It is old news now that Nokia boarded the Windows Phone 7 OS-powered smartphone train, so how much attention is it still paying their Symbian and MeeGo mobile operating systems?

Quite a bit it seems. Nokia has recently announced the Symbian Anna-running X7 and E6 as well as the MeeGo-operating N9, and now the company has revealed further developments for Symbian, which is still, and will probably remain for some time, the mobile OS powering the overwhelming majority of its device portfolio.

These developments have come despite the fact that the company handed over the development of the Symbian mobile OS to global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company Accenture.    

New updates

Nokia’s software development team has been working on updates for mobile devices running Symbian 3.2 as well as Symbian 5.0, which the Finnish firm says will improve the feature set and provide software fixes.

The first new feature of the updates is the integration of a new browser, the Nokia browser v7.3, which is the same mobile browser that will be available for newer Symbian Anna-powered smartphones. It allows for much quicker browsing speeds, supports International Domain Names (IDNs) and also supports non-ASCII letters the likes of Arabic and Mandarin.

Ovi Maps will also be updated, with a new version of Ovi Maps for each version of Symbian. Ovi Maps 3 SR4 will feature on Symbian 3.2 devices, bringing indoor positioning via Wi-Fi, as well as travel and recommendation services including Lonely Planet. Users of devices running on Symbian 5.0 will be updated to Ovi Maps 3 SR6, which adds public transport lines and check-in services to social networking sites.

Also part and partial of the update is a set of emoticons that will be added to all listed devices, giving users access to more ways to express their feelings, whilst they are busy composing SMSs and MMSs.

Nokia will be launching the updates for the Nokia C6-00 and Nokia 5230 first, with the other models following suit in the next few weeks. According to the company, the role-out of the updates will occur in stages, so users are encourage to have software update auto-check switched on, on their smartphones.

Below is a list of the phones, powered by Symbian 3.2 and 5.0 to which the updates are aimed at:

Symbian 3.2

Nokia E72
Nokia E52
Nokia E5
Nokia C5-00
Nokia 6700 slide

Symbian 5.0

Nokia C6-00
Nokia C5-03
Nokia 5230
Nokia 5235
Nokia 5250
Nokia X6
Nokia N97 mini
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

Nokia also recently introduced its own BBM-type instant messaging program called IM for Nokia, which allows users to connect to their friends, colleagues and family members over Wi-Fi or 3G via Nokia’s own instant messaging client.