Nokia has showcased its next generation handset, the N9 running on MeeGo operating system, at the Nokia Connection 2011 event in conjunction with CommunicAsia 2011 event in Singapore.

The new Nokia N9 is a full touchscreen smartphone with no buttons on the front panel. Flaunting a new industrial design with vivid 3.9-inch Amoled touchscreen display, the Nokia N9 certainly is a worthy successor to N8 and a flagship MeeGo device. The N9 is expected to be made available later this year.

Nokia N9 will certainly sweep many off their feet with its slim (7.6-12.1mm) unibody and curved glass display, stuck together to form one slab of a smartphone. The precision crafted polycarbonate unibody is just one piece that packs the battery and the other hardware inside it.

The N9 has a 3.9-inch AMOLED curved glass touchscreen display with 854×480 Pixel resolution. You can expect to see 16.7 million vibrant colours and crisper text on the screen. The N9’s AMOLED touchscreen is built using the scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass technology.

Internally, the Nokia N9 houses a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 architecture based ‘Texas Instruments OMAP 3630’ processor, with PowerVR SGX530 graphics chip. It is the same combination used in the recently available Samsung Galaxy S LCD 4GB GT-I9003.

The Nokia N9 packs massive 1GB RAM and comes in 16GB or 64GB storage options.

The Nokia N9 features the volume rocker and lockscreen buttons on the side. At the back panel lies an 8-megapixel camera with Wide-Angle Carl Zeiss optical lens coupled with dual LED flash. Supporting the imaging in 16:9 aspect ratio, the camera has a digital shutter and comes with continuous Autofocus while recording a 720p HD video. One can enjoy the digital 4x zoom while clicking a still image or shooting a video. The camera optics are powerful enough to give great performance under low light conditions thanks to its larger f/2.2 Aperture and dual LED flash.

There’s a camera at the front panel for making video calls. To stay put with latest generation of smartphones, Nokia has put the Near-Field Communication chip inside it.

Nokia boasts of its new swipe philosophy where the users can browse through the smartphone’s user interface with finger swipes. Running MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan operating system, the user experience has been developed with the help of the Qt cross-platform application and user interface framework. With system-wide swipe gesture implementation, users can go to homescreen any time by swiping in any application.

Nokia has designed three different home screen views and offers live multi-tasking. Open Applications feature shows the number of apps running in a card style panel interface where users can multi-task between them.

Being the MeeGo flashship device, Nokia has also added free maps and turn-by-turn based Navigation with voice guidance. The dedicated Drive App has been optimised to be used as the GPS navigation system in cars and also features public transport routing. Apart from that, N9 also supports corporate email with ‘Mail for Exchange’ and comes pre-loaded with Ovi Store and Music along with support for Facebook as well as Twitter.

Nokia N9 features a fast mobile web Browser built using Webkit 2 technology and offers wide HTML5 support for using rich web apps and smoother video playback. In sound department, N9 supports Dolby Headphone and Dolby Digital Plus that enables personal surround sound audio experience with any pair of headphones connectable via 3.5mm audio port.

For network connectivity, the N9 features quad-band GSM and penta-band WCDMA support. Apart from that, wireless connectivity is ensured through Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.

The N9 features a 1450mAh battery that offers talktime of up to 11 hours on 2G and up to 7 hours on WCDMA. One can play 720p HD videos for up to 4.5 hours and music playback is up to 50 hours &#151 better than the Apple iPod touch. The N9 will be available in black, cyan and magenta colours.

With mind-blowing design, contemporary specifications and intuitive interface, Nokia N9 certainly is a flagship MeeGo smartphone. So far there are no details on the availability and pricing but expect to be blown away whenever they are official.

Microsoft Windows Phone 7 smartphones will soon be able to install third party apps compatible with their handsets as the company has now approved a jailbreak tool for enabling the installation of homebrew (open source) software on its devices.

The ChevronWP7 team, the trio who developed the first jailbreak for Windows Phone 7 devices, has announced in a blog post that a Windows Phone 7 unlocking service approved by Microsoft will be launched as part of the ChevronWP7 Labs.

ChevronWP7 team’s announcement that the new Windows Phone unlocking service will be approved by Microsoft is quite surprising for many.

The ChevronWP7 Labs website states that the team will be delivering a solution “in collaboration with Microsoft” and that it will charge developers a small fee via PayPal. Microsoft has obviously won brownie points over Apple and Sony, who have always been against jailbreaking hack developers.

It seems that the ChevronWP7 device-unlocking service will most likely be available to developers for a fee. This solution won’t be available for free like the ones on iOS and on Sony devices. Do note that jailbreaking a device is legal in the USA.

Tomorrow, Nokia is expected to announce and show its first Windows Phone 7 handset in Singapore. Microsoft will then have yet another major handset maker for its Windows Phone 7 platform.

Nokia has unveiled its three touch and type phones- C2-02, C2-03 and C2-06.
Out of the three, C2-03 is a Dual-SIM mobile phone and has exact specifications as of C2-02 which is a single SIM handset. All these three new Series 40 mobile operating system running handsets come pre-loaded with Nokia Maps application.
Nokia will offer C2-02 and C2-03 for $105 (Rs 4,725 approximately) as estimated retail price while the C2-06 is expected to be sold for $80 (Rs 5,040 approximately).

The Nokia C2-03 is a the dual-SIM handset that offers Easy Swap feature that lets users change the SIM card without having to switch off the mobile. Besides, users can personalise the look, feel and tones of up to five different SIM cards.

All three handsets sport a 240×320 pixel Resolution supporting touchscreen and sliding keypad – hence you can either use the phone via its touchscreen or use the keypad for quick messaging. Sporting 2 Megapixel camera at the back, these devices have 10MB Internal Memory and capability to expand the storage with Memory card of up to 32GB.

The new C2 series handsets will have Nokia Maps for Series 40 which also has an offline version and thereby offers the users to use it without data connection. All three devices look almost the same but the C2-06 comes with bit smoother finish and more colour options.

Music lovers can also enjoy the FM radio available on all three handsets. Nokia boasts of its new mobile web Browser that speeds up the web page load times. However, you can always use the Opera Mini to browse web.

These three handsets can be expected to arrive in India, China, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Eurasia and MEA in the third quarter of this year.

The next generation Symbian Anna update for the Symbian^3 based handsets will arrive in end of August this year, Nokia has said. The Anna update, for the Symbian^3 devices N8, E7, C7, and C6-01, is expected to bring new user interface, new icons, and all other performance jazz promised earlier by the Finnish handset maker.

Nokia will start rolling out the Symbian Anna update from July. However, users across the globe will be able to download it via PC or over the air by the end of August only.

Back in December, Gunther Kottzieper, senior manager for Nokia China, shared the company’s plans to roll out number of significant firmware updates for the Symbian platform.

Symbian Anna update will also bring some helpful features like we reported about N8 that is expected to get Continuous Autofocus and 30fps video recording post Anna update.

Apart from that, major focus would be on the Ovi App Store. After applying the Symbian Anna update, the Ovi store will get keyword suggestions, spelling autocorrect, increased download limits and faster applications search.

Meanwhile, freshly announced Nokia X7 and Nokia E6 would be available with Symbian update pre-installed.

So if you have bought Nokia N8, E7, C7 or C6-01, then hold on to your devices till August end, get the Anna update and then make the best out of it.