Almost as if to welcome in its new CEO, Nokia announced three new smartphones this week at Nokia World, but he won’t have yet had time to have any influence on these devices, in fact he hasn’t started yet, and they will all likely to bear the design weaknesses which have punctuated Nokia’s demise in Smart phones, which began the day the Apple iPhone was launched.
Other smaller companies, such as HTC have done a much better job of emulating Apple and making the best of touch screens in a phone with new touch interfaces, which is one of the reasons that the Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, has stepped down to be replaced by the Microsoft import Stephen Elop as of September 21.
The phones are all on the new Symbian ^3 platform and are said to be tightly integrated with Ovi services and apps which have been reinforced with an easier transaction interface ‘ the older interface was clumsy and dated to say the least.
The three phones are the E7, the C7 and C6, and each of them owe something to the only capacitive touch screen phone Nokia has managed so far, the just delivered N8, and will form a family with it.
The company said that the new version of Symbian adds 250 new features to the OS. All the phones will feature the latest beta release of free Ovi Maps with both pedestrian and motorist turn by turn directions.
‘Today our fight back to smartphone leadership shifts into high gear,’ said Niklas Savander, Executive Vice President, Markets, Nokia. ‘Despite new competition, Symbian remains the most widely used smartphone platform in the world. Our new family of smartphones introduced today feature the all-new Symbian OS, rewritten to be faster, easier to use, more efficient and more developer friendly.’ Savander also commented on the high level of anticipation for the Nokia N8. ‘Based on the level of consumer interest and the highest online pre-orders in Nokia history, we expect big things from the Nokia N8.’
The E7 is a Blackberry-alike with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to get corporate emails. It has a 4 inch touchscreen featuring Nokia ClearBlack technology for improved outdoor visibility, also a full slider keyboard. It will hit the streets at €495. The C7 is more about home screen connections to Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo! email or Gmail and has a 3.5 inch Amoled display at around €335. The C6 is a smaller version with a 3.2 inch Amoled display and both these last two are depicted as music phones, this smaller one priced at €260. All three devices will ship before the end of 2010.
The new family of Symbian smartphones should open the doors to an updated Ovi Store with a ‘friendlier’ user interface.