Both Nokia and the wider community have been busy with a lot of updates, some of which we summarize here.

Firstly, Nokia has updated both the Nokia Maps application for your Symbian device, but also a new Nokia Map Loader. Symbian Guru has kindly worked out the direct download links, which are Nokia Maps and Map Loader, if you don’t want to go via the normal Nokia Maps flash webpages.

Symbian Guru also points out that Python for S60 has been updated too, and is now at v1.4.4.

In other Nokia news, Mobile Web Server has been updated to v1.4, and Nokia have also released the new v7 PC Suite, and the Nokia PC Music client is now at v1.5.

Finally, the plan for Nokia to buy Navteq has now been approved by the EU, so it will be interesting to see what impact this has as the companies merge together.

ShoZu have been busy people. First of all, they’ve announced ShoZu for iPhone, which should be available in the next few weeks, in line with the updated Apple iPhone 2.0 firmware, and the Apple App Store. ShoZu allows you to take photos, and then ShoZu will organisee uploading those pictures to your selected sites in the background. A very popular Symbian S60 app, and now available for the iPhone, supporting the same range of sites. As well as the traditional upload facilities, there are now facilities for downloading pictures from your friends, reading and commenting on your and your friends’ photos / posts, interaction with Facebook, and geotagging your photos for you. It even supports a variety of “Citizen Journalism Sites”, such as the BBC website, Scoopt, CNN and ITV.com.

ShoZu supports many sites, and the other big news is that they have recently added support for Ovi, the new Nokia sharing site. Interestingly, two months ago they only support 29 site; now they support 46, and looking through the list the majority of picture based sites we could think of were included. Although they support Twitter, they need to expand their range of text based sites (such as Plazes and Jaiku that add location information to the messages) to complete their support and claim to be able to support the majority of Web 2.0 sites.

Some content thanks to Jonathan at atmaspheric | endeavours, and Darla Mack at her website.

Many people have speed camera databases loaded into their SatNav, and we support and recommend Pocket GPS World as one of the most accurate and regularly updated camera databases for the UK. However, up to now, if you used Nokia Maps on your Symbian phone as your primary navigation device, you were left without speed cameras. This is now resolved. If you head to this HOWTO at Pocket GPS World, they’ll explain what you have to do to get their database working on your phone.

Basically, you have to install a freeware application, and the subscribe to the Pocket GPS World site (if you aren’t already a subscriber), and download the “Nokia Speedcam” specific database from their site, and you’ll have working, and up to date speed cameras on your phone. The software has only been tested on a UK N95 with Nokia Maps v2, although there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work with every S60 3rd edition phone, and, like Nokia Maps, it supports Bluetooth GPS units if you don’t have a built in GPS.

Nokia have announced two major updates today. Firstly, they have announced they are purchasing the remainder of the Symbian shares they do not already own, and will therefore take complete control of Symbian. As part of this purchase, Nokia have also announced that they will turn portions of Symbian (the OS), S60 and UIQ (controlled by Sony Ericsson and Motorola) into Open Source, via the new Symbian Foundation. This process will take a couple of years, but follows in the footsteps of the work Nokia has put into the Maemo community (for their Internet Tablets). This bodes well for the future of the platforms.

In other news, Nokia have also released a major OS (firmware) update for the N800 and N810 Internet Tablets. Apart from lots of bugfixes, and some improvements in the applications, the key new feature is that future OS updates will be able to be installed without a full reflash of the firmware back to factory condition.

Missing Sync, a Mac sync program, will soon be available for Symbian phones, according to an article at All About Symbian, and even better, will support S60 3rd edition and the latest UIQ phones too.  Although Nokia do provide some Mac tools, a lot of Windows Mobile users have found Missing Sync a very useful program, and we are all looking forward to the release of the Symbian version.  More details here.

The screenshot shows the Windows Mobile version, All About Symbian have stated the Symbian version will look very similar.

Nokia released the PC Phone Beta back in December, but have now withdrawn the product from the Beta website. They’ve said that they will not continue development as a standalone product, and have removed the software. They did also mention that although a standalone product would not be following, they would “incorporate the best parts to other Nokia offerings”.

In other news, the Nokia Support Discussion forums are now accessible from WidSets, via the Nokia Discussions WidSet widget. Although read only access right now, we’re hoping Nokia develop this further to allow full two way access to the site from WidSets.

Finally, the Nokia 5800 phone, ie the touchscreen S60 phone, has been spotted on a German advert (above, courtesy of Symbian World), so can’t be far away from launch. As the first of the new generation of Nokia touchscreen phones, it’ll be interesting to see how well it functions.

Anssi Vonjoki, Nokia’s VP of Mobile Markets, has stated that Nokia will launch a whole range of touchscreen phones in 2009, not just high end smartphones, but “from the very low segment to the highest one featuring this type of functionality.” We’re not sure that Nokia would want to redevelop both S60 and S40 to support touchscreen, so these phones are likely to bring S60 phones down to more consumers.

LG have had some success with their touchscreen phones, from the Viewty to the latest LG Secret, and of course there’s the iPhone.  Whether Nokia can achieve the consumer experience to the same level as Apple waits to be seen.

Google have announced that they have now made a customised version of the Picasa Web Albums for Nokia S60 devices. As well as that, Google have translated it into 36 languages as well.

Simply head to picasaweb.google.com to access the new version.

fring have updated their S60 VOIP client (to v3.35), which now offers improved stability, less interruptions, less logouts, improved voice quailty and they have added a speakerphone option. They’ve also added a file transfer capability via Yahoo! or Skype. More details here, with the download here.

Truphone have updated their mobile phone VOIP S60 client to v4.0, and included Truphone Anywhere. This allows you to route as many of your calls as possible over the Internet, which will reduce your costs. Clever logic in the program means it will offer a variety of options from a local area number, Call Back and true VOIP calls. If you have included bundled minutes, then Truphone reckon their service will still save you money on your international calls. Head over to the Truphone website for more information and a download link.

As well as the existing Nokia Internet Tablet range, Nokia are definitely preparing Linux based cellphones. The comments have come from Nokia’s CFO, Rick Simonson. Whether it’ll be their own OS, Android, or LiMo, is unknown, as is whether it’ll use Trolltech’s Qt UI, a company Nokia bought earlier this year, but we can be sure of one thing; it’s likely Nokia will not stop at a single device, and we should, over the coming years, expect to see a whole range of devices. We don’t suspect Nokia will give up on Symbian S60 anytime soon, so it’ll be interesting to see if the Linux phones compete in the high end smartphone sector, and how much overlap of technology and applications they bring from the current tablets.

Story from Thumb Report, a new smartphone news service, which tried to encompass the news within 160 characters.

Here’s an interesting snippet of information. Google have released an updated version of their iPhone version of their Google Reader, and it’s been noted that any device can access the URL, which is http://www.google.com/reader/i/. This version works well on both Symbian S60 smartphones, as well as the Nokia Internet Tablets, both of which seem to benefit from the additional effort Google has put into the user interface. It offers a better interface over the traditional mobile version by offering you easier access to each post. If you are a regular Google Reader user, and have never got on with the mobile version, then give this version a go…

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.

The Symbian Guru has written up a comprehensive article that answers this very question, comparing the mobile GMail application, accessing GMail through the web browser, and using the built in messaging app and accessing GMail via IMAP. He has also included the Pros and Cons of each option. A useful article if you are looking into GMail access from your phone.

The article can be read here.

Psiloc have just released their latest S60 application, it’s called Psiloc Connect, and as the name implies (just), it’s a connection manager for your phone. Once configured with all your details, it creates an additional AP connection called Psiloc Connect. Simply use this within your application and it will do everything else for you. It will search through all available WiFi access points, and connect to one of them if available. Failing that, it can either not connect at all, or if you have a good unlimited data connection, it will happily use a 3G / GPRS connection to connect the phone with the Internet. It costs €9.95, so is well worth a look.

More details here.

Scheherazade is a new Audiobooks player for S60v3 from PlatySoft in Australia. It requires python to be installed, but the author has released two versions, one for those who already have python, and another which includes python. Once installed, all you need to do is to put your Audiobooks into a folder called Audiobooks and Scheherazade will automatically find them and play them for you. Even more, it’s free!

Download it from here [Via Symbian Guru].

Nokia have been updating a number of their Beta applications over at Nokia Beta Labs. Firstly, they have updated PC Phone including performance updates, bug fixes, and a few other updates. Secondly, they have also updated the less popular Nokia Channels, with a new simpler interface, bug fixes and new features.

Here’s a useful guide - it’s a step by step guide on how to configure the built in email client to use Google Mail on your Series 60 handset. It covers every step of the way, and although it’s only useful once, it makes getting the settings right a breeze.

Step by Step GMail on S60 [Via HandyWi, which also includes a video]

If you are into your music, and have a last.fm account (which allows you to publish your music tastes, and what you are and have been listening to), then Michael Coffey has released a native last.fm client for Symbian S60 phones. It has a simple interface (you provide it your last.fm username and password and that’s it!), and whenever you play music it will silently in the background update your last.fm account (it also remembers the music should you be disconnected and will upload the data when a connection is available again).

Download it here.

Here’s an interesting rumour we’ve picked up on via the internet. It appears that Nokia might be trying to beat Apple to the launch of the first 3G touchscreen smartphone, by announcing the 5800 Tube in advance of the iPhone announcement in June. Although they’ve both been beaten to touchscreen mobiles (like the LG Viewty), it would be an interesting turn of events if Nokia beat Apple to this crown. It’s unlikely, but an interesting rumour nonetheless…