Finnish handset maker, Nokia will support Symbian based devices till 2016, two years more than its previous deadline.

Chief executive officer of Nokia, Stephen Elop said in an official blog, “Even as we go through a transition towards our primary smartphone platform, Windows Phone, you will see that continued investment, software updates to Symbian devices are expected until at least 2016.”

Earlier, the handset maker had said that it will provide support to Symbian devices till 2014 but won’t manufacture such phones after 2012.

Nokia has opted the Windows Phone 7 of Microsoft as the operating system of its future smartphone. It will be releasing close to 11-12 smartphones by the end of 2012.

Under the Nokia plan, the apps and customer service will continue to support the Symbian platform.

However, Symbian users will find it difficult to get access to a thriving App environment comprising third party apps as developers would rather like to create apps for those platforms which will be out there in the market longer.

Symbian is still pretty strong in Middle East, Africa and Asia, and Nokia would definitely not like to lose the existing customers.

Nokia is the most sought after mobile phone in India, according to the findings of a research conducted by ViziSense on the ‘interest in mobile phones online’.

The study, which cited data for the January-April 2011 period of all the users who searched for mobile handsets on ecommerce sites, said that 35 per cent of users searched for Nokia followed by 30 per cent for Samsung and 29 per cent for BlackBerry. Micromax came in a close 4th at 22 per cent.

With the growth of internet penetration, more and more people are using ecommerce sites to assist them in their buying decisions and for great deals.

Interestingly, though the overall share of smartphones in India is a meagre 5 per cent, a huge 44 per cent of people showed their interest in smartphones online compared to the lower end handsets.

According to the study, amongst all those who look for phones online, 12 per cent of them end up purchasing the mobile phones from the e-commerce and group buying websites (i.e. 1 in 8 searches end up in transaction).

Explaining the trends from the research, Amit Bhartiya, general manager and vice president, ViziSense, commented, “Rampant changes and upgrades in phone models and features has made the internet a very compelling medium to help decision making around buying phones. As the largest buyers lie in the TG of 15&#15124 year olds across the country, Blackberry seems to have a done great job in capturing the imagination of this audience in a market infested by smartphones.”

Sony Ericsson has officially announced the launch of its first update for the users of Xperia Play and Xperia Arc smartphones, which will now be upgraded to Android Gingerbread version 2.3.3.

Besides, they will also get the recently launched feature ‘Facebook inside Xperia’ that was introduced during the launch of the new range of Xperia Mini’s. The feature allows users to share, like and connect on Facebook in a faster and easier way that is not possible through an application or through website.

The feature works side-by-side with TimeScape user interface that track various social networking websites for contacts of the user and brings it all to a single place. The Facebook for Android App is also available on the phone that delivers faster and more accurate results related to the contacts.

The operating system upgrade has been made with the feedback received from various users around the globe. The update brings along list of fixes and optimisations along with the new operating system that includes, better touch interface, battery usage optimisation, Wi-Fi and software stability. Last but not the least, it also improves the high definition video recording performance on the Xperia Arc.

The update is available in some countries for now but is expected to be rolled out globally very soon. The software update will be available for update over the air and through the PC software as well. In case of India it will be through the use of computer only.

Samsung Music Hub, a dedicated music service for Samsung smartphones and tablets, might just come to India sooner than later. It allows the users to browse, listen, and purchase selected songs from a catalogue of over 10 million MP3 songs.

Ranjit Yadav, country head, mobile and IT business, Samsung India, said this during the launch ceremony of the Samsung Galaxy SII in India recently. He also added that the Music Hub will soon start featuring on smartphones starting with the Samsung Galaxy SII.

Internationally to provide content for the Music hub, Samsung has tied up with 7 Digital. For India, Hungama Mobile will be the content provider for the music service. Indian users will have the choice to choose a variety of songs of different genres and regions.

The dates for the final roll out of the service are still under wraps, but the details about the content provider promises that the services are soon going to be launched in India for the smartphone users first followed by the tablet users.

After Nokia and BlackBerry, Acer has announced a new touch and type interface based Android smartphone for India, named as BeTouch E210.

The new Acer BeTouch E210 is a 3G capable phone based on Android 2.2 Froyo and has a full QWERTY keypad along with a 2.6 inch big capacitive touch screen that supports multi touch gestures like pinch to zoom and more.

The phone features Qualcomm 7227 processor, running at 600MHz, and an optical Track pad that helps fast browsing.

For multimedia, the BeTouch E210 has a 3.2 Megapixel camera, a multi format music player and FM radio. Apart from 3G data connectivity, it also features Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for wireless connectivity.

Its memory is expandable up to 32GB. The company is also offering a 2GB Memory card complimentary with every BeTouch E210 also.

The Acer BeTouch E210 is available in the Indian market through all Acer dealers and franchisees for a price of Rs 11,900.

We keep hearing about new smartphones, but it appears Samsung and Motorola are going to surprise us with a new concept &#151 cloud based mobile phones.

These are cheaper phones that will run on software stored in a remote server, or cloud. Usually, the data accessed by smartphones resides on the phone itself, thus raising the cost of the device. Cloud phones, on the other hand, will have no need to carry data with them. Rather, users can just pluck data from the cloud and use it as per their convenience.

There are currently more feature phone users than there are smartphone users. Feature phones have less processing power than smartphones, and if they use cloud technology, they don’t need to have costly components at all.

The exciting part is that feature phones will be able to access data same as smartphones do; it’s just that the data will not be stored on the phone.

Users will benefit due to the reduced cost of the phone, while handset companies will be able to target more users. Even in the case of applications, people won’t have to worry whether the App will run on their phone or not since the apps will then be platform independent.

Users won’t have to worry about the phone’s storage capacity because their data will be stored in the cloud. Of course, they will have to a worry about the storage capacity of the cloud and might have to pay extra for storing data beyond a free limit. Since the apps or software are not installed on the phone, there is more memory available to make the phone work efficiently.

The need for more expensive devices will also disappear, and even if something goes wrong with the hardware of the phone users can go for a new handset without worrying about their personal data, which will be safely stored in the cloud.

Take the example of Gmail: All the data is stored on Google servers, and the data processing work is also done in the cloud.

Even other apps, including the music player, mobile desktop, printer app, and multimedia player can be based in the cloud. Indian users are likely to lead the cloud mobile phone market due to their preference for feature phones, which are less expensive.

Samsung, which is working on cloud based phones, is looking to use either Chromium or even webOS from HP to make sure it has a great user interface in place. Samsung believes users don’t really care whether the data remains in the phone or the cloud so long as the phone performs all the tasks expected of it well.

The recent news of Motorola acquiring Zecter should also be seen in the same light since Zecter provides music and photo streaming services to mobile phones.

Last but not least, if Samsung can think of using Chromium in its cloud based feature phone, why can’t Google come up with a Chrome based phone? Chrome operating system is in any case a closed system, which can be a good thing in a way because users can stop worrying about software upgrades and antivirus or security.

But a cloud based mobile phone also has a cost factor to it. Every time the phone is switched on it will start accessing data from the server, which means more expenses for the user. This is a problem that handset manufacturers will have to address.