Nokia's 603 is the latest Symbian Belle smartphone

Nokia may be hard at work behind the scenes on its Windows Phone smartphones that are expected to debut before the year is out, but it hasn't stopped producing Symbian smartphones, and the 603 is the latest Symbian effort from the company. The Nokia 603 features an all-touch interface and the latest Symbian Belle operating system.

The Nokia 603 sports a 3.5-inch ClearBlack display with nHD (360 x 640 pixel) resolution. It is powered by a 1GHz processor and has a 5 megapixel camera that can shoot 720p HD (1280 x 720 pixel) video.

Nokia says the 603's battery will keep it going for seven hours of talk time or over 19 days of standby. The 603 supports HSPA+ 14.4Mbps connections on the 850/900/1700/1900/2100MHz bands, and features Bluetooth 3.0 and NFC support. The phone measures 113.5mm x 57.1mm x 12.7mm (4.47in x 2.24in x 0.5in) and weighs 106.9g (3.77oz). Running the latest version of Symbian, Belle, the 603 features the latest Nokia Browser and Maps applications. It also comes with Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Shazam, YouTube, Microsoft Office Communicator, Quick Office, Adobe PDF reader, and Vlingo all pre-installed. Nokia will be offering the 603 in black and white color options, each with six interchangeable back plates of various colors. It will ship in Q4 of this year, and is expected to cost around 200 EUR (US$275). Check out the video for more looks at the Nokia 603.

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Nokia on a bumpy road

Nokia, does the name ring a bell? The Finish Company that has been struggling well over a year now did not manage to pull off any miracles after the appointment of Stephen Elop back in 2010. The ex-Microsoft employee entered the telephone company with a storm when he brought in a massive strategic alliance with Microsoft. Shortly after this massive breakthrough, Nokia won a petition against Apple, as a result of which, Apple became one of Nokia’s patents. Despite those major successes, Nokia’s struggle with the market share continues.

In Jun 2011, as ill luck would have it, Nokia came on the brink of losing its crown as one of the biggest manufacturers of smartphone to Apple. Two months later, in July to be exact, Nokia lost a big chunk of its market share to Apple. While this in itself was sad for the loyal Nokia customers but what was sadder was Stephen Elop’s statement which basically predicted that Nokia would lose more of its market share to Android. And sure enough, a few months later Nokia became the third contender in the race of smartphones, after Apple and Samsung. This came during a time when the company had already suffered a 40% decline in its profits.

 Nokia’s ill luck has continued to this date where the sales for some of its newer phones are still having a hard time to pickup. Followed by a series of disappointing annual reports, the rumour has it that Nokia will get rid of some four thousand employees in several of its office across the globe. Despite suffering severe blows from operating systems such as Android and iOS, Nokia still has not given up. As part of its new strategy, the company has dedicated three of its factories solely to the manufacturing of smartphones. And that, in the simplest words means that Nokia maybe down but it’s certainly not out of the race of smartphones.

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