth with stereo audio support, speakerphone, and Wi-Fi for phone calls over UMA.

Buy Nokia 7510 from T-Mobile

via phonenews

Nokia and bit-side GmbH today announced that an agreement has been signed for Nokia to acquire substantially all assets of bit-side. Bit-side is a privately owned Berlin-based professional services and software company with 39 employees. By acquiring bit-side Nokia will strengthen and accelerate its mobile development for Nokia Maps.

“Acquiring bit-side enables Nokia to offer consumers the world-leading mobile location applications, such as Maps, along with routing and navigation at an accelerated speed” said Michael Halbherr, vice president and head of social location, Nokia. “Nokia has been working with bit-side since 2007, and bit-side has become a strategic development partner to Nokia.”

Nokia has added a new section to its mobile website (nokia.mobi) called Here & Now which provides the latest world news, music, celebrity buzz, as well as information on Nokia services and products.

Featuring downloads, music, news, celebrity buzz, and a section to discover more information about Nokia’s service offerings, Here & Now is designed as an easily accessible means to get to know more about Nokia devices and enhance the mobile experience.

http://nokia.mobi

Nokia announced today that it has expanded its Supernova range of devices with fresh, new colors reflecting the latest runway trends, as well as enhanced services. Here is more info:

The Nokia Supernova 7610, 7510, 7310 and 7210 are now available in additional colors including Graphite and Passionate Purple. Building on the existing music and entertainment experiences offered by the Supernova range, the enhanced services let people share their images and video with friends through Ovi Share, as well as keep up to date with friends via Nokia Maps and instant messaging with Windows Live Messenger.

The Nokia Supernova range of products lets consumers express their personal styles on a number of levels ranging from bold colors, to exchangeable covers. Aimed at style conscious men and women who want to stay connected, the Supernova range delivers exceptional mobile functionality alongside a variety of social entertainment experiences.

In an event held today in Nanjing Nokia unveiled the Nokia 6208c, a new pen input device which caters for a number of different customers, specifically those in China. The touch screen on the 6208c is optimized to write Chinese characters and messages in the most natural way, with a pen. The design of the stylus, attached to the back of the phone, is inspired by bamboo slips and works perfectly with the large color display which is reminiscent of an ink stone, another element from traditional Chinese art and culture. All these design cues are implemented using premium materials such as the stainless steel back cover, which makes the handset both easy to use and comfortable to hold.

With a 3.2 megapixel camera, dual LED flash and 4x digital zoom, the Nokia 6208c makes capturing memories and sharing moments simple and easy. The large input area features larger fonts for messaging and browsing as well as viewing pictures and web pages. The new handset also supports optional microSD cards up to 8GB, providing ample memory for images, videos, music and more.

The Nokia 6208c is expected to start shipping in select markets in the first half of 2009.

Mail on Ovi, the free email account from Nokia, is now ‘live’ and can be set up directly on Nokia phones without requiring a PC to get started. People who use Nokia Series 40 devices can create their own email address directly on their mobile phones. The Ovi email account gives a person all the features and functionalities of a typical PC-based email account. During the Beta period, consumers will be able to choose from 12 languages based on the settings of their device, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Hindi, Bengali, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia.

“We’re creating a mindset shift with mobile messaging. Mail on Ovi is the first-ever email service which allows people to create an account directly on their mobile phone, and start using it right away” said Senior Vice President Tom Furlong, who oversees Consumer Messaging initiatives within Nokia’s Services & Software organization. “Rather than focusing purely on push email for the world’s most advanced mobile users, we are mobilizing email across Nokia’s mainstream device portfolio, while giving consumers in emerging markets their first email account, Mail on Ovi, as well as their very own internet identity. These people are the new ‘mobile digital natives’ who will exclusively use their mobile phones for email and internet, rather than a PC.”

Mobile phone users from India, Malaysia and the Philippines have been able to use the Beta service since November, with extremely encouraging results, and the availability is now being extended to the rest of the world. Continue…

Nokia today announced that it has completed its offer to acquire Symbian Limited. All conditions to Nokia’s offer to acquire Symbian Limited have been satisfied and it has received valid acceptance of greater than 99.9% of the total Symbian shares that Nokia did not already own. Symbian is the software company that develops and licenses Symbian OS, the market-leading open operating system for mobile devices.

The closing of the offer is a fundamental step in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, announced on June 24, 2008 by Nokia, together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, ST-NXP Wireless, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.

All Symbian employees are planned to become Nokia employees on February 1, 2009.

Tilting touch display, QWERTY keyboard and personalized home screen – a true mobile computer

Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N97, the world’s most advanced mobile computer, which will transform the way people connect to the Internet and to each other. Designed for the needs of Internet-savvy consumers, the Nokia N97 combines a large 3.5″ touch display with a full QWERTY keyboard, providing an ‘always open’ window to favorite social networking sites and Internet destinations. Nokia’s flagship Nseries device introduces leading technology – including multiple sensors, memory, processing power and connection speeds – for people to create a personal Internet and share their ’social location.’

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The phone call is the most obvious way to use the new handset to connect with people, but it will also be used to share photographs and videos, check on a friend’s social network status or be guided to a restaurant to meet up with a loved one. For this, the Nokia 6260 slide features quick access to search engines and points of interest straight from the home screen and the new 360° navi-key allows a great mobile Internet experience.

Uploading images and videos to websites, blogs and social networks is quicker than ever with Nokia’s newest arrival, which features lightning-fast speeds over both cellular and Wi-Fi networks. The Nokia 6260 slide comes with the latest 3G technology, with high speed uploads (HSUPA) and downloads (HSDPA), a great camera, music player and web browser with a simple, instantly familiar interface. Combined with the range of Ovi services on offer, Nokia brings a compelling mobile Internet experience to a huge group of consumers.

A 5Mpix Carl Zeiss camera with flash takes fantastic pictures which can be easily shared and uploaded to Share on Ovi or other photo and video sharing websites. In addition to the photo, music and sharing features that come packed in the Nokia 6260 slide, Nokia Maps and the assisted GPS provide a great navigation experience. The Nokia 6260 slide brings GPS into the Series 40 software platform for the first time, really signifying navigation arriving in the mass market.

Key Features:

• Easy to use: Search is only one click away. The 360° Navi key gives an excellent browsing experience. Web pages are easy to read with the 2.4” HVGA display.
• Fast up- and download of web pages, maps, pictures etc via HSDPA/HSUPA and WLAN.
• Take excellent pictures. 5 mpix camera with Carl Zeiss optics
• Find your way. Built-in GPS. Easy access to navigation with pre-installed Nokia Maps on the 1 GB microSD. Assisted GPS (A-GPS) support.

Additional Features: Continue…