Nokia is all set to launch its Lumia range in the USA signing Verizon. Both the smartphone major and the carrier have entered into a deal for the forthcoming handset. The Nokia Lumia 928 is a flagship mobile handset that will enter the market from the following month. This mobile is one that is next in line to the present range of Nokia Lumia smartphones that have been launched till date.

Both the smartphone manufacturer and Verizon have made the deal public. These claims however have been made by Bloomberg stating that both these telecom giants have struck a deal. There are reports from Bloomberg that the Lumia 928 phone was seen in the systems of FCC and Verizon. There was an image of the device that was leaked in the beginning of the month.

If the above Verizon deal is true the Lumia 928 will become the first high end phone that the carrier will launch. In the USA most of the Lumia phones have been carried exclusively by Verizon. Today this carrier has about 100 million subscribers and they are on board with the flagship mobile that is vital to the success of both companies.

Bloomberg has also reported that this lumia phone will launch on the carrier soon. This phone will sport a metal body along with a touch screen of 4.5 inches. It will also have an 8MP camera and wireless charging. There are some previous rumors that this phone will also have a polycarbonate body and the internals of the phone have been expected to be the same like the Lumia 920.

It has been seen that North America has always been a very weak market for the Nokia. Way back in its Symbian days it also did not perform too well. In the Q1 results that were published last week it has been seen that Nokia had experienced an increase in sales by 9% compared to the records last year. Nokia has also recorded selling a large number of Lumia phones across the globe in the quarter.

Nokia is gradually climbing up the popularity charts when it comes to mobile smartphone devices in the world. It has been successful with its Nokia range of smartphones.  Currently it is behind two leaders the iOS and Android. This helps the smartphone build some momentum in the region. This momentum has helped Verizon to take a hint from the Nokia Lumia flagship phone.

Nokia is making its last effort for this year offering new devices worldwide. This time the stop point is China. Nokia has officially announced another Symbian device for the local market. The device is coded as Nokia N801T. It comes with the TD-SCDMA connectivity, which is a sign of its availability for only the Chinese market. Still there’s a chance the device will also get brother models with other connectivity options.

The specs of the smartphone are available only partially. So far we have learned it runs Symbian OS, has a 4-inch display, support for NFC, a 3.5mm audio jack, a shock-resistance case and a front-facing camera. Most likely the rear camera will be no less than 5 megapixels, while the front-facing one might be no more powerful than 1.3 megapixels.

The elite device comes pre-installed with mobile TV. The antenna for the activation of these features comes in the box, which is a great way of attracting more attention.

Though some analysts claimed Nokia Maps would not be available in China due to the restriction of GPS search features in the country, still this doesn’t refer to the Nokia N801T and most of the Nokia devices.

The Nokia N801T is expected to hit the Chinese market before the end of year. The price of the smartphone is not announced.

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Seems the Nokia N8 is still in leading positions, though Nokia has switched to a platform more competitive than Symbian. These are not just words as not so long ago we saw the bronze N8. And now be ready to get very surprised. A very respectable and trustworthy source states there is a white Nokia N8!

This amazing information comes from Anik, which posted a screenshot Navifirm where it shows v25.8 firmware for the N8. At first sight seems there is nothing to be surprised at. But what will you say if this firmware is for the white variant of the Nokia N8? Of course, it might be for the silver model, but I prefer to think Nokia will launch the white N8.

Anyway, I don’t have much to say on this, as we still have no information from Nokia itself. But if it proves true, we’ll have all reasons to claim Symbian (and Symbian-based smartphones) is not out of competition and until 2016 we’ll still be hearing pleasant news towards it.

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Most of Nokia’s Symbian^3 smartphones have been updated to Symbian Anna. There were a few ones that interest us more, among them I can mention the Nokia N8, E7, C7 and others. Now we’re all waiting for Symbian Belle, and it refers not only to devices with Belle on board, but also to the updates. That’s very important, because when Nokia N8 or another high-end smartphone of the company gets this update, all those users who “hate” Nokia and especially the US users won’t have anything real to contra-distinguish to it. However, we’ll see Symbian Belle sometime in the near future, and as it is in the final stage of developing. Don’t you wonder what the next versions will be called?

The information is not confirmed officially, though the source mentions it was on display during Nokia’s Devoloper Day in Mexico. According to the picture above, Symbian’s next versions will be called Carla and Donna. As you know, Nokia calls each update by female names in alphabetical order — Anna, Belle, and now Carla and Donna.

Symbian Carla is set to be launched in late 2012 or early 2013. It will be released for much more capable devices and all current Symbian^3 devices. Symbian Carla will bring some goodies with it, like 8.0 Browser, Dolby soundround, NFC and Best Widgets.

As for Symbian Donna, it’ll be designed especially for dual-core processors.

Well, things become more interesting, and as Nokia has announced it’ll continue developing Symbian operating system till 2016, so we have enough time to hear other beautiful female names as well.

Translated from SymbianLatino

Nokia has made a consecutive update of its already well known radio application – SoundTracker, Nokia Beta Labs announced. It can now be downloaded and tried from Beta Labs website.

Nokia made swift conclusions from those users who tried its previous version and made their comments about future improvements. Several known problems are already fixed in this new update. As stated on its website, it has “Fixed redraw bug in edit profile. Text for settings overlapping profile fields. Fixed player in pause status bug.” This refers to the technical issues. As for the design, changes were made here too. For example, now below the name of the user in the player view the locations of the stations can be seen; it can be a very handy tool. Also the notice Up Next is visible for the next coming artist, allowing the user to anticipate what will be next. If you are interested, the description of time elapsed for the stations is improved as well.

It should be noted that Nokia’s rather serious about the role of this application. For those who do not know, Nokia SoundTracker has introduced completely new features to simple radio listening experience, in particular the sharing characteristics is quite promising, making this application resemble in some ways the very Facebook. It establishes its own mini platform for the user to make a network of friends with similar tastes and locations. Future updates can naturally be anticipated in the near future, after the comments about this update reach Nokia Labs.

For those who like T-Mobile services, the operator in its German branch has now made the Nokia Lumia 800 available. Well, it was altogether expected to happen sooner or later, but the speed at which T-Mobile has caught up with the latest developments is to be appreciated. And the other good news is the carrier billing is going to operate in the Lumia 800 for Marketplace buyers.

Well, after all what’s the significance of this all? It is that you can forget your credit card for buying your favorite applications. Plus, the developers now have more incentives to be drawn to the Windows Phone. It is still not clear whether this works exactly the same way as the already operating Symbian carrier billing.

Whatever its implications, it seems that the trend will be developing and in the near future other operators could be attracted to use this same scenario for their corresponding devices. And finally it adds another advantage to the Nokia Lumia 800.

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There are two main events expected in the beginning of the upcoming year: CES 2012 and MWC 2012. Most likely during the CES event the main attention will be devoted to Windows Phone devices. As for the MWC event, in all likelihood the sequel of the Nokia N8 will be announced. It’s the first and only device from Nokia coming with a 12 megapixel camera, thus the development of the series has a vital importance.

The upcoming handset will probably have an even better camera, plus it will sport an optimal zoom upon users’ request and suggestions. The lack of the zoom was definitely a disappointing omission.

Other specs the impressive novelty will come with are the following: a 3.5 inch Clear Black display with an improved 480 × 800 resolution, a 1.5 GHz CPU and 512 MB of RAM. The smartphone will also be based on Symbian. But this OS doesn’t support high resolutions, which means that before the release date of the novelty we will have an update for Symbian OS.

Many people might consider the use of the old OS a little strange. Let’s not forget that at the moment Windows Phone OS doesn’t support high-resolution screens, multicore processors or good cameras. Next year this OS will get Apollo update, which will solve the situation.

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The Nokia N8 is Nokia’s most popular and powerful smartphone. Though it was launched a year ago, it still doesn’t cease to be popular. Of course, I am not talking about Nokia’s popularity in the U.S., because U.S. carriers and consumers denied Nokia’s products with the release of Android. But other than the U.S. market, there are other large markets as well, and they have warmly welcomed both Nokia and its products.  I’d even say Nokia’s god there.

However, let’s put aside all talks about Nokia, especially the Nokia N8. Don’t you think it’s proved its dignity long before? Needless to say, the Nokia N8 sports the most powerful camera in the world. I guess the main reason consumers denied it was the platform, Symbian^3. But luckily, these times are behind and Nokia has updated all its high-end smartphones to Symbian Anna. And don’t forget that Belle’s on its way, and the Nokia N8 will be one of the first ones to get it.

And now I want to ask you, “Do you love bronze?” Don’t get surprised at my question because besides the previously announced colors the Nokia 8 comes in (including the pink), this smartphone will be available in bronze as well! Great, isn’t it? This information comes from Nokia Hungary currently offering the phone for 370.49 EUROS.

During Nokia World 2011 the manufacturer announced about its further developments of the NFC capabilities. Nokia also made a statement concerning the agreement with MTA to use NFC tickets. This means that in 2012 the NFC  will include other payment features.  The first test will include the Nokia 603, which will get the chance to use NFC emulation card update allowing to have secure mobile payments. If the test reports good results, the rest of the devices will undergo the same process. Note that the manufacturer’s planning to port this feature to all of its Symbian devices.

The most common use of the NFC technology is definitely gaming (including the popular Angry Birds). It allows the users to have additional characters and levels for their games. Among the latest additions are the Foursquare integration and the possibility to share location info with friends. The manufacturer hopes the users will get used to NFC and will make use of its main capabilities.

Microsoft is currently planning to add NFC capability to its devices, which means that in 2012, there’s a chance that upcoming Nokia Windows Phone devices will also get this feature.

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Kik launched a new app for Symbian and Windows Phone devices at Nokia World 2011 event. The application is designed for cross-platform messaging. It comes in private beta version for Symbian devices and is now updated to work with the latest version of WP, that is Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. For WP Mango we have 2.0 version of the application.

This application has been already available for iOS, Android and Blackberry operating systems. So we can say at the moment Kik Messenger is also available for all major operating system based handsets.

The Symbian private beta version of the application allows to send and read notifications, to have a group chat with any Kik user (regardless of the OS used by the group member) and to share photos.

As for the Windows Phone 2.0 version of the app, we have fast app switching, list scrolling, address book contact matching and many other innovations.

The latest three devices of Nokia — the Nokia Asha 200, Asha 300 and 303 — are all running What’sApp application, while Kik Messenger is way faster and will most likely be used for Nokia’s upcoming high-end devices.

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