The first thing you need to know about the Nokia Belle update is that it weighs in at close to 300MB, so you won’t find it appearing as an OTA (Over The Air) update any time soon. In fact, if you look for it on your phone you’ll be told there isn’t an update ready.

The thing is, you need to plug your smartphone into your Nokia Suite software on your PC. The first thing you need to do is make sure that you have the latest version of Nokia Suite, you’ll need version 3.3.

To get ahold of this you’re best nipping over to Nokia Beta Labs and that way you’ll have the latest version on your PC. DOWNLOAD: Nokia Suite 3.3

Once this is the case you can plug your smartphone into your PC and fire up Nokia Suite. Now, you don’t need to make a backup of your device but we’d advice at this stage that making a backup of all your files, folders and apps is the best thing to do. This is because Nokia Belle is a complete new install and while you will find that all your Contacts, messages and multimedia files are kept safe, the main operating system is a refresh install and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

In Nokia Suite go to update and select your smartphone. At this stage you’ll find out whether Nokia Belle is ready to be downloaded. We found that when we did it a huge screen with the handsets supported was thrown up, so we knew the update had hit.

As with all Nokia updates, you may need to wait a few days before it comes through to your device, so best to check back regularly until it does. Once it’s there, all you have to do is follow the onscreen messages.

It’s advisable that you leave a good 30 minutes for the whole process, as the 284MB download, in our case, took around 15 minutes to download and install. However, once the main install had been carried out we did find that a couple of additional apps, such as the Search widget, needed to be updated individually!

Getting ahold of the Nokia Belle update is easy and once installed you’ll find the system is a whole lot faster, smoother and intuitive. If you’ve already gotten the update on your phone why not share your experiences with others by leaving a message in the Comments below.

Check out our How to Install Nokia Belle photo gallery:

10 things Nokia Belle makes easier

The Nokia 700 may be slim, but it still manages to cram in all the features you might expect of a smartphone twice its size. That means web browsing, social networking, instant messaging music all come natural to the Nokia 700. And as one of the first Nokia Belle phones, the Nokia 700 ushers in a new era of Symbian functionality, as the most intuitive Symbian phone yet.

Using the Nokia 700’s energy-saving features you can use the Nokia 700 for longer. Here’s how to do it.

First of all, there are many ways to save power on your Nokia 700. You could tap the menu, go into settings and turn down the brightness of the display, or switch off bluetooth and Wi-Fi when you don’t need it. However, there’s a much easier way to do so, should you find yourself in a charger-less state.

Activate power saving

A handy power-saving mode ensures that even when your battery is at its lowest, you can make it last for as long as you need to squeeze the Nokia 700’s charge.

To activate it, simply hold down the end call button lightly. A menu will pop up with several options. One of these is ‘Activate power saving’. Simply tap on it to activate. You’ll see that your screen has dimmed, and that your battery meter looks different.

You won’t be able to browse the web. The whole idea is to extend battery life enough should you need to make a call or send any emergency texts. It’s a handy feature to have, and you never know when you may need it. It’s that easy. Don’t forget to deactivate power-saving mode the next time you charge your Nokia 700.

Check our our Nokia 700: How to extend battery life photo gallery below:

How to change the time

To change time tap on the clock on the homescreen, and then press the options button on the bottom right of your Nokia 700. Now tap ‘Settings’.

From Settings you will be taken to the Time and Date section. From here you can tap on each section to adjust them to your preferences. For instance, tap on time to adjust the time using the keypad.

Go through each section accordingly to set the date and time format. When you’re done, press the back button situated on the bottom left of the screen.

How to set an alarm

From the homescreen, tap on the clock to be taken to the clock app. From here you can set an alarm by touching the plus sign at the bottom. In the Reminder Time section, tap the screen to set the time using the keypad.

A description section below lets you alter the name of the alarm, but you can leave this as it is. To change the frequency of the alarm tap Repeat and  choose from: Not Repeated, Daily, Workdays or Weekly.

Once you are satisfied with all of the above, tap on the tick symbol to confirm.  

Check out our Nokia 700: How To change the time and set up an alarm photo gallery:

While the Nokia Lumia 710 has a decent amount of internal storage (8GB to be precise) eventually you will manage to fill that up with apps, music files and especially photos if you’re particularly snap-heavy. Fortunately, there are a couple of ways to lighten the load on your handset and also make your photos easier to share.

Nokia Lumia 800: How to store and play your music from the cloud

One of those methods comes with the phone as standard, while another is more geared towards sharing and can be obtained for free through the Windows Phone Marketplace. We’re talking about SkyDrive and the official Flickr app.

SkyDrive is a service that you automatically sign up to when you create a Windows Live ID – which you’re asked for when you first set up your Nokia Lumia 710. Once you’ve set up your Windows Live account on your phone, you’ll be able to take advantage of a free 25GB of online storage. To be more particular, this storage is set aside for documents, videos and – of course – pictures.

In fact, your Nokia Lumia 710 can automatically send pictures to SkyDrive as soon as you take them – just go into Pictures, then select the Settings menu at the bottom of the page. Scroll down and you’ll see the option to Automatically upload to SkyDrive. This will create a folder in the Albums sub-menu called SkyDrive camera roll and will automatically send your pictures to this folder once you’ve taken them. Make sure you have a decent data plan (or are near a Wi-Fi hotspot when you take the snap).

If you don’t want to automatically upload to your SkyDrive folder, but would rather send individual photos at a time and place of your choosing (such as when you have access to a Wi-Fi connection), leave this option set to Off and follow these guidelines. Simply go into any photo stored on your Nokia Lumia 710 and bring up the options menu for it. Select Share on SkyDrive, and you’ll be able to upload the picture to your account. This grants you the ability to add captions and face tags, so is a useful way to catalogue your pictures.

That’s SkyDrive – where does Flickr come into it? Flickr also lets you store unlimited pictures online – up to 300MB per month – but is more geared towards sharing your photos with friends and other like-minded photographers. Indeed, with more than 50 million registered users, Flickr is one of the most popular photo-sharing sites around.

Once you’ve downloaded the Flickr app, you’ll need to log in or sign up. If you have a Yahoo mail account already, you’re laughing. Once in the app proper, can hit the camera icon at the bottom to jump straight to your Lumia 710′s camera, take a picture and upload it straight to your Flickr account. Alternatively, hit the Upload arrow to go to the pictures stored locally on your phone and upload any of them. You can then access these pictures from your Flickr account on your computer or any other smart device.

It’s like a slightly more flexible but less well integrated version of SkyDrive, then – but the added perk is that you can benefit from Flickr’s extensive community element. There’s every chance that you have a number of friends who already use Flickr to store all their photos, and you can link up with them and keep them abreast of your latest snaps (as well as checking out theirs) with a few taps. Indeed, the Contacts activity page is the first one you’ll come to once you’ve booted up the Flickr app.

So, with SkyDrive and the Flickr app you don’t have to worry about clogging up your Nokia Lumia 710′s memory with pictures. Just snap away and upload them to the cloud, where they’ll be preserved for you to view, share and treasure whenever and however you like.

Nokia Lumia 800 Ultimate User Guide

One of the most frequently asked questions on Nokia’s UK website is ‘How can I prolong my battery life on my Nokia with Windows Phone?’, so Nokia Lumia 800 users are clearly finding it difficult to put their phones down! Fear not – by following a few simple tips, you’ll be able to keep your phone juiced up for longer.

Use Battery Saver

Yep, there’s a Battery Saver mode in the Settings menu. Turn this on and your phone will not longer automatically receive emails or calendar updates. Live Tiles won’t be quite so, er, live either, and certain apps will no longer be allowed to run in the background.

Disable Wi-Fi

It’s easy to forget this when you leave your house, but your Lumia 800 will continue scanning for Wi-Fi connections when out and about, which eats up precious battery juice. Remember to go into the Settings menu and turn Wi-Fi off to prevent this.

Turn off 3G

There are a number of spots in the UK where a decent 3G signal isn’t easy to come by. Spotty 3G performance proves quite a drain on battery performance, believe it or not, because you phone is constantly losing and then searching for a new high speed connection. Go into Settings>mobile network and turn 3G off.

Reduce email synch frequency

Do you really need your Lumia 800 to push you emails as they arrive, or could you stand to have them every 15 or 30 minutes? Go into Settings>email+account, select your account and change the Download new content setting to a lower frequency.

Use dark theme

Bright themes require more power to display, especially on the Nokia Lumia 800′s AMOLED display, where pixels are individually lit. Select Settings>theme>Background>dark, and do the same for any apps that offer a dark them option.

Lower screen brightness

Most people instantly crank up the brightness on their screen to really see what it can do, but this sucks power something chronic. If you want to be really stingy, go into Settings>brightness, disable the Automatic setting and lower the brightness to low.

Turn off location

It’s nice to have location turned on, because a number of apps request it and it also helps Nokia Maps zone in on your position quickly. It eats juice though, so go to Settings>location and flick the setting to off when you’re not using it.

Kill Xbox Live

It’s easy to forget this, but your Nokia Lumia 800 automatically connects with your Xbox Live account to upload scores and achievements and to display your gamer profile info. Go into Xbox LIVE and select Settings, then turn Connect with Xbox Live off.

Turn off Vibrate

Do you really need your Nokia Lumia 800 to rumble as well as ring? Probably not, unless you want to know when you receive a message while on silent. When not the case, go into Settings>ringtones+sounds and flip Vibrate to Off.

Switch to flight mode overnight

If you’re like us, you use your Nokia Lumia 800 as your alarm clock for getting up in the morning. This requires that you keep the phone turned on, of course, so minimise the power used by switching to Flight mode in the Settings menu. You won’t have any network connections, but your phone will remain on.

Are there any other ways to save battery life that you’ve found to be effective? If so, do let us know in the Comments section below.

How to stop music on your Nokia Lumia 800

As we just said, Nokia Lumia 800 owners really do have an excellent device for listening to music on the go. For a start the device has ample storage and a fine music player that ensures your favourite tracks are always to hand. There there’s Nokia Music, which compiles all the tracks you’ve uploaded onto the device and adds a generous helping of free music mix radio stations. Zune lets you purchase and download tracks directly from and to your phone, too.

But if you’ve been casting your eyes around the smartphone scene recently, you’ll have noticed a fairly new smartphone music concept – cloud-based music. Certain services promise to let you store your music tracks on an online server and access them whenever your like, saving you storage space and ensuring access to your tracks even if you change your phone.

Now you can do the same on your Nokia Lumia 800 (or Nokia Lumia 710, for that matter), offering you an extra 25GB of free storage for your music and the ability to either stream or download tracks at will. Here’s how.

All you need is your Nokia Lumia 800 and a copy of Cloud Music – a new app on the Windows Phone Marketplace that can be had for 99p. This app essentially adds music to the list of things the default SkyDrive service (a cloud-based service you automatically sign up for when you set up your Windows Live ID on your Lumia) can handle.

First up you need to upload some music tracks to your SkyDrive account. Log in and create a new folder titled ‘Music’. Then, create a folder within Music with the artist’s name, then another within this with the album name. Drag and drop the music tracks (either MP3 or AAC) into this folder, ensuring that the track names are always preceded by the right track numbers (01, 02 etc.).

If you want a background artist image to show up in the Cloud Music app (just like in Zune and Nokia Music), add a relevant jpeg file to the artist folder. Likewise, if you want an album image, add the jpeg to the album folder.

Now open up the Cloud Music app and you’ll be asked to sign in to your Windows Live account. Do so and select Yes to allow access to your SkyDrive account. Select Continue to start searching your SkyDrive account for the tracks you’ve uploaded. There you have it – all your tracks pulled from the cloud!

Play any of these tracks now and they will, by default, stream over your network connection. You can also opt to download tracks as standard from the options menu, or you can download albums and tracks to your Lumia 800′s internal storage individually. It’s a great way to have access to a lot of music without eating up valuable internal storage.

Have you tried this cloud-based music method? Do you prefer it to storing the files locally, or do you prefer the immediacy of the default approach? Let us know in the comments section.

Nokia 700 hardware review

One of the great things about the Nokia 700 is its Nokia Belle operating system, and the ease of which it makes using your phone. Nokia Belle will soon be arriving on the Nokia N8, Nokia E7 and more handsets in future, making even more Nokia phones much more of a joy to use.

That includes setting up your social networks. Here we’re looking at how to get Facebook and Twitter working on your Nokia 700.

Setting up Twitter and Facebook

The Nokia 700 features a social widget that ties in both social networks. Hit the menu button on your phone and scroll through the icons until you see the blue social widget.

From here you will first be asked to sign into your Nokia account. If you do not have a Nokia account you can easily register one by providing an email address and password. It’s both quick and easy to set up. The rest is just as simple.

Once you have a Nokia account, you can set up your Twitter and Facebook profiles by entering your email address or username and password of either, or both. As soon as you’ve entered details of both, your accounts will show up in the homescreen widget that alternates between Twitter and Facebook on your homescreen.

Now whenever you need your next social fix, all you need to do is tap on the widget for all those latest Facebook status updates and tweets. Easy.

Check out our Nokia 700: How To Use Twitter and Facebook image gallery:

We love the fusion of form and function on the Nokia 700. It’s a beautiful, slim phone, with the very latest smartphone features, apps and games already pre-loaded. Our favourite feature of the lot though, has to be Nokia Belle.

Nokia Belle ensures that any command is never more than a few screen taps away, making every task, such as updating your Nokia 700 that little bit quicker. Speaking of which, here’s how to do just that in just a few taps of your Nokia 700.

How to update your Nokia 700 software

To perform an Over The Air (OTA) update make sure your Nokia 700 is online. Once your Nokia 700 is online,  begin by tapping the middle button on your Nokia 700. That’s the menu button. A menu wof icons will now appear on screen. Scroll towards the bottom and look for the ‘SW update’ icon. It should be green, with a white arrow in the middle. Now tap on it to check for the latest updates.

If your phone needs updating, a message will display saying ‘Improved software’ and ‘Restart needed’. Tap the triangle button below to begin the updating process.

A menu will now pop up asking if you wish to ‘Install now?’ Tap the ‘Now’ button, and then ‘Accept’. You Nokia 700 will now begin to update.

When successful a message will display on screen letting you know that your Nokia 700 is fully up-to-date. That’s all there is to it.

Check out the Nokia 700: How To Update your Firmware (OTA) photo gallery below:

Nokia N8 ultimate user guide

Be ready for a good shot

The best thing about swapping your digital camera for your Nokia N8 is how much more convenient it is to store in your pocket. You never know when the opportunity for a good photo will present itself, so be prepared to shoot at any moment.  

Take lots of photos
Take photos. Lots and lots of photos. It sounds like common sense, but only after you’ve taken enough photos, will you developer a keen eye for what makes a great shot.

Think about what your shot will look like
Some of the best photographers have an idea of what their next shot will like like before a button is clicked. Try to develop a sixth sense for how your subject will look from different angles.

Ration use of the flash
There will be situations when you’ll need to use the Nokia N8’s Xenon flash, and other times when you will won’t, such as when snapping objects at close range. Light has a tendency to bounce off certain objects, particularly glass, resulting in an useable image full of glare. Know when to turn it off.

Don’t ruin the moment
Knowing when to spot a photo opportunity is important, but so is keeping your distance. Try not to ruin the chance for a good photo by being spotted.

Vary the angle of your shots
Mixing up the angles of your shots makes for more interesting pictures. For instance, if you are taking a photo of a couple conversing, snapping from behind one of the subjects will highlight the expression of the other, encouraging a sense of curiosity from the viewer at what the couple might be talking about. Similarly, snapping from the side, especially in a crowd could create a neat focal point of the photo, the crowd behind providing a backdrop to the action taking place in front of you.

Make your shots look interesting using foreground objects
If you want to shoot something, but find there are objects in the way, rather then curse your luck, try using them to your advantage by focussing in on your subject, and using the blur of foreground objects to frame the subject, making what you wanted to capture look more important than anything else in shot. The result is a more professional-looking shot.

Got any more Nokia N8 camera tips that you would like to share? Let us know in the comments section below.

Nokia Lumia 800: How to create, transfer and listen to music playlists

To get custom ringtones on your Nokia Lumia 800 you’ll need to download a piece of MP3-editing software onto your PC or Mac. Any will do, but we’ve gone with Audacity (1.3 beta) as it’s free and relatively easy to use. If you have your own editing software installed already, just skim through the first few steps, as we’re going to incorporate how to get what you need out of Audacity for those who are starting from scratch.

Also ensure that you have Microsoft’s Zune media management tool installed on the same computer (which is pretty likely if you have a Nokia Lumia 800), as well as a handful of music tracks (with no DRM restrictions) you’d like to turn into ringtones. Got everything sorted? Then we shall begin.

1. Open up Audacity and go to File>Import>Audio, then navigate to the music track you want to use for the basis of your ringtone

2. Click on the Selection Tool (the large ‘I’ symbol) at the top, then click and drag on the track timeline to highlight the section of music you want to use.

3. Press Play to preview this snippet, and manually tweak the time portion in the Selection Start and End sections at the bottom (must be 39 seconds or under).

4. Go to Edit>Remove Audio>Trim

5. Go to File>Export, and save the shortened track as an MP3 or WAV file. You might need to download an additional (free) file for MP3.

6. Go into Zune and import the track, then right click to edit and type the Genre in as Ringtone.

7. Connect your Nokia Lumia 800 and sync the track to it, either by right clicking on the track or physically dragging it onto the phone icon.

8. Go into Settings>Ringtones+sounds>Ringtone on your Nokia Lumia 800 and your track should be listed at the top under Custom.

Easy-peasy, eh? Now you can add as many new ringtones as you like based on your favourite music (or humorous home-recordings), and it won’t cost you a penny. The hardest part will be bringing yourself to answer your Nokia Lumia 800 when it starts ringing.

Check out our How to add free custom ringtones to your Nokia Lumia 800 photo gallery: