A slip by the Ovi-supporting team today revealed a new touch-driven Nokia handset that is in the works. Nokia 5250 appeared on the company's application store website, flaunting a fresh new design, but unfortunately the handset is running on the good old Symbian S60 5th edition OS. Those of you hoping for an Symbian^3 device in the low-end segment are sadly out of luck.

The handset is obviously the next member of Nokia's family of lower midrange touchscreen phones and comes to replace the pretty popular Nokia 5230. There is not much specs about the Nokia 5250 that we can confirm. Perhaps an nHD screen measuring somewhere around 3 inches in diagonal certainly isn't a wild guess. 3G and GPS are on the cards as well but the rest is pure guesswork.

This February Nokia promised to deliver 100 euro touch smartphones and we have yet to see those. Could the Nokia 5250 be the first to go near that psychological barrier? In any case with the Nokia 5250 appearing on the Ovi store page it's clear that its announcement is fast approaching so we won't have to wait too long to find out.

Design by Community is nearing an end it's at the penultimate step, which by the way I find the most interesting. The fictional Nokia U was designed from the ground up by popular vote (including the name) and now as Nokia Conversations always promised they’ve released three sketches to pick the final design again by voting…

If you haven’t followed Design by Community closely, check out this page with the finalized specs. Each group of specs was chosen by a weeklong poll. Voters consistently picked the best of the best available and the finalized specs are probably impossible with today’s technology. No problem though, this was always meant as an experiment trying to design a phone for the future.

Guided by the features picked by voters, Nokia’s designers have prepared three concept sketches. The winning sketch will get the full 3D design treatment. Here are the three possibilities of how the Nokia U could look.

Looking at the designs you can quickly spot the heritage – the first sketch is heavily inspired byNokia N8, the second takes its cue from the Nokia X6 and curiously, the third sketch looks a bit like the rumored Nokia C7.

OVI Store cannot boast the sales increase and the number of applications is hardly mind boggling. The same applies to the search function in the shop. Out of the available solutions Nokia shop is the most uninspiring. The company tries to boost sales by all means and until August 12 it offers a special offer of 26 games (most popular games on all platforms, not only for Nokia phones). For one dollar, euro or pound you can buy any of the games. It is an excellent solution for those who remain loyal Nokia customers. The following games are available:

• Doodle Jump
• Fieldrunners
• Bejeweled
• Bejeweled Twist
• California Gold Rush
• Pac-Man Championship Edition
• Armageddon Squadron
• ToonWarz
• WSOP – Hold’em Legend
• Wave Blazer
• Fieldrunners
• UniWar
• The Sims 3
• Monopoly World
• Uno
• Raging Thunder
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Where’s Wally
• California Gold Rush
• Zuma
• Zuma’s Revenge
• Burning Tires
• Tetris Revolution
• Trivial Pursuit
• Jewel Quest III
• Tony Hawk VERT
• Super KO Boxing 2
• Heli Strike

Everything remains the same, but it is not as comfortable to play in Fieldrunners on Nokia due to the screen resolution. Not to be accused of groundless allegations it will say that the screen resolution is the main platform limitation today and the company somehow does not handle it or tries to ignore the problem. You can put it differently.

British marketing research firm YouGov published its report on Smartphone Mobile Internet Experience. 2121 smartphone users took part in the poll. The most alerting tendency is the drop in preferences for Nokia by 12% within 6 months, which correctly describes Nokia, its products and marketing. The number of people who plan to buy Nokia smartphones soon decreased two times. It is sad, but Nokia may label YouGov as one of unreliable information sources and claim that everything they say is not true. It is easier to ignore your market position, than to improve the situation.

This time its a REAL Prototype from Nokia. May be Nokia plans to release a phone Next year (2011) with this shape. And this will be Super cool!

Our Previous Review on Nokia Kinetic

Nokia faced another difficult quarter for its devices and services division, as the financials struggled in the competitive smartphone market

Nokia has reported difficult results for the second quarter as it continues to feel the squeeze from Apple and others in the smartphone market.

Nokia had already downgraded its outlook for the second quarter for devices and services, and said net sales would be at the lower end of, or slightly below, the previously expected range of €6.7 billion to €7.2 billion. This was primarily due to lower than previously expected average selling prices and mobile device volumes.

Reported net sales in the devices and services segment came in at €6.8 billion, up three per cent from the second quarter of 2009 and two per cent from the first quarter of 2010.

However, Nokia said net sales for devices and services would have declined two per cent had the results been reported at a constant currency rate.

Operating profit in the division fell 16 per cent to €643 million and the operating margin shrank from 11.6 per cent to 9.5 per cent over the year.

Latin America was a particularly key market for Nokia, with the value of sales up 31 per cent year-on-year and 28 per cent quarter-on-quarter. Sales in Greater China were also up 21 per cent year-on-year, although down 6 per cent quarter-on-quarter, while in Asia-Pacific sales were down year-on-year but up 13 per cent since the first quarter.

Net sales in Nokia’s biggest market Europe remained fairly stable, while North America recorded a 16 per cent decline year-on-year. The Middle East and Africa saw a 10 per cent fall in net sales year-on-year and a seven per cent negative swing quarter-on-quarter.

Sales of feature phones were down four per cent year-on-year to €3.4 billion, although business in what Nokia reports as ‘converged mobile phones’, including smartphones and mobile computers, added 12 per cent to net sales year-on-year to take it to €3.4 billion.

Nokia said the total volume of mobile devices it sold during the quarter was 111.1 million, an eight per cent growth year-on-year. It estimates 338 million units were shipped by the industry as a whole during the second quarter, up 14 per cent over 2009, giving it a 33 per cent market share.

Nokia added that the industry as a whole shipped 59 million smartphones and mobile computers during the quarter, while it moved 24 million units over the same period. This was up 42 per cent from a year ago and gives Nokia a 41 per cent market share, according to its own estimates.

In terms of volume, North America was the only market to see a year-on-year fall, down 19 per cent, with Latin America accounting for 11.2 million of the 111.1 million units shipped, a 26 per cent increase.

Price pressures and higher sales of lower priced smartphones led Nokia’s average selling price (ASP) to decline from €64 in the second quarter of 2009 to €61 in the second quarter of 2010.

The ASP decline was more marked for smartphones than feature phones, and fell from €181 in 2009 to €143 this year. Quarter-on-quarter, there was a €12 decrease in the smartphone ASP, which was cited as result of “price pressure in certain high-end smartphones”, namely the iPhone 4, and a strategy to sell devices at a lower price point to reach a wider group of consumers.

Nokia chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said: “Despite facing continuing competitive challenges, we ended the second quarter with several reasons to be optimistic about our future.

“For one, the global handset market has continued to grow at a healthy pace, led by some of the less mature markets where Nokia is strong. We are also encouraged by the solid second quarter performance of our mobile phones business, helped by an improving line-up of affordable models.”

Nokia said it is working on a family of phones built on the Symbian^3 platform that will give it broader reach and appeal.

Kallasvuo said: “In smartphones, we continue to renew our portfolio. We believe that the Nokia N8, the first of our Symbian^3 devices, will have a user experience superior to that of any smartphone Nokia has created.

“The Nokia N8 will be followed soon thereafter by further Symbian^3 smartphones that we are confident will give the platform broader appeal and reach, and kick-start Nokia’s fightback at the higher end of the market.”

Nokia doesn't have a great many phones that combine a touch screen and a hardware QWERTY and that's quite a popular combo, just look at all those Androids.

Aside from the Nokia N97 and N97 mini, the Maemo-powered Nokia N900 was the other touchscreen QWERTY phone. And now, there’s the Nokia C6 3.2 inch nHD touchscreen and a four row QWERTY keyboard are its claim to fame

The looks of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and the brains of Nokia N97 mini – that's the shortest way to describe the C6. It has the 5800 beat in terms of features and pricetag it's mainly the keyboard and the 5MP camera that put it closer to the N97 mini.

It doesn’t have the 8GB built-in memory of the mini though, or the 8GB microSD card of the 5800 just a 2GB card, but that’s enough to get you started. Other than that, the box doesn’t contain more than the basics hit the video to see our quick unboxing and tinkering around.

Check the Unboxing video Above!

See Nokia C6 FULL Specifications

Nokia is pretty proud of the multimedia capabilities of the upcoming Nokia N8 they have shown off the video and still image capturing capabilities of the 12MP shooter, but now they are boasting about the multimedia playback prowess too.

The Nokia N8 has an HDMI port, which allows it to output 720p video. The N8 supports "native mode" rather than "clone mode"  in other words, the phone display and the external display are treated as two different displays.

So, the playback controls stay on the phone's screen and the video is displayed on the TV screen. Clone mode copies the phone display image to the TV, which limits the resolution, but Nokia N8’s support for native mode means the full 720p resolution of videos is sent to the TV.

That’s not all of it however the Nokia N8 is very good at audio too with its Dolby Digital Plus support. Nokia underlines that this isn’t some cut down version (e.g. Dolby Mobile), this is the whole nine yards 5.1 audio and all.

The native mode works just for videos and images right now, but Nokia are working to expand the support. They don’t say what exactly but there’s not much left.

Nokia just announced their Q2 financial results. To summarize - sales are up, profits are down, shifting currency exchange rates didn't help and smartphones have sold more units and have gotten cheaper, compared to previous periods.

The net sales for the Nokia Corporation 10 005 million euro (12.842 billion US dollars) and the net operating profit is 660 million euro. Net sales are 1% higher than the year ago quarter and 5% higher the previous quarter. However, operating profit has fallen.
Looking at just the mobile phone division, it has net sales of 6 800 million euro (3% higher YoY and 2% higher QoQ) and 643 million euro operating profit - 16% down YoY and 23% down QoQ.
"Converged mobile devices" (that is smartphones and mobile computers) accounted for just over half of those sales. That's 12% more sales than converged devices managed in last year's second quarter.
This is likely due to the noticeable drop in the average selling price for smartphones - it's 143 euro (184 USD) for the second quarter of this year, down from 181 euro (232 USD) for last years Q2. That's a 21% drop. Feature phones have a mostly stable average selling price of 39 euro.
Nokia attributes the falling gross margins to "price pressure" in the high-end segment and depreciation of the euro. Industry-wide shortages of some components had a negative impact on sales and Nokia predicts those shortages will continue into the third quarter as well.
For much more numbers and details, check out the full report.

A proper MeeGo device is still nowhere in sight, but the Aava phone is the next best thing, it's a developer platform, meaning intended mostly for MeeGo developers rather than customers, but it gives us a look at how the MeeGo OS and MeeGo-powered devices might look.

There’s a lengthy video review along with an extensive photo shoot of the Aava phone running MeeGo 1.1. A lot of the things aren’t working yet, but there’s still quite some time before the market launch…

Like I said, this Aava phone is not meant for consumers and it shows – many things (volume keys included) still aren’t working. The software needs plenty of work too – but the things that work look rather impressive.

The Aava phone is powered by the Moorestown platform with a 1.5GHz Intel Atom based processor – so, in terms of computational power it’s about equal to a netbook. The Firefox Mobile browser (ex Fennec) goes through the SunSpider JavaScript test in about 4.2 seconds, while a netbook running Chrome manages it in about 2 seconds (of course, Chrome is much faster than desktop Firefox, so it’s not really a fair comparison).