Nokia have also announced they have finally released their PC Music Client for managing your music between your desktop and your smartphone. However, you need an N95, N95 8GB, N82, 5610 XpressMusic, N81, as these are the only phones supported (read: tested) right now, and despite the beta client already being at v1.5, it does not support the Nokia Music Store, which would be an obvious integration we would expect to see in the final product (it’s actually “deactivated”, so support is likely to be available before the product comes out of beta).

Interestingly, Nokia have adopted a standards based approach with this software, and hence it should actually work with “any MTP-compliant device, whether it be a Nokia device or another brand MP3 player.”

Head over to the Nokia Beta Labs PC Music Client website for more information and to download.

On top of all the other Nokia Beta Labs applications that have been released or updated recently, they have just added another application; Nokia Step Counter. This is the equivalent of a pedometer, but it uses the accelerometer built into some recent S60v3 Nokia smartphones (N95, N95 8Gb, N82). A couple of known issues exists (you have to enter your height and weight in metric units irrespective of the units you have chosen to display), but it’s a good start. Head over to the Nokia Beta Labs website for more information and to download.

On top of all the other devices getting firmware updates, Nokia should be releasing v20 firmware for the N82 in the next few days. This mainly adds Flash Lite 3 and WRT (Web Run Time Widget). A full Changelog is available from Symbian Freak. With the N82 already having User Data Preservation (as mentioned here), it should be easy to apply too.

Nokia have finally launched the new N-Gage gaming service, with support for the N95, N95 8Gb, N81, N81 8Gb, and the N82. Other phones, such as the N73 and N93i should follow at a later date.

Whereas most of us have yet to see a traditional Nokia N82 in the flesh, a new variant is coming - the black N82. It’s already listed on the Nokia Hong Kong website, and is expected to be released around the world (including the UK) soon.

As we first mentioned here, Nokia have now released the new N82 firmware with User Data Preservation. This means that when upgraded the firmware, none of the user data or applications are lost, saving a lot of work of installing / reconfiguring. The actual update is mainly minor bugfixes, but we hope to see UDP on all future Nokia Symbian devices, and would also like to see it made available for some existing phones.

A new Nokia firmware is due shortly for the N82. Although firmwares are released on a fairly regular basis by Nokia, this firmware update heralds a new era in Nokia updates. The N82 supports a new firmware function called User Data Preservation, which should result in all user data and applications being preserved throughout the upgrade process.

We’ve seen something similar on the latest Nokia Internet Tablet, the N810, which has the ability to restore this type of data, but this is the first time Nokia has really started supported a smooth upgrade path.

Thanks to Kevin at the Series 60 Blogs.

Nokia have just launched a new beta service, Channels. This allows you to view the content of traditional medi, such as the New York Times.

Nokia say “Through Channels, international and local branded publishers provide you advertising paid daily news, sports and entertainment optimized for mobile devices. You can access your favorite publications via WiFi of GSM, and read either online or offline.”

More news sites will be added to the service over the coming weeks.

Also, Nokia has taken advantage of the Accelerometer included in the latest Series60 phones, including the N95 and N82, and the application will automatically convert to landscape format should you turn the phone on it’s side (like the iPhone).

Nokia has recently released a new client for a number of it’s phones. The Nokia Internet Radio client allows you to connect to many internet radio stations, and works on a number of Nokia S60 phones (so far they have released a beta client tested on: N82, N91, N95 and N95 8Gb) over both 3G and WLAN networks. More phones should appear in time.  IN time, Nokia are planning to include the Internet Radio client in new phones (and new firmwares for existing phones).

This shows Nokia’s commitment to it’s new Ovi services, which already include the Nokia Music Store.

Nokia will launch the N82 tomorrow. As mentioned before, the phone is basically an N95 in a different form factor, although over and above the N95 it also includes a Xenon flash, 90Mb of RAM, and a larger battery. The other interesting extra feature is an auto-rotate function like the iPhone.

If a number of mobile sites are to be believed, this is the new Nokia N82, which is likely to get launched in the next few weeks, possibly even sooner than that. It’s basically a non-slide version of the N95, so it packs a 5-megapixel camera with a Xenon Flash, GPS, WiFi etc.