I so wish that Nokia would stop closing services that people are relying on. The latest to face the chop is Ovi Files which is predicted to close on 1st October by Nokia Experts.

As much as I love Nokia devices and services, I also get extremely frustrated with them from time-to-time. A couple of years ago it seemed like they were buying up as many services as they could with the hope that a global Ovi services offering would provide you with all you need. We have seen several of these services come and go (N-Gage, Mosh, Nokia Backup, etc.) to the point where I am now very leery of jumping onto any service they launch. I hope Ovi Maps never goes away, but you never know. Today we here that Ovi Files is shutting down on 1 October 2010.

A beta of Swype is now available to try for the Nokia N97, N97mini, X6, 5800, and 5230 with more devices expected to be supported over time.

From Nokia Beta Labs- “Swype provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen. With one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard, the patented technology enables users to input words faster and easier than other data input methods—at over 40 words per minute. The application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.”

Check out the video demonstration below for more details-

Nokia has released update v51 for the E72 which brings with it a browser upgrade, the Ovi music client upgrade, new chat functionality and much more. The full changelog is here.

mobile-review has posted a first impressions piece on the Nokia C7, and because it is mobile-review the first impressions are longer than most sites full reviews. Well worth a read to see what Nokia has coming.

In this article I will draw upon my personal experience when I used this phone in Estonia during my vacations. I tried different apps on it and studied its features. Full review will be published at the end of the year when its first buyers will be able to pass their judgment. The text in front of you is not a comprehensive review, but first impressions. They are quite grounded and I hope they are correct.

In the smartphone lineup from the Finnish manufacturer Nokia C7-00 (hereinafter referred to as C7) occupies a special place. It is the second smartphone on Symbian^3 to go on sale. Such models will be offered in abundance at the end of 2010 and in 2011. They will coexist with old fashioned handsets on Symbian^1 (S60 5th Edition). The company views Nokia N8 as the flagship and all promotion efforts will be concentrated on this model, but Nokia C7 will sell better due to lower price and will prove that cameras in phones are not so important for average consumers. Why Nokia C7 will attract the attention of people? The answer is simple. It is Nokia N8 in a different body with a lower price.

I had 20 minutes with the Nokia C5 today and was quite impressed with the build quality and overall design. While it looks and feels like many other Nokia phones, there has definitely been a ramp up in terms of the care given to materials and the form factor. It felt very quick and the screen was ‘just’ large enough to cope with what is a fairly busy OS and the overall experience was much more positive that I have felt over the past year with any Nokia phone. I still can’t see where it will fit in such a crowded market, but it is part of Nokia’s focus on making standard mobile phones smarter rather than trying to push smartphones onto people who just need a phone. My overriding feeling was that it is a bargain for under £150 without contract.

And then I had a full 30 minutes with the BlackBerry Torch. When I first picked it up I must admit to feeling less than impressed by the size and especially the weight. The design does not scream 2010 and is very much in the practical camp, but the levels of practicality available are immense.It was only when I started to really play with the keyboard and touch screen that I got into the experience and OS 6 felt very natural within a few minutes. I won’t go into too many details because I am expecting one for review soon, but I was left feeling that this phone is actually quite special.

You probably know by now that Apple is holding a special event on 1st September. Rumoured announcements include the new Apple TV (still people are calling it iTV), 99 cent TV episode rentals from the likes of Fox and Disney, a new iPod Touch with Retina Display and FaceTime, CDMA iPhone 4 and lots of other silly ideas such as hardware keyboarded iPhones (won’t happen) and that the Beatles back catalogue will make it to iTunes (also won’t happen). The use of a guitar to put an image to the event is a curious one though…

MusicWithMe is a new BlackBerry app which performs a very important task- it allows you to download tracks from iTunes straight to a BlackBerry device. It is currently priced at a one time charge of $14.99 and a 30 day trial is also available. It is also coming soon for Android, Symbian and Maemo. I have looked and cannot see how it handles the DRM tracks, or if it can, but it is ironic that an iPhone needs to connect to iTunes via a wire and a BlackBerry doesn’t.

One in four developers happy to support Symbian is a decent new piece from AAS which turns the stat on its head and points out the positives.

“29% of developers support Symbian, says Millennial Media, with 100% of them supporting iOS. While that sounds like a bad statistic for Symbian, it’s worth examining the data to conclude that this is healthy for a huge number of mobile operating systems. More below…

First up, Millennial Media are an ad serving platform (similar to AdMob and Quattro), so the numbers are derived from their own reports and advertising systems. There is going to be inherent bias in the system. Also consider that the Boston-based company is likely to be promoting itself as a potential acquisition target to Silicon Valley – the flag waving of Android and iOS support becomes a bit more clear…”

Every day this week a new Nokia has popped up and so far they have shown off a much smarter styling ethos than what has come before. Today we have the N9 which looks like the kind of device I expected when EPOC died and Symbian was born. Think of a Revo with 2010 features. More at engadget.

The Nokia C7 is a long rumoured phone that may well have appeared in all its glory on this Chinese site. I say ‘may’ because these images could be fake. My first thought was that it looks like a mixture of an N series and E series phone and that Nokia is using up some spare parts or that it looks like the kind of fake designs we are so used to seeing these days. However, I suspect this is real and as such am quite impressed. Thanks to Bethan.

Nokia has debuted the X3 and is pushing ‘Touch and Type’ as the main feature. The phone looks good in the following video, but I can’t help but notice similarities to Apple’s iPhone videos i.e. a bit cheesy. To quote- “The touch screen is a like a smooth body of water, evolves into the ripples of the keypad.” You what?

Espoo, Finland – In a move to continue driving innovation in its market leading mobile phone range, Nokia today unveils the super slim Nokia X3 Touch and Type, with a unique combination of a touch screen and traditional 12 button phone keypad.  As Nokia’s first ‘Touch and Type’ phone, the Nokia X3 allows people to tap quickly on the bright color touch screen, as well as enjoy the familiarity of the full keypad for quick fire text messages and phone calls.  Expected to be on sale in the third quarter, the Nokia X3 is expected to retail for approximately EUR 125, excluding taxes and subsidies.

“Innovation is not just a high-end game. The Nokia X3 is a great example of bringing new consumer value to lower price points,” said Mary McDowell, Executive Vice President of Mobile Phones at Nokia.

“With the Nokia X3 we are giving consumers the best of both worlds by combining a touch screen and a keypad in an affordable device. We have given people a larger screen with clear icons and menus plus kept critical keys such as the send and end keys. We’ve also added dedicated function keys for important links like music and text messaging,” she said.

“We have designed the Nokia X3 to be a touch and type device because typing is ideal for SMS and social networking where fast and frequent input is needed, while touch is ideal for functions such as setting alarms, smooth browsing and controlling applications like music and games.

“Our research tells us consumers who have invested years in becoming fast one-handed, one-thumb texters want to maintain their speedy edge for SMS, chat and instant messaging – yet enjoy the benefits of touch as well,” continued McDowell.

With its sleek and modern design coming in at a very thin 9.6mm – making it one of the slimmest Nokia phones ever – the Nokia X3 slips easily into the purse or the pocket, and looks the part with its brushed aluminum back cover which will come in five vibrant colors designed to suit any mood or wardrobe.

Despite its size, the Nokia X3 is jam-packed with features including 3G, WLAN, a music player and an FM radio.

Lovers of the snapshot and social networks will enjoy a great 5 megapixel camera with 4X digital zoom that can take both still and video images.

The Nokia X3 also features dedicated music and messaging keys allowing fast access to important Ovi services including social and entertainment applications.  In addition to Ovi Mail, people’s favorite consumer email and chat accounts can be pushed direct to the phone via Nokia Messaging.

With a gentle glide over the touch screen people can go online and get access to many services including thousands of apps from Ovi Store. In certain markets, the new phone will also be available with Ovi Music Unlimited, enabling the owner to access a virtually limitless range of the latest hit music that can be stored on the available 16GB memory card.

The Nokia X3 – affordable and accessible touch and type which is simple-to-use and beautifully designed. The Nokia X3 Touch and Type sits alongside the Nokia X3-00, a slider with strong music functionality, which was launched in September 2009.

The Nokia N8 is now available to pre-order at Nokia USA for $549. Expected delivery is end of September (2010:)) and is likely the best touch screen Nokia yet. Not a difficult task though…

You will have decide if this is ‘pushing the boundaries of mobile entertainment’, but it is certainly a novel idea.

Espoo, Finland – Heroes creator Tim Kring and the Ovi by Nokia-powered new social benefit entertainment pilot, Conspiracy For Good(TM) (CFG, http://www.conspiracyforgood.com/), concluded successfully this past weekend with more than half a million downloads of CFG casual games and apps from Nokia’s Ovi Store, over 4,000 dedicated members joining the global movement online, enthusiastic attendance at the four live events in London, and huge support recorded from partner charities.

“The Conspiracy For Good has been two years in the making with Nokia,” said Tim Kring, 2010 International Digital Emmy® Pioneer Award winner for transmedia storytelling. “We had a team of more than 130 experts working behind the scenes in five countries across three continents making sure that this was the best entertainment experience possible and to ensure the charity causes were the true heroes of this immersive story.”

Partnerships with charities for CFG were uniquely interwoven into the narrative, taking actual roles within the story and creating a new way to reach potential supporters of their respective causes. The new approach created unprecedented interaction with the CFG communities and will result in 50 scholarships being provided for young women in Africa as well as the establishment of five children’s libraries in Zambia in association with Room to Read. These libraries will be stocked with more than 10,000 donated books in association with the Pearson Foundation. These highlights join many other worthy causes that were supported by the CFG movement.

The first of its kind, this project used the extensive reach of Nokia’s Ovi platform with online and physical participants joining CFG from more than 165 countries and enjoying a variety of Ovi content, apps and services.
“This is the most comprehensive Ovi offering to date integrating almost every service to help advance the story,” said Tero Ojanpera, executive vice president, Nokia. “A specially developed app using Nokia’s Point & Find, called Conspiracy For Good: DeadDrop, created a new dimension for augmented reality and opens the door for content owners anywhere to use participatory entertainment powered by Ovi to extend their brands.”

CFG is at the forefront of a new transmedia entertainment movement in which the storyline played itself out across multiple platforms. Participants became part of the story and found tools and clues to move the narrative forward both in the online and real worlds by using music, apps, mobile games, alternate reality gaming (ARG), live events, and interactive theatre that was produced in association with International Digital Emmy® award-winning production company, The company P.

The Conspiracy For Good pilot titled “Read the Signs” focused on literacy as the social cause. The fictional narrative followed the actions of a schoolteacher, Nadirah X, CFG spokesperson Ann Marie Calhoun, and the underground resistance movement, Spira. The movement, which dates to the 2nd century, recruited members of the public to help Nadirah X and Ann Marie in their task to bring down evil corporation Blackwell Briggs before it could install an oil pipeline and destroy a Zambian school and library. Online and real-world game play also raised awareness and generated donations for partner charities including Kids Company, Doctors of the World, READ International, Room to Read and the Pearson Foundation who partnered with Nokia to provide resources to schoolgirls in Chataika village in Zambia.

There has been no official word of the Nokia 5250, but that has not stopped Nokia from letting it slip online.

There are few official specs available, but you can see it in detail at this link and it looks pretty smart, if a little like too many other Nokia phones.

What I do know is that it has 3G, is running Symbian S60 5th and a 3″ HD screen. Expect a price as low as 100 Euros.

All About Symbian has posted a gallery of Nokia C6 images which show off this phone perfectly. I played with one of these the other day and have to say that, sadly, it felt like almost every other Nokia phone I have used recently.It’s better, but not better enough…

It is all very easy to knock Nokia and the Symbian platform these days because it is fashionable to do so. One thing that everyone needs to remember though is that Nokia sells phone by the 100’s of millions and has continued to do so for a very long time, so let’s see what’s good and what’s bad about the Symbian platform.

Good

There’s little doubt that Symbian phones are born from the original heritage of the mobile phone and Nokia to this day continues to build in excellent battery life, great call quality and is producing the smartphones with the absolute best voice experience of any platform.

Nokia maps is an added bonus as are the standard cameras, which despite the iPhone raising the bar in the minds of many people, the high-end Nokia smart phones include cameras the rest can only dream of. If you want a camera phone there really is nowhere else to look at this time because some of the better Nokia phones easily rival compact cameras for performance.

Bad

Confusion reigns in the Symbian segment of the market these days because Nokia seems intent on releasing 250 phones a month using different variants of the Symbian platform. They seem to be releasing new software solutions all the time and at the same time removing others with little notice that people have been testing loyally, and most importantly they don’t seem to have a clear vision of where they want to go.

Nokia looks like a follower of the moment. It looks like a follower of the iPhone, it looks like a follower of Android and can’t seem to produce one smart phone that will make the world sit up and take notice. The Nokia N95 was without a doubt a high point, but since that glorious moment we have not seen anything since that comes close to what a company as large as Nokia, and a company that has such a long heritage, should be producing. Nokia has the ability to produce a smart phone that could easily compete with the rest, but on the software and hardware sides it is not quite working out. I want to see Nokia do well, I really do, but it’s been a long time now and some serious head scratching and pencil sharpening needs to be done for Nokia to truly get back in the smartphone game.

Nokia has closed its Conversation trial which will be bad news for loyal users. One trend I have noticed with Nokia over recent years is the lack of consistency with its offerings- too many software solutions get closed with little notice which does not help to build loyalty.

“Given that development of the standalone app has virtually ended, though, we feel it’s time to close the Conversation experimental beta trial.  Keeping a trial and forum open without matching levels of development and feedback responsiveness would be doing a disservice to you…”