This isn’t spam that normally clogs your email folder! Nokia UK plans to showcase the awesome HD capabilities of their new N8 by creating a short feature film called The Commuter. Did we mention its supposedly a raunchy short film? Well, here’s the interesting part. You have a chance to star in the film along with Pamela Anderson! In a bedroom scene! The entire movie is going to be shot on the Nokia N8.

Unfortunately by YOU we mean residents of  the UK only :( . Oh well, we can always hope.

The movie starts filming on the 28th of September, so if you’re lucky enough to be in the UK, try your luck. Get more details about this promotion from Nokia at www.starwithpam.com

P.S:- Also there is a some other guy who you can act out a scene with in an elevator so if you’re interested you could check that out as well. www.starwithed.com

Anyway that’s all for now, if you do apply and win this contest, please let us know we’re @mynokiaworld!

I just got a notice today, which mentioned that Ovi Files will be discontinued come 1st October, 2010. The mail mentions that the Ovi Files connector has to be uninstalled, but goes on to say that your files are all safe. My question is, what happened? The service was mostly free, so I don’t see why it’s being shut down.

Anyways, here’s the mail:

“Dear Ovi Files user,

Nokia is discontinuing the Ovi Files service, effective October 1, 2010.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

Please make sure to uninstall the Ovi Files Connector installed on your personal computer. To do this, execute the standard Windows or Macintosh uninstall procedure that came with your computer. You will not lose any files as a result of this service discontinuation. Ovi Files simply creates an ‘online mirror’ of the files saved on your Windows PC or Mac, so your original files will remain intact. The files on your computer are always treated as the master version, even if some are selected as ‘Anytime Files.’

You will still be able to share content between your phone and PC using another Nokia product, Nokia Ovi Suite. With Nokia Ovi Suite installed on your PC, you can do the following: sync your contacts and messages; transfer videos, photos, and music; back up your Nokia and update your device software. Please note that this is not a direct substitute for Ovi Files as Nokia Ovi Suite requires a wired connection between your PC and mobile device. For more information visit www.ovi.com/suite.

Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience and hope that you will continue to enjoy our most popular services.”

So again, no idea why. If you have some idea, let us know by commenting below. Or catch us on twitter, we’re @mynokiaworld. And do visit our Facebook Page.

Nokia has been rated the most trusted brand in India for the third year in a row now. It’s not the media or a “mysterious” organization which rated them on top, but consumers (translated as, people like you and me) themselves during a survey.

This doesn’t mean that Nokia can stop improving, they still have to go a long  improving Customer support here in India. Even though they’re voted the best, they’ve still got some way to go to be actually world class in support.  So we wish Nokia the best in getting there, and hang on to the top place!

Here’s the news from Nokia’s press release today:

Consumers rate Nokia as India’s Most Trusted Brand for third year in row

Espoo, Finland – Nokia has been ranked No.1 in The Economic Times-Brand Equity’s annual ‘Most Trusted Brands’ survey for 2010 in India, marking Nokia’s recognition as India’s most trusted brand for three consecutive years. Nokia has appeared in the survey since 2005, and has held the first position in 2008, 2009 and now, 2010.

Nokia’s leadership rating over the years in this survey is also an indicator of the dramatic impact mobility has on India’s consumers over the years.  India has been among the fastest growing telecom markets in the world with an estimated current mobile subscriber base in excess of 670 million subscribers.

“Nokia has always been a consumer-centric company and a consumer award for ‘trust’ is the pinnacle of all awards.  This award is a testament to our team’s deep focus and determined efforts to better understand the needs of the evolving Indian consumer and connect with them. Our initiatives for India – ranging from ‘made in India, made for India’ handsets, services such as Nokia Life Tools and extensive retail and care networks - are a proof of the fact that we are continuously striving to make a positive impact on the lives of our consumers,”  said D. Shivakumar, Managing Director, Nokia India Pvt. Ltd.

The award marks the celebration of 15 years of mobility and Nokia in India. The first mobile phone call was made on a Nokia phone using Nokia network on July 31, 1995.

Brand Equity’s ‘Most Trusted Brands’ survey judges 300 brands from consumer products and services. Consumers across 13 Indian cities evaluate the brand on seven key attributes.

Key brand attributes used in Brand Equity’s “Most Trusted Brands” survey:

1. Always maintains a high level of trust
2. Is worth the price it commands
3. Is a brand I would surely consider if I have to buy the product
4. Has been a popular brand for many years
5. Has something that no other brand has
6. Evokes a feeling of confidence and pride among its users
7. Is very special brand with unique feelings associated to it

Let us know your thoughts on this news item by commenting below. As always, head out to Facebook and join our fanclub or follow us on twitter @mynokiaworld.

Hey Symbian users, Swype is gonna hit your Nokia phones pretty soon. Android users have been using Swype keyboards on their devices for quite sometime now. I use it on my Android devices, and Swype much faster than I can type using the touchscreen.

What’s Swype, you ask?
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. More about how you can get this app on your Symbian touchscreen device right after the video.

If you don’t know about Swype, here’s a video to show you what’s it’s about.

If you’re one of those who love tinkering around with new software on your symbian devices, head over to the Swype for Symbian Page on Nokia Beta Labs and get a copy of the app and install it on your phone -betalabs.nokia.com/apps/swype-for-symbian

If you’ve tried Swype on your Nokia device, tell us your experiences by commenting below.

Edit: If you’re facing a problem downloading the file as we were, you can get the download right here – Download Swype-S60-5thEd-1-0-10334-betalabs.sisx

Nokia has gone a step further into the social cloud by offering support through Twitter. They started up a twitter account this week @NokiaHelps, and have asked you to get in touch with them with your Nokia problems. If you’re in the US, follow the US Nokia Care team over at @NokiaCareUS.

If you’re not the type to scroll through pages and pages of forums and need some quick help, get on twitter and shoot @NokiaHelps your query.

Nokia’s not the first to start this initiative of support through Twitter, some of our Indian telecom companies had already started this method of support earlier this year. I’ve had pretty good experiences with support through @TataDocomo and @Airtel_Presence when I’d gone to them with the problems I’ve faced using their service.

Since a lot of problems can be solved without a visit to the Nokia Care center, we hope this new channel of support should give Nokia’s customers an easier solution to most of their issues. Also give then fact that the Nokia Care’s Indian arm does lack sometimes with problems high-end users of their products face, the @NokiaHelps team should be able to help these folks with their issues as well. So start following @NokiaHelps today.

Stay tuned to us on Twitter and Facebook for all the latest updates.

Nokia today announced the new 5250 phone, through a post at Nokia Conversions. The 5250 is yet another budget phone from the Nokia stables featuring a touch screen, runs on Symbian^1 and is targeted at the music crowd with a bundled subscription to  Ovi Music unlimited and a built in FM receiver.

There’s not much storage on the phone, but it’s expandable using a MicroSD card. Nokia claims that this phone has excellent battery life in this segment of phones,  with 18 days standby or 7 hour talk time. In fact if you use this device only to listen to music, you can listen to 24 hours of back to back music before the battery gives way.

Being a budget phone 3G, GPS and WiFi have been given a miss on this device. The 5250 should cost 115 Euros (around Rs. 6,900), before taxes, when it hits the markets in the fourth quarter of this year.

Key features of the 5250:

• Quad Band phone
• Runs on an ARM 11 processor clocked at 434 Mhz
• 2.8 inch touch-screen with resolution of 360 x 640
• 2 Megapixel Camera with video recording in VGA resolution @ 30fps
• Expandable up to 16Gb via MicroSD card
• FM Radio
• Connectivity through MicroUSB connector and Bluetooth
• Ovi Music Unlimited bundled in selected regions

You can head out to this link for a more detailed spec of the 5250.

From the press release:

“The 5250 runs the Symbian^1 operating system and offers GSM/EDGE communications over four bands and GPRS for data. It has a 2.8-inch TFT screen with a 16:9 apect ratio and a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. On the back, there’s a 2-megapixel camera, with Ovi Share installed to let you upload your snaps to the Web. Eminently pocketable, the device measures 104mm x 49mm x 14mm.”

“This is a highly sociable phone. Also on the home screen, you’ll find your favourite contacts and there’s easy access to Facebook, MySpace and the rest. You can also log-in to multiple email accounts such as Ovi Mail, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, as well as instant messenger accounts from all the usual suspects. Extra applications can, of course, be added using the Ovi Store.”

via Nokia Conversations

Intel & Nokia announced today that they would be establishing a Joint Research Center,along with the University of Oulu.  One of the initiative’s first objectives will be to work on developing a 3D experience, leveraging mobile computing power, to be used by Meego.

Here’s the press release:

“

University Research Center Will Lead to New User Interfaces and Experiences

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

• Intel Corporation, Nokia and the University of Oulu have announced the establishment of their first joint research center.
• One of the first objectives of the new lab is to create new and compelling mobile user experiences that leverage the rapidly increasing capabilities of mobile devices.
• The lab is the latest member of Intel Labs Europe – Intel’s European Research Network.

OULU, Finland, Aug. 24, 2010 – Intel Corporation, Nokia and the University of Oulu officially opened the Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center today. It will employ about two dozen R&D professionals and become the latest member of Intel’s European Research Network, Intel Labs Europe.

Initially the lab will conduct research for new and compelling mobile user experiences that could leverage the rapidly increasing capabilities of mobile devices. Creating interfaces that are more similar to interactions in the real world can enable experiences that are more natural and intuitive, in the same way that modern games and movies are more immersive through the use of realistic 3-D graphics.

The new lab is well aligned with the MeeGo open source platform recently launched by Intel and Nokia. MeeGo provides the greatest flexibility for developing new 3-D experiences on mobile devices as much of the lab’s research activity will also be open source.

“The University of Oulu’s focus on future telecommunications solutions as well as electronics and photonics made it the perfect location for the Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center,” says Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer and director of Intel Labs.

Another potential area of research could look into technologies that allow displaying a 3-D hologram of the person you are talking to on the phone, a capability only found in science fiction movies today. Consumers will feel more involved and engaged with their mobile experience than with current methods.

“3-D technology could change the way we use our mobile devices and make our experiences with them much more immersive,” said Rich Green, Senior vice president and chief technical officer, Nokia. “Our new joint laboratory with Intel draws on the Oulu research community’s 3-D interface expertise, and over time will lay down some important foundations for future mobile experiences.”

The lab will be located at the Center for Internet Excellence at the University of Oulu, and will work closely with the Oulu Urban Living Labs, which provide a unique environment for sensor research, testing and piloting technological and social innovations. The Intel and Nokia Joint Innovation Center follows a successful industry and academia collaboration model similar to the ones of Intel Labs Barcelona and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Spain, the Intel Visual Computing Institute and the Saarland University in Germany or Intel Labs Berkeley at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States.

Source: Intel News Room

Here’s another thing that makes the Nokia N900 awesome: MoBio. It stands for Mobile Biometrics!

Developed by the University of Manchester, the app tracks and locks down 22 facial features, in real time, using the front facing camera on the N900.

From the Video Description:

“This prototype from the University of Manchester (UK) shows an Active Appearance Model tracking 22 facial features (superimposed in yellow and red) in real-time on a Nokia N900 mobile phone. This demo was developed for the EU-funded ‘Mobile Biometrics’ (MoBio) project as part of a face verification system for access control (e.g. instead of a password to access your social networking profile) on mobile devices such as smartphones.”

Here’s the video:

For more info on the video, visit this page. And for more info on MoBio head over here.

What’s next for the N900? Anybody got something we haven’t seen yet? Let us know by commenting below. Or catch us on twitter, we’re @mynokiaworld.

Source: Engadget

This is a free theme from Pizero, which is compatible with S60 v3 and Symbian^1 devices.  You can get this theme free from Ovi Store. If you are surfing from your phone, the Ovi Store link for this theme is store.ovi.com/content/26177, or just search for Earth by Pizero in the Ovi Store app.

This free theme is a  lite version with the default icon-set, but if you like this theme and would like to get it with a custom icon-set, you can check out the Earth Pro theme from Pizero.

Folks, DivX has now released an updated version of their mobile DivX player for Symbian. The main thing with this release is support for Symbian^1 (Touch devices). Do note, it’s still beta. But something’s definitely better than nothing!

You can download the s60v3 app here - Download
Download the s60v5, aka Symbian^1 version here – Download.

From DivX Labs:

We have released a new 1.0 version for Symbian S60 3rd and 5th edition phones.

Even if your phone isn’t officially DivX Certified, you may still be able to watch DivX® videos by downloading and installing the DivX Mobile Player. Find out below if your phone supports the DivX Mobile Player and follow the link to download according to your phone’s operating system.

DivX Mobile Player 1.0 is beta software available for a limited time only and will expire.

You can also check out the older versions here – DivX mobile players download page.

Let us know how it runs will ya? Comment below, or catch us on twitter, we’re @mynokiaworld. Also, do visit our Facebook Page.