To Nokia’s cult – Ovi store,Ovi Maps,Comes with Music – if you are still on Symbian 7210, you are in for surprises…a lot of shiny new surprises.

The Finnish phone maker has decided to produce an e-zine filled to the rafters with tips, guides and information on everything, current Nokia phones have to offer.

Imaginatively dubbed Nokia Ovi Magazine, the first issue of this digital tome offers up the latest information as well as a thorough explanation of all aspects of the service, both on and offline.

Setting up mail, downloading music with Ovi Player, uploading media with Ovi Share, app reviews and even finding your way using Ovi Maps, it’s all covered.

The smart and much needed move is to retail this e-zine soon.Those shoppers unconvinced of Nokia’s prowess in the face of impending smartphone competition would do well to have a look and see what their phones can really do.

Symbian ^3 is here, and all of its multitouch and multitasking was recently demonstrated in a Nokia San Francisco press briefing.David Rivas, Nokia’s vice president, showed a demo of what users will expect from the revamped platform, due to make a debut on Nokia handsets in Q3.

It may be running on a PC rather than genuine hardware, but the interface and user experiece has been confirmed to largely be what we’ll expect from the next, open source generation of Symbian.

The good news is that Symbian ^3 brings an fresh look and feel to the operating system, future-proofing the platform with support for multi-touch and pinch-to-zoom, an enhanced user experience with better kinetic scrolling and one tap selecting an item (finally!), as well as multiple home pages.

The tech of Symbian is dragged into the smartphone era too, with 3D graphic hardware acceleration support and support for HDMI, making ^3 handsets capable of outputting high definition 1080p pictures and video when hooked up to a television.

Symbian ^3 also enhances handsets for communications, enabling instant connectivity to the web, one click access wireless networks and automatic switching when the phone detects a known Wi-Fi hotspot. Symbian ^3 is also ready to run on the future of voice calls on 4G networks.

With phones packing Symbian ^3 due as soon as Q3 2010, it looks like the future of the platform in the face of increasing competition like Samsung’s Bada and Microsoft’s recently announced Windows Phone 7 Series is far less in doubt.

CeBit kicks was launched in Germany recently, with Nokia choosing the tech event to launch their smart new C5 handset.

The Nokia C5 has simple styling to look like an entry level device, but the Symbian operating system powering the device and its 2.2-inch display shows a bit of oomph beneath an unassuming exterior.

On top of Ovi Maps and Nokia Messaging that make phones from the Finnish manufacturer great for navigation and nattering, the C5 offers Facebook connectivity for status updates, and support for instant messaging on Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger.

But the C5 is devoid of Wi-Fi and opts for a traditional alphanumeric keypad as opposed to full QWERTY,  weighing a mere 89 grams.A few more features :

3-megapixel camera,

2GB of memory (with support for 16GB SD cards)

3.5mm audio jack,

12 hours talktime and 26 days standby

Available in  white and grey colourways, expect the C5 to make your social life easier from Q2 2010, with a price of around €135.

Intel and Nokia are merging their Moblin and Maemo software platforms to create a unified Linux-based platform that will run on multiple hardware platforms like pocket mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, mediaphones, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

Nokia and other manufacturers are expected to be launch devices based on this platform, called MeeGo, later this year.

MeeGo blends Maemo and Moblin features to create an open platform for multiple processor architectures. It builds on the capabilities of the Moblin core OS and its support for a wide range of device types, combined with the reach of Maemo in the mobile industry and the broadly adopted Qt application and UI framework for software developers.

For developers, MeeGo extends the range of target device segments for their applications.The Ovi Store will be the channel to market for apps and content for all Nokia devices, including MeeGo and Symbian-based, with Forum Nokia providing developer support across all Nokia device platforms. The Intel AppUp Center will be the path to market for Intel-based MeeGo devices from other device manufacturers, with the Intel Atom Developer Program providing support for applications targeting devices in a variety of categories.

The first release of MeeGo is targeted for the second quarter of this year.

Nokia has announced that its financial services, Nokia Money, will be deployed in India first. The announcement was made at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain. With Nokia Money, users will be able to pay their bills, recharge their pre-paid SIM cards and also transfer money to a person by using his or her mobile number.

The payment platform is in partnership with Yes Bank and has been initiated in Pune already. This is a commercial pilot of its ‘global mobile financial services initiative’. In Pune, the service has been christened, ‘Mobile Money Services by Yes Bank’.

Last year, Nokia had invested an estimated 70 million dollars in Obopay, a service provider for payments via mobile phones.The company plans to scale up the services by later allowing consumers to pay merchants for goods and services.