According to the official press release, Microsoft and Nokia have released a corporate client Communicator Mobile for Nokia.

Communicator Mobile application will show who of the user’s colleagues is online and will give the smartphone owner an opportunity to communicate with multiple methods of communication. Thus, a user can send SMS, e-mails, instant messages and make phone calls from one client.

Owners of Nokia E Series, E72 and E52 smartphones, will get the first opportunity to set the client. The Communicator may be downloaded on Ovi Store. This application is free for the users of Office Communications Server 2007.

This was the first decision made within the frameworks of partnership between Microsoft and Nokia. The announcement about the creation of an alliance to develop new applications was made by companies in August 2009.

At that time it was reported that the companies plan to create mobile versions of Microsoft Office applications. The development of business applications and products for joint work for smartphones based on Symbian OS was also announced.

Previously, Microsoft applications were available only for the  smartphones based on WinMo OS. However, due to  the lower popularity of the mobile platform Microsoft had to promote its solutions on other operating systems.

Thus, Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile package can be installed on a number of Nokia smartphones running Symbian S40 and S60 operating systems, as well as for one of the Motorola devices- Motorola Razr.

Despite the fact that Nokia N900 has long been prepared and sold in most of the countries, in Taiwan the device has  been released only recently. In this region the Finns set the price of N900 at the level of 22.100 local dollars, which corresponds to 697 US dollars.

As you already know, Nokia N900 is one of the latest top devices from Nokia, based on Maemo OS , and not on Symbian. The specs of the device include a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, built-in full QWERTY keyboard and a 3.5-inch resistive touch screen.

At the same time, DigiTimes resource notes that Nokia is planning to publish data on the devices based on Symbian 3 and Meego in the nearest future. Their announcement and the commercial launch will be in the second half of 2010. This information has become available from industry sources, their reference materials, which most often serve as a reliable source for the formation of forecasts.

Nokia has reported that it is going to present new smartphones, which will help to reduce the gap between the company and its competitors. Of course, now the Finnish manufacturer is still the leader in the market of smartphones, in a competiton with such rivals as Apple and RIM.

The head of Nokia Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo noted that the company has a lot of work. “This year Nokia plans to introduce a new generation of devices that will constitute serious competition to rivals”, – said the head of the company.

As it is known, according to the results of the first quarter of 2009, the share of Nokia in the mobile phone market has fallen by 33%. “The economic crisis has coincided with our reorganizations, as well as with changes in our portfolio of devices”, – said Kallasvuo. “This led to the decrease in operating profit and earnings per share.

During his speech Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo also said that 83 million customers around the world are active users of Nokia mobile services, but in the future this figure is planned to increase. “We are making every effort to return the leadership of high-end smartphones and mobile computers in the market. The important thing is that we make the use of our phones and our services  are more comfortable”.

Kallasvuo underlined that Nokia has been number 1 company for the production of mobile phones for 12 consecutive years. The manufacturer has sold 432 million phones worldwide, and this figure is more than those of its three main rivals combined.

The lull did not last long: today Nokia has announced that it has filed a complaint against Apple in federal District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin. The statement confirms that 5 important Nokia patents are used in iPhone 3G and iPad.

The matter concerns the technology of speech quality improvement and data transmission, using the positioning data in applications and innovations in the antenna configuration, which increase productivity and save space. Thus, the above-mentioned technologies enable the development of more compact devices. These patented innovations are very important for the success of Nokia, because they make it possible to increase the output of products, as well as to improve their design.

Paul Melin, the director of the patent department at Nokia, underlined that Nokia is a leading developer of many key technologies for mobile devices. “We act in this way because we want to protect the results of our innovative development, as well as to put an end to the illegal use of Nokia technologies”.

In mid-March of this year, Nokia organized a project called Design by Community. There was a voting for approximately two months related to the creation of the concept of an ideal smartphone. The best option of device appearance was chosen, when users defined the best materials, shape and size of the case. The display, operating system, camera settings and communication capabilities were also selected.

At the moment the first part of the Design by Community is over and a team of Nokia designers are already working on the creation of concept sketches. It is noted that over the past seven weeks over 74 thousand users have participated in the voting.

Thus, the ideal model is a smartphone equipped with a 4-inch capacitive touch screen, which case is made of aluminum. The thickness of the shell should be equal to 10 mm. An 8 megapixel camera with dual LED and xenon flash will be ideal for operation with photos and videos, 4 x optical zoom is capable to shoot videos in HD-quality. The best Nokia smartphone should be equipped with a Wi-Fi 802.11 n / b / g module, GPS, USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, support for Dolby Surround technology, a temperature sensor. The best device will not be deprived of multi-tasking, support for two operating systems with open source code simultaneously.

Nokia has decided to modernize its structure in order to accelerate the development of  the new devices and services. Now the company’s structure consists of three divisions: Mobile Solutions, Mobile Phones and Markets. Analysts believe that such changes are the result of the activity for the first quarter of this year.

The department of Mobile Solutions will combine Nokia smartphones and mobile computers of high-end class, which will be based on Meego and Symbian operating systems, as well as content, applications and Nokia services. This division will be headed by Anssi Vanjoki.

Mobile Phones, at the head of Mary McDowell, will focus on the development of simpler phones based on Series 40 mobile platform. Particular attention will be paid to services, such as Ovi Life Tools, Ovi Mail, Ovi Store and Nokia Money.

The third division – Markets – will be responsible for sales, marketing and management. The head of this division is going to be Niklas Savander.

In March 2010 a new slider Nokia 7230 appeared on store shelves. Nokia phones are distinguished with classical, and to some extent, even conservative design. And, despite the fact that the manufacturer provides a whole range of sliders of different price categories, among which there are also quite inexpensive and lovely female models of different colors, we may say that Nokia has created a slider that does not have prototypes in the market according to price-functionality. Similar models of other manufacturers are either more expensive or less functional.

Nokia 7230 is represented in two colors- black and pink. The device was created targeting the female audience. The price of the novelty is about seven thousand roubles in Russia. And in an area of eight thousand roubles in the model range Nokia crosses the border between sliders and touch-phones.

Nokia 7230 is equipped with metal bezel, emphasizing/underlining rounded shape of the model, form factor slider, weighs 100 grams with dimensions of 48 mm in width and 98 mm in length. Judging by the combination of specifications, namely design and value, it harmoniously falls into the family of female sliders from Nokia.

Phone specifications are not ideal, but they meet all current requirements. The phone supports HSUPA, EDGE, GPRS standards. The phone is controlled by keyboard ,of course. The internal memory is small – 70 MB. But it is good that the phone supports memory cards of microSD, microSDHC format up to 16 GB. The set of the device is supported with 2 GB card. The device supports USB-drive mode and the function of “flight mode”, it is equipped with Bluetooth, but there is no Wi-Fi and GPS .

The screen size is 2.4 inches with a resolution of 240×320 megapixel displaying 256,000 colors. A simple little 3.2 megapixel camera with 4x zoom is built-in. The phone has audio and video player, reads video in 3GP, MP4 formats, audio in AAC, AAC +, AMR, MIDI, MP3, WAV, WMA formats, JPEG image format. It has a built-in FM-radio. The battery type the novelty is Li-Ion, working up to 5.4 hours in talk mode and up to 370 hours in standby mode. The battery operates in a mode of video record up to 2.5 hours and up to 6.3 hours in the mode of viewing. And you can listen to music continually as the battery is charged within 27 hours. The phone includes 4 games. JAVA-applications are also supported : MIDP 2.1, Facebook, Opera mini, YouTube, Nokia Ovi Maps: 2.0 and others. The case of the device has three outputs: Nokia 2.0 mm original interface, 3.5 mm mini Jack for headset and output for microUSB.

The novelty will be popular among people who prefer classic phones to fashionable technological innovations. This one will be ideal for them, easy in use, clean and simple phone with nice design, a standard set of features and capabilities. There are a lot of users who do not want to get used to touch screens or waste time on the development of a large number of functions. Nokia has probably focused especially on them: power users of mobile phones, for whom the appearance is much more important than the functionality.

Nokia has released the beta version of Qt SDK, allowing you to create applications for different mobile devices based on Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo operating systems. The release includes the following elements: a library of Qt 4.6.2, development environment of Qt Creator 2.0, simulator of Nokia devices – Qt Simulator, as well as tools for working with Symbian (Symbian tool chain) and Maemo (Maemo tool chain) platforms.

Nokia reminds that this release is under open beta testing stage, and recommends to bring in information about problems in the system of back tracking of Qt Bug Tracker.

More and more information appeares about the upcoming smartphone from Nokia, which will be the first device running Symbian^3. The expected presentation of Nokia N8 was not held in the middle of this month, instead it became known that the camera phone will be available only in July.

At present the sensational novelty of Nokia has been in the hands of journalists from a number of web sources, the result of which was a short review of the device.

Thus, the images of the new device, which appeared late in March corresponds to reality. The smartphone is made in a bar form factor, is equipped with a large touchscreen supporting multi-touch. On the back is located the expected 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, capable of shooting video in HD-resolution (720p), near the camera you can see a flash. It is noted that the pictures of Nokia N8, are not distinguished with something striking, though their quality is better than the quality of the pictures taken by Sony Ericsson Satio. There device has HDMI-output, which, though it may seem strange, is smaller than the usual slot.

The smartphone operates quickly in case of no content in its memory, but if the content is filled, there will be rather unpleasant inhibitions. In general, observers found no obvious differences from other S60-smartphones. And Symbian^3 represents something “combed, washed, but not polished”, that is the functionality of the platform has not been improved sufficiently.

Well, let’s see whether Nokia N8 will become the flagship or disappointment for users in the future.

Nokia has released a new firmware update (version 31.023) for smartphone E72. Apart from correcting the most of existing errors, the new firmware includes several new applications, along with opportunities for updating the present applications.

The new firmware contains:
- New pre-installed applications: Ovi Sync, Advance Communication Manager (which provides additional features, such as the creation of black lists), Smart Connect and Internet radio.

- Ovi Maps (a free version of the navigation), Web (full support for Flash Lite 3.1), Ovi Store (v1.5.436), Share online (v4.3.10.02), My Nokia, Start up and Email wizards (v2. and v2.05, respectively) were updated.

At present , the new firmware will be available only through the Nokia Software Updater, which means that you will need to connect Nokia E72 to a PC to update it.