Need more shortcuts on the homescreen of your Symbian^3 device such as the Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 or E7? No problem thanks to the app called Favourite Apps. Available as a free download, it extends the default shortcut widget by providing total of 15 spots for your favorite apps. Not sure anyone needs that many icons on the homescreen, but hey there are different people with different needs and we should not judge anyone.

To start using Favourite Apps, download it (from Ovi Store) and then add it as a widget to the homescreen. Then customize it with the apps you want, repeat the process as many times as you want and voila… your homescreen is now jam-packed with icons, allowing you to quickly start apps with a single tap. If you want, you can remove all other widgets, except the clock , and have your homescreen look like an iPhone

Favourite Apps (FREE) [Ovi Store link]

Its updating time for Symbian Fring users. The new update is hot off the presses in fring HQ and promises improved audio-visual experience during calls and the stability of the app should be better too. This particular update is Symbian-only. It comes shortly after the four-way calling update from a week ago.

The update brings the Symbian version of fring to v4.5.17. You can grab the update by visiting m.fring.com on your phone. Audio and video quality is improved by the update and the bufixes make the app more stable.

Nokia has just announced an update for their Drop app for Symbian smartphones. Initially used for pushing images and URLs to your smartphone, Nokia Drop now also gains support for sending map views and locations and RSS feeds from your computer to your smartphone. The RSS feeds could be sent to both the Nokia reader app on your Symbian smartphone and its native browser, while the map views and locations will be pushed to the OVI maps app.

The update also brings a key usability improvement you can now choose how you want to handle received items, automatically or manually. Automatically means that received items are handled without the Nokia Drop UI popping-up when you receive items. In manual mode, you need to click items in the client if you want something to happen.

The CNN App for iPhone has been available in the USA since 2009, while the international one is just six months old. It seems CNN has found Symbian^3 attractive enough as they have made the CNN App available in the Ovi Store as well.

The app comes with a very neat UI and allows you to browse the stories by different locations and interest groups. A very interesting feature is the iReports section. There you can submit your own audio or video files to CNN and try to make it on the news.

Finally we have some concrete images of upcoming PR-3 or Symbian Belle uploaded at Nokia Forum. Its the new Qt UI which all the current and upcoming Symbian^3 devices will get.

The changes as you can see new the Signal and notification bar is now thin and takes very less space then current big n chunky one. This bar also work as Pull down to see all notification In menu the Back button has moved from right to left hand side, the icons are same as the upcoming PR-2 or Symbian Anna.

Take a look at new messaging app and calender app it has new Toolbar which has back button, dialer button, Refresh button (what to refresh in calender) and new options button. One more thing that I can notice is that there will be no persistent scroll bar in PR-3.0 or Belle like we have right now.