It doesn’t matter how Symbian Anna, Belle and MeeGo succeed — we all know Nokia’s goals are related with Windows Phone. We have heard for many times about it and it’s not a secret the first WP-powered device of Nokia already exists and is being tested. Of course, I am speaking about the Nokia Sea Ray, though there are several other WP-based smartphones to be launched by Nokia in the nearest future.

Well, every day we hear news about Nokia and its adopted Windows Phone strategy. Yesterday we even introduced a new concept that looked quite attractive, though there is a huge number of Nokia’s WP-powered concept phones. I am mentioning it to make it clear how intensively Nokia is working on these phones, but at this time I must sadden you because the latest statement of Nokia’s Australian branch says:

“We won’t be releasing a Nokia on Windows Phone until Q1 of next year. Can’t be more specific than that sorry!”

In some aspects this announcement doesn’t change anything because we initially were aware the WP handsets will be launched not earlier than Q1, 2012, but the latest events make us hope they will appear sooner. One more thing — probably this statement refers to only Australian market, and other regions will offer the handsets before 2012. It mainly depends on Nokia’s plans — whether they are going to launch Windows Phone-based devices worldwide or there will be specified countries. Though I must say China is in the list already, which can mean Nokia’s WP-strategy refers not only to the U.S., but to other areas, too.

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Nokia has prepared a new smartphone application for more productive in-car use of Nokia devices. The application is called Nokia Car Mode. With its optimized user interface it gives a chance to experience simplified access and  use of Nokia Drive.  So this application makes the voice-guided car navigation with Nokia maps simply a pleasure. The rest of enhancements include traffic updates and music and voice call features while driving.

Nokia Car Mode will be available for those Nokia devices that are running the Symbian Belle OS sometime in the forth quarter of this year from Nokia Ovi Store.

Nokia Car Mode is the first application, which is actually using MirrorLink (something known earlier as Terminal Mode). It is a standard platform providing smartphone-to-car connectivity by 20 major brands that are members of Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC).

MirrorLink gives a chance to connect the smartphone with in-car displays, various control system features and finally audio systems. And the greatest thing is that the connectivity is reciprocal, thus you can use the car to control your device.

Among already the announced devices the Nokia 701, the Nokia 600, the Nokia 700, the Nokia N9 and all models which will be upgraded to Symbian Belle will support the application.

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The Nokia C7 is one of those rare handsets the US carriers ventured to launch there. Moreover, T-Mobile is offering it for free which mainly helped the phone to score points. Anyway, the handset is worth to praise because there are many awesome features in the Nokia C7 (aka Astound). All these specs became more attractive when the smartphone was updated to Symbian Anna, and though the new version of OS activated NFC functionality, gave a new look to the phone and fixed many bugs, we must mention another exciting improvement it brought—now the Nokia C7’s 8MP camera is ready for new advantages and won’t stop against anything.

Of course, the Nokia C7 can’t be compared to the Nokia N8, because they have weapons of different calibers, but both handsets offer the same f/2.8 aperture rating for low-light shooting. The difference between these phones is not only in MPs. Unlike the Nokia N8’s Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and Xenon flash, the C7 offers more modern specs—a dual-LED flash with EDoF focusing system. As you remember we have talked about this system when we were introducing the Nokia Oro’s camera, and even that time it became clear the Nokia C7 (aka Astound or Oro) is not a loser.

Well, Nokia has made a special video to help you discover what has become the phone after Anna update, and what you can do with the C7’s camera. It is called “Exceptional photos and video.” Watch the video and let us know whether you like what Nokia is doing with its phones, I mean updates, designs and so on.

Symbian Belle is really cute, and though it is not released yet (there are several Belle-powered smartphones announced, but they have not been launched yet), every day I discuss this OS with many geeks, and they are all sure that if Nokia released Belle earlier, it wouldn’t lose its positions and market share.

This means people like it and they are ready to own a smartphone running Belle. On the other hand, maybe these are just words, and even if the company released the update last year, people would criticize the Symbian platform anyway and choose Android blindly. Of course, Android is perfect, but all the accusations I’ve heard about Nokia and Symbian are not correct, I think. Anyway, now Symbian Belle is on everyone’s lips, so it’s the right time to see how the best version of Nokia’s OS is running on the best smartphone of the company — the Nokia N8. Let’s go.

Here is a video with Symbian Belle running on the Nokia N8 where you can see the 6 homescreens we heard earlier. I remember there was a time when geeks were talking about 100-1000 homescreens, but it’s a myth and I think 10 at most is enough. Anyway, that’s a matter of taste, so let us know what you think about Symbian Belle’s homescreens and how many you prefer.

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Nokia has been using Nokia maps (also known as Ovi Maps) in its Symbian devices for several years. Now, after the announcement of the possible “death” of Symbian devices and introduction of the new Windows Phone smartphones, Nokia has plans to expand its application.

HTML 5 Map app will be capable of working with different kinds of operating systems, including even Android and iOS, which used to have their own apps — Google maps and OS maps.

The novelty has the following features: points of interest, walking and driving routes, location shots (everywhere, where it’s possible), and reviews of the places. This app is still in its beta version, which means that a list of other features will be added to the application before it’s released. The satellite feature of the application allows to have a look at detailed images of most of the U.S. and European cities.

At this point, HTML5 Map app is not going to be a powerful competitor of Google Maps, as the latter has a large list of user-friendly features, such as pinch-to-zoom, rre-cache and 3D viewpoints. But I think that Nokia’s maps are good, too, and with time they’ll become even better.

If you want to try the novelty, head to m.maps.nokia.com.

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Great news! At least two online retailers are willing to offer the Nokia 700 in the UK. And now you can make your pre-orders to be able to pick up one of the first Symbian Belle smartphones from Nokia sometime soon.

Play.com is offering the handset for £259.99 (about $440) and it’s release is expected to take place by the end of October, at they state the device is “due for release on October 21.”

MobileFun is also taking pre-orders for two versions of the Nokia 700 — White or Gray. The only disadvantage here is that you will be required to pay £279.99, that is around $32 more.

The Nokia 700 comes with a 3.2-inch AMOLED display with ClearBlack feature and a resolution of 640 × 360, a 1GHz processor, a 5MP camera shooting 720p videos, 2GB of internal memory, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and NFC support.

Another piece of news is about Nokia 500. This handset has identical features with the Nokia 700, only instead of the Symbian Belle OS the handset uses Symbian Anna. The smartphone is expected to get released in Portugal in two weeks. The official statement also includes the price of the Nokia 500 — it will be sold for €229.90 ($317). Most likely the release in Portugal will be followed by the release in nearby regions.

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We have a new official statement from Nokia Mexico saying “Nuevo Nokia N9 – ¡Próximamente en México!” (which means “New Nokia N9 shortly in Mexico!”). So another country is going to receive this MeeGo-Harmattan device!

The carriers that are going to distribute the handset in Mexico are not known yet. But it’s great that the country will get the device. Now it’s time for the U.S. — I hope some retailer stores will at last think of shipping the Nokia N9 to the U.S. So far there is only one retailer in the U.S. that is accepting pre-orders for the MeeGo handset, that is Overseas Electronics. The bad news is that the retailer is offering the smartphone for a super high price — $924.99. Still I think that the price will be lowered close to the release of the Nokia N9 in Mexico and in other countries.

The Nokia N9 also has a webpage on the Romanian website of Nokia. So Romania is going to be one of the first countries that will get Nokia’s handset.

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You know Nokia’s last smartphones don’t yield to other handsets neither in terms of design nor in terms of hardware and software features. All latest smartphones by Nokia are packed with awesome features, and each of them has its own target audience. This means they highly competitive, so Nokia doesn’t wait for Windows Phone-powered devices and tries to regulate the situation with the help of its native platform. The last announced Nokia handset is the Nokia 801 also known as the N8-01. Now this device is spotted in a video demonstrating its attractive design and some software advantages.

Maybe this handset is the “Messiah” and has come to save the company from collapse. Of course, it is not the successor of the Nokia N8 and generally doesn’t have anything in common with it, but it doesn’t mean the Nokia 801 is weaker, vice versa, this phone is packed with many high-class features, so I believe it can succeed.

At first, the Nokia 801 comes in a perfect design and looks very nice, it also features an edge-to-edge qHD screen. Most likely, the 801 will run the latest version of Symbian, Belle. Not much information is available at this time, but we have heard it will be NFC-enabled, too. This is all we have grabbed for you, and it’s only left to watch the video and leave your comments, because it is extremely important how you accept each new handset of Nokia.

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There was a time when there were rumor saying Nokia had dropped off the N9 because of another MeeGo-powered device, the Nokia N950. Fortunately, later it became clear both handsets exist, but one of them is designed for public, and the other won’t be available for simple users and only developers can get their hands on it.

Anyway, the fact that this phone is created only for app and game developers and won’t be introduced to public didn’t prevent the designers from making a perfect smartphone that differs by its elegant appearance and innovative platform. Watch the unboxing video, then we’ll continue discussing it.

The Nokia N950 is packed with a 1GHz TI OMAP3630, a 4-inch TFT touchscreen with a resolution of 854×480 pixels, 1GB of RAM and an 8MP camera that records videos at 720p. It also supports Bluetooth and WiFi. Plus, the Nokia N950 sports a sliding QWERTY keyboard. So don’t you regret that this handset won’t be launched?

If its platform worries you, I’ll remind you about the case when a couple of months ago the French-Swiss Myriad Group said this smartphone won’t have any problem as they promise to adapt for it Myriad’s Alien Dalvik – the Java virtual machine that allows Android applications to work on other, non-Android platforms. So, I guess you regret for sure you can’t get it, am I right?

During this crisis period Nokia is required to get rid of some of its popular units. One of them is Core Licensing. So now the 2,000 patents that used to be the property of Nokia are moved to Canada-based Mosaid, which acquired Core Licensing. These patents are mainly dealing with mobile and wireless technologies.

Core Licensing is going to function as a unit of Mosaid. Mosaid in its turn is not going to pay Nokia for the use of the patents, still in case of patent lawsuits and settlements from patent infringers, the company should be willing to transfer 2/3 of income to Nokia and Microsoft. And this is a rather tricky solution, as Mosaid used to have winning lawsuits against Dell, HTC, Sony Ericsson, RIM and a large list of other major manufacturers. Except this Mosaid is planning to get more revenue from the company, than in its latest 30+ years of functionality.

But there’s another interesting news concerning Mosaid itself. Wi-Lan, which is another Canadian patent licensing company  is planning to acquire Mosaid. If this deal ends up successfully, Coral Licensing is going to be transferred to another interested party.

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