Last week, Nokia invited visitors to their site to vote for one of the three sketches of the “perfect smartphone” offered by the Finnish corporations. Today the company released results of the user vote. The opinion was expressed by about 18 thousand people. Of these, more than 7 thousand selected the following versions:

The Nokia noted that many users pointed to the similarity of patterns imprinted on the sketches with some already existing devices. Finnish designers explain this by saying that they wanted to retain the features common to call the device of Nokia brand.

As the representatives of corporations, some members of the project Design by Community also expressed regret that among the sketches there are no smartphones in the style of E-series or with a sliding QWERTY-keyboard, as in Nokia N97. Nevertheless, in March, most users have voted for a smartphone with large touch screen and virtual keyboard.

Nokia N97, Nokia 5800 or Nokia  5530.If your device is encountered in this list then now you have a chance to fill up your device with a list of new widgets. Well, let’s say that actually the update is prepared for Symbian 9.4 OS devices.

While the overall application is not ready yet, you can still get a chance to get two of the HTC-type clocks, Music Player. But if you have plans to wait and get the final and not the beta version, you’ll also get calendar, contacts, flashlight, BT, Wi-Fi and much more.

The application is an unsigned one and thus you can sign it with the help of your  OPDA Certificate and Key File.

Nokia has released the new version of the free software for Ovi Maps 3.0.4 navigation. According to the official blog of the company the application has become “faster, better and more personal”. The video below displays how it looks in action on N8 smartphone:

Apart from the obvious improvements in the quality of operation, the producer focuses its attention on the fact that useful information for tourists to be added to the application, and in particular information from the world’s leading travel companies.

Faster operation has been achieved due to the optimizing the methods of revealing the subscribers through triangulation, as well as the use of Wi-Fi local access points. Ovi Maps is compatible with the recently emerged service Ovi Voice, thanks to which users can record tips in the direction of motion and then use them.

N97, X6 and 6710 Navigator are the only smartphones that currently support applications. Devices of E-Series and XpressMusic are expected to be the next to get support for these applications. Judging from the video, N8 will come with already preinstalled application.

In January of this year the “Ovi maps” have become free for new Nokia models. Within three months users have downloaded more than 10 million copies of the program and this is not the limit. The new version has recently been released.

According to the official statement, the new “Ovi maps”  application operates more quickly (quickly determines the position of users regardless of location), better (in collaboration with Lonely Planet, Michelin and the local “Yellow pages” new point of interest have been added, the Qype program has been included) and has become more personalized (function of recording voice commands).

Another important news concerns the completion of Nokia smartphones. A car charger and a car holder have been included in boxes with the N97, N97 mini, 6710 Navigator and X6 for already two weeks. Soon the 5800 XpressMusic, 5230, E52 and E72 will be completed with a car holder.

Last month, in addition to Nokia C3 and Nokia E5 with QWERTY-keyboard, the Finnish manufacturer has introduced Nokia C6. It is based on Series 60 5th Edition and has absorbed much from N900 and N97. Nokia C6 will be available in two colors – black and white. Below is a selection of photos of black C6. It seems to look less impressive than the white one.

Anyways Nokia considers the C6 to be an available smartphone for communication. However, the phone includes small number of applications in this segment – not all manufacturers pay attention to touch QWERTY-solutions.

Nokia C6 Specifications:

• Network: GSM / GPRS / EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), WCDMA / HSDPA (850/900/1800/1900 MHz),
• Platform: Symbian ^ 1 (S60 5th Edition)
• Display: touchscreen, 3,2 “, 640 x 360 pixels, 16 million colors
• Camera: 5 megapixel, flash
• Additional camera for video calls: available
• Processor: ARM 11 434 MHz
• Internal memory: 200 MB
• Expansion slot: microSDHC (up to 16 GB)
• A-GPS
• Wi-Fi (802.11b / g)
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
• FM-radio
• microUSB 2.0
• 3,5-mm jack
• Ovi services
• Battery: BL-4J, 1200 mAh
• Hours of operation in talk mode: up to 7 hours in GSM networks, up to 5:00 in WCDMA networks
• Hours of operation in standby time: up to 16 days
• Dimensions: 113,4 x 53 x 16,8 mm
• Weight: 150 grams
• Colors: White, Black
• Integration: phone, BL-4J battery, AC-15 charger, WH-102 stereo headset, memory card of 2 GB, CA-101 cable
• Form factor: side slider with a touchscreen and QWERTY
• Type: smartphone
• Date of announcement: April 13, 2010
• Release date: second quarter of 2010

Citing Nokia’s representatives Reuters report we see that the Finnish  company Nokia has postponed the commercial launching of Symbian ^ 3 platform to the third quarter of 2010. The reasons of transfer have not been disclosed.

Nokia decided to jump over Symbian ^ 2 and immediately proceed to use Symbian ^ 3. Symbian ^ 1 is the S60 of the fifth edition, with support for touch screens. This platform is used in Nokia 5800, N97, C6 and other devices. The company promises that Symbian ^ 3 will have 3 times higher performance as compared with S60, will support multi-touch screens with gestures and will be equipped with completely overworked simplified graphical interface.

Earlier the general manager of Nokia Markets Anssi Vanjoki promised that the devices on Symbian ^ 3 will work well, that is their owners will not have to wait for software updates after the purchase. Recall that the flagship N97 smartphone appeared in the market in June 2009 in a very raw state and the corrected firmware was released only six months later.

It was reported that the Nokia Application Ovi Store of the Finnish manufacturer, which has recently been optimized and redesigned get a load of more than 1.6 million programs downloaded on a daily basis.

Ovi Store offers content offered in over 80 countries. The most successful publisher has become the developer companyof Digital Chocolate games  – its products have shown interest in the amount of 4.5 million downloads.

It is alleged that at the moment more than 100 models of Nokia phones are compatible with the Ovi Store, while more than 60 devices are Symbian-based smartphones.

The most popular among the visitors of Nokia Ovi Store are the following models: Nokia X6, N97, N97 Mini, 5800 XpressMusic, 5530 XpressMusic, E66, E71 and E72.

There are more that 66 operators offering the integration of billing with shopping through Ovi Store in 19 countries in the world.

British resources, citing sources inside the retail chains and service centers, state that Nokia N86 8MP has some kind of hardware problems.

Their nature is similar to one that of N900 and N97 – microUSB connector is unreliable, and when connecting the charger it simply slides into the device. Some users claim that after charging the cluster just falls out along with the wire.

An employee of Nokia service centre announced: “In our Nokia Care we didn’t have a single case of complaints of the USB connector in N86  registered”. Media suggest that such cases are not rare and the Finnish vendor is continuing to pretend that everything is in order and not paying any attention to the problem.

In mid-January Nokia announced the transfer of navigation service Ovi Maps on a free basis. However the free walking and satellite navigation became available to owners only of relatively new models – N97, N97 mini, 5800 XpressMusic, 5800 Navigation Edition, E52, E55, E72, 5230, 6710 Navigator, 6730 classic, X6, N86 8MP.

The fresh press release shows that Nokia has taken into account the desires of  the users and has developed a version of Ovi Maps, compatible with former smartphones E71 and E66. However, not all features of new Ovi Maps have been implemented – there are no Guide Michelin and Lonely Planet premium services.

Ovi Maps for E71 and E66 are already available for downloaded from the Ovi Store.

The need to release touch devices in order not to let competitors far ahead (Samsung, Apple, RIM, HTC), has forced Nokia to release to the market crude devices.

It would seem, Nokia N97, the expensive flagship (and not the first touchphone in a line of the producer), should not bring inconvenience to users with software problems. However, this is not true. An indignant user has posted a video on the YouTube, which accuses Nokia of lies and cites as an example glaring deficiencies of N97, which the manufacturer intentionally hides in its promotional video.