Nokia announces Oro luxury model made by 18 carat gold

Nokia has announced the Nokia Oro made by 18 carat gold and leather. The Symbian smartphone has a sapphire crystal home key and AMOLED display

The Nokia Oro (Oro means gold in italian) is a smartphone running on the dying Symbian Anna operating system. It has a 3.5 inch AMOLED touch display, a home key mad of sapphire crystal. The Oro comes with a special edition of the Nokia J Bluetooth headset also having a 18 carat gold plating. Two colours will be available. They are called Nokia Oro Light and Nokia Oro Dark. The backside of the phone has a leather wrapping to keep the cost down. From the press images, it seems like buyers of this phone also will be able to have a monochrome theme in real gold.
Nokia Oro has a GPS receiver and it will be shipped with Ovi Maps for car and pedestrian navigation. But those buying such expensive handset will probably not be flashing the device in public just to find quickest way to La Rambla street.
Nokia allready owns Vertu. A manufacture of luxury mobile phones. The Nokia Oro brand will compete directly with the Vertu brand.

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Nokia changes name of the service branding Ovi to Nokia

Nokia today decided to change the name of their service branding from Ovi to Nokia

According to Nokia, none of the services offered by the company will be affected other than having the name changed. The transition is likely to begin in July and will be finished by 2012.
Ovi, which translates to door in Finnish, was launched in 2007 but was not promoted much by Nokia before 2009. Before Ovi was born, Nokia was running Club Nokia, a mobile store for ringtones, wallpapers and themes for Nokia handsets. But Club Nokia was soon closed down because network operators was dissatisfied with Nokia "stealing" their customers. Instead Ovi saw the light, offering photo sharing and digital maps. Later Ovi started offering Ovi Mail and Ovi Store (app store) and Ovi Music.
The only difference consumers can expect to see is the replacement of the brand Ovi with Nokia. The name change will affect the device software and web as well as printed material and online media.

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