In case you have a Nokia N96 and you happen to live anywhere in North America then you should get the latest firmware update. And it’s not your regular update meant to fix some of those existing bugs but it’s a rather important one. Nokia intended to improve overall stability of the phone and the quality of the images taken by its camera.

Fixes for color haziness and motion blur have been added in order to maximize image quality. The Bluetooth has also been improved in terms of connection and compatibilities. You will also receive an update on Nokia’s Mail on Ovi service and even more. Check the list below while you get your Nokia N96 ready to be receive the firmware update:

• Switch 4.0 - improved switch application to transfer user data from/to other devices
• Still image quality is improved, with fixes for color haziness and motion blur that appeared under certain conditions
• Improved overall Bluetooth interoperability
• Now compatible with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Email service (available as separate download)
• If user sets brightness to maximum value, the display backlight now does turn back on after screensaver mode
• The device auto-lock no longer locks the device while viewing or recording videos
• SMS no longer gets auto-converted to an MMS message if there are more then 20 recipients
• Music Player “Refresh Library” no longer hangs if General Settings Date separator is set to “:”
• Now only one message alert tone is played per synchronization with Mail for Exchange, instead of one per message
• Fix for issue with alarm snoozing
• Theme no longer jumps back to default theme after using USB mass storage mode
• CSHelp texts are now updated to resolves several identified issues

No matter what some people say, Nokia is by far one of the best cell phone manufacturers out there. And it’s the Finns’ desire to provide customized software and various services to their customers that amazes me. The company keeps rolling out new phones and it keeps rolling out software for them.

Today Nokia launched the public beta version of Mail on Ovi. You can use your S40 handset to get a free email account and start mailing all your friends. Until now the beta was restricted to Malaysia, India and the Philippines but starting today it’s available worldwide and it comes with support for about a dozen languages.

Mail on Ovi is said to be similar to any PC-based email account. It will work an at least 110 million S40 phones sold in 2008 only. The number should actually be higher since these stats cover only the first 10 months of the year. And it’s 35 the number of different S40 handsets that can be used to run the beta mail service.

Why is Nokia going through all this trouble? Well why do companies bother in general? Money of course! Nokia doesn’t keep a secret the fact that it wants to make at least 2 billion euros annually starting with 2011 from Internet services like navigation, music, games, messaging and media. And they’re on the right track in my book!

via TechCrunch