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A couple of weeks ago, Nokia announced that it is planning on releasing an Android smart phone. The concept just sits there, and Nokia’s fans seem to be thinking of a move in a different direction than the mobile phone manufacturer.

In a recent community event in the Nokia Conversations Blog site, the Finnish mobile phone maker announced that it will be launching a new smart phone and that the initial decisions will be determined by the public. The specifications have already been voted upon and now, there are three concept designs that people can choose from for the upcoming mobile phone.

There is no doubt that all of the three designs from Nokia are far from just concept sketches, these three carry most of the major hallmarks of a standard Nokia handset. While this is not surprising, it would have been interesting to see a semblance of variety when it comes to mobile phone design. At this point, regardless of which of the handset designs get chosen, the look will still have that ever familiar Nokia atmosphere.

Looking at the preliminary hardware specifications, there is plenty of emphasis on the need for an open source mobile platform that packs unlimited multitasking capabilities. It may seem like a big stretch, but that actually sounds a lot like the Android operating system. Despite the fact that both the Symbian and the Moblin operating systems are open source mobile platforms, the fact that the public seems to be leaning heavily towards Android phones should be a major red flag for Nokia.

Anyway, while it is very unlikely that Nokia will be producing an Android device, we can expect the company to keep pressing the Symbian^3 and the Moblin operating systems further and beyond what people would expect from most of the OS available today.

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While it is pretty much expected that mobile phone users would be more interested in the Apple iPhone 4 than any other handset (since smart phone just came out a couple of weeks ago), it is surprising how much Nokia’s public ratings has gone down.

According to an independent study by YouGov, the number of people interested in getting a Nokia handset has gone down by at least 12%. Only 34% of phone buyers are considering getting a Nokia.

While the drop is mostly attributed to Apple’s new iPhone launch, but many also believe that Nokia has failed to keep public interest in their devices by failing to come up with truly innovative handsets in the past few months. With most of Nokia’s mobile phones still concentrating on the low end users, many high end smart phone users pass up Nokia devices in favor of phones from LG, Samsung, HTC and other big name phone manufacturers.

The Espoo based company needs to ramp up its game. Not only is Nokia currently the largest phone manufacturer in the world, they are also the most eco-friendly (with Sony Ericsson ranking in second place) as reported by Greenpeace.

Nokia has previously led the industry by setting new standards for mobile phone makers. Also, the close ties between the Finnish phone maker and the Symbian foundation has led to the creation of several iconic devices as well. Unless they are able to come up with a phone that is truly able to compete with the Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7, Nokia stands to lose plenty of ground in the next generation of smart phones.

This means that the upcoming Nokia N8 which uses the new launched Symbian^3 OS and the Nokia N9 which uses MeeGo which was developed by both Intel and Nokia are going to determine what happens to the company in the next few months.

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With all of the details being released about the N9, the most interesting fact that is being left out is the device’s actual name and designation. Aside from that, we can all tell at this point that this is going to be one Symbian^3 smart phone to look out for.

It has already been confirmed pretty early on that the new Nokia handset will be using a well equipped camera for those who love taking high resolution images and videos. The 8 mega pixel snapper will certainly be a welcome feature for amateur photographers while the ability to record videos in 720p will give users plenty of reasons to make use of the HDMI output port on the handset.

The phone has been popping up in a series of rumors and media content online showing off what the handset look likes and the Symbian OS. Recently, the N9 was compared side by side with the HTC EVO 4G and the Apple iPhone 3G. This allowed people to get a quick estimate of the screen size on the Nokia N9 –a nice big 4 inch TFT capacitive touch screen display. It has not been confirmed if the handset will be using other display technology such as AMOLED screen though some sources have hinted that Samsung’s new display technology, the super AMOLED screen might be used in the N9.

In the meanwhile, Nokia is set in the development of the development of the MeeGo operating system which they and Intel have been working on together. The new OS is a combination of the Moblin and Maemo operating systems. Currently, the developer version of MeeGo is already being made available in order to provide the Os with plenty of app support when it launches this coming October.

According to Nokia, the N8 smart phone will be the last Symbian OS based device for the N-series, leaving the N9 with a possible upcoming name change in the future.

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For mobile phone users who need a quick secondary handset for basic calling and texting functions, Nokia has just released a second version of the 5233 handset that comes without the 3G and GPS functions. Of course, for a primary handset, this device will only be useful for people who have little use of a mobile phone, otherwise, it really only serves as a reliable but fancy backup handset.

Virgin Mobile has confirmed that they are offering the Nokia 5230 Nuron touch screen handset for a bargain cost of only 20 Pounds per month. The 18 month contract will give users about 200 minutes for talk time and unlimited text messages. Overall, it’s a pretty nice deal, and even if you do not get it from an operator, this touch screen device still makes for a pretty nice phone to have around.

The biggest advantage of this touch screen handset is that it actually uses the Symbian OS 9.4 (S60) and this means that users will be able to access most of the features that one would expect from a Symbian smart phone –with the exception of GPS maps and 3G access obviously.

Nokia’s 5230 might fool some people into thinking that it is a smart phone that comes with 3G, GPS and all the trimmings; the device’s 3.2 inch touch screen display gives it an appearance of a mid range smart phone –and it does come quite close, though the use of a stylus on a resistive display might turn off some users who are used to capacitive touch screen technology.

The Nuron also comes with a 2 mega pixel camera (with video recording at 30FPS), a basic ARM CPU clocked at 434 MHz, 70 MB of internal memory (but it supports 16GB SD cards), GPRS, Bluetooth and a 3.5 mm audio jack.

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There is a new Nokia smart phone in town and rumor has it that this Symbian^3 handset will be showing off how far the mobile platform has come since its shift to open source.

So far, the biggest piece of news that we have heard regarding the N8-00 is that it will be using a 12 mega pixel camera and that it will be DivX capable. The DivX feature sounds quite the practical addition; with Samsung’s Galaxy S and Wave smart phones already being the first to bring portable HD DivX to users, it makes perfect sense that Nokia’s own video-centric device should also have the same feature.

Anyway, back to the 12 mega pixel snapper, it is said that it will have a Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash (no word about video LED lights) so users can expect to be able to grab some high quality images on this smart phone. For video, it is said that it will be able to record in 720p and the playback can deliver up to 1080p. It has also been reported that the phone has an HDMI port for displaying videos and images on an HDTV or a compatible monitor.

As for the rest of the specs, everyone is still guessing what else Nokia will place in this smart phone. Many are already stating that it will be running on an ARM CPU –some believe that it may also be a new version of the A4 processor.

The Symbian^3 operating system has yet to prove itself, though it seems like Nokia is placing a lot on this smart phone. It was originally said that all the new N-series devices would be using Maemo. For Nokia to move back to Symbian for this phone, it may have plenty of amazing surprises for us to see.

Get to know more about the upcoming Nokia N8-00 at GSM Arena.

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