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:

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: How to create, transfer and listen to music playlists

What do we mean “stop the music”? Once you’ve started playing a music track on your Nokia Lumia 800, the music player will stay there in partial operation until you reboot your phone. You can pause the track and go about some other task without any hit to performance, but the music player will still be in play. Hit the volume button or bring up the lock screen and you’ll see the music player shorcut and the paused track there, ready to be resumed.

This might sound like a bit of an odd conundrum, and indeed it’s not really a problem at all. Indeed, for the vast majority of us (myself included), this is an excellent design decision. Listening to music while you travel is a stop-start affair, with constant pausing and resuming as you change trains, engage in work or converse with people. As such, having your music constantly there in the background, ready to resume at a moment’s notice is extremely welcome.

Some people like their smartphone apps to end when they’re not in use. To such people, having that music player shortcut constantly there in the background is just a little… untidy. For such ones, there is a simple solution in the shape of a free app on the Windows Phone Marketplace (follow the link below).

Appropriately named Stop the Music!, this app will quickly close the music app so that you no longer have to look at those stylish shortcuts in the volume bar or lock screen. You can even pin a tile to the home screen that instantly kills the music player as soon as it’s pressed.

If you really must kill the music (you big sourpuss), then, a trip to the Marketplace is all that’s needed. With more than 50,000 available apps (and growing), it really is the best way to customise your Nokia Lumia 800 experience to suit your needs/funny OCD personality quirks.

After you’ve signed into your Ovi account, you’ll have to register to use Ovi Files. This gets you started with a 10GB account. All you have to do is enter your first and last name, and agree to the terms and conditions. You’ll receive a confirmation email once you’ve done this.

Once you’ve done this, you’ll be taken to a download screen – where you’ll be able to download the software needed to use Ovi Files. At just over 15MB, it can take a couple of minutes to download.

You’ll then be taken to a download screen – where you’ll be able to download the software needed to use Ovi Files. At just over 15MB, it can take a couple of minutes to download.

One the software has downloaded, click on the Ovi Files icon in the taskbar in the bottom right of your computer’s screen. This lets you automatically sign into Ovi Files. You’ll be able to chose from Show photos, View files, Download music, Send files and Anytime files.

The most impressive thing about Ovi Files is the fact that you don’t actually have to upload files to get the best out of it. With the Ovi Files software on your computer, your Nokia smartphone will be able to access your content remotely, as soon as you sign in on your Nokia.

Simply type files.ovi.com into a standard web browser on a connected computer – anywhere in the world – and you’ll be able to access any of your files.

Find out more about Ovi Files

Perhaps a little surprisingly, it’s just as easy accessing your photographs on your Nokia. Simply type the same address into your handset’s mobile web browser, log in, and again you’ll find all of your files available to use. You can also download the Ovi Files app from the Ovi Store, giving native compatibility with the service. We’ll be explaining more about the app next week.

You don’t always have to be connected, either. You can upload content to Ovi Files, with 10GB to play with. As such, you’ll be able to keep your most important files safe, so even if your computer breaks, gets stolen or is offline, it’ll be easy to access precious files.

We’ll be bringing you a lot more on how to use Ovi Files in the next week, as it’s a truly excellent application. In the meantime, however, download the software, sign up and give it a try.

Check out our Ovi Files photo gallery below:

We really like Ovi Contacts, as it offers a safe and secure way of backing up all your contacts. Even if anything happens to your computer, all of your contacts will still be easily accessible the next time you log into Ovi Contacts.

Yesterday we brought you a comprehensive guide on how to set up Ovi Contacts, but even then there are a few things that can make it tricky to get going.

How to set up Ovi Contacts

The biggest issue is if you’ve been using Nokia’s older PC Suite application. While this software is still great for syncing data to your laptop, it can clash with the Ovi Suite when you’re trying to sync data online.

As such, you’ll need to change your synchronisation profile from PC Suite to Ovi.com. You’ll be sent all the settings you need when you first set up Ovi Contacts, but you’ll still need to activate them.

To do this in Symbian S60 5th Edition, tap the top right hand corner of the screen and click the ‘Connectivity’ icon. Scroll down and click on ‘Data Transfer’. If you have trouble getting to the Data Transfer menu directly, you can also go through the main menu, pressing ‘Settings’ > ‘Connectivity’ > ‘Data Transfer’.

From here, click on ‘Sync’, ‘Option’s and ‘Change active profile’. This lets you change the profile to Ovi.com – simply carry out the same process if you want to switch back to PC Suite at any point. Once you’ve done this, you’re good to go, with Ovi Contacts backing up all of your details whenever you press synchronise.

Go to Ovi Contacts

Click on ‘Get Started’ from the Ovi Contacts main screen to get going. The first thing you’ll have to do is select your mobile from a list of devices onscreen. Then click on Next, and follow the information onscreen. This includes entering your mobile phone number, and also your time zone.

You’ll then have configuration settings sent to your mobile phone in the form of a text message – again just follow the instructions onscreen and it couldn’t be easier. You’ll be given a pin number from Ovi.com to enter into your Nokia mobile phone.

What is Ovi Contacts?

Once you’ve entered your pin, and set up your account, to sync with Ovi Contacts select ‘Menu’, followed by ‘Settings’ and ‘Connectivity’. On Symbian S60 5th Edition devices – such as the Nokia N97 Mini – you’ll also be able to go straight to the Connectivity menu by tapping the icon on the top right of the touchscreen. Select ‘Data Transfer’, then press ‘Sync’.

It’s then a case of selecting what items you want syncing, and pressing ‘Options’, and finally ‘Synchronise. It can seem like a daunting task at first, but it’s easy once you get the hang of it.

Confused? Check out our how to gallery below:

Ovi Contacts is part of the increasingly versatile service offered by Ovi.com. With Ovi Contacts, you’ll be able to easily sync information between your Nokia mobile phone and your PC, and need never lose any contact details ever again.

As with the other services offered by Ovi – such as Ovi Calendar and Ovi Mail, using Ovi Contacts couldn’t be easier, and there are loads of features on offer.

You’ll need an Ovi Account to get started – as with the other services – but if you haven’t got one already you’ll be able to register in minutes. Once you’ve logged in you’ll be met by the main page, which lets you add and sync smartphones, and manage your contacts.

As well as the ability to import your contacts from your mobile phone to your PC, you’ll be able to create contacts on your computer and transfer them back to your Nokia. You’ll also be able to produce groups of friends, making it easy to send out bulk text messages.

Ovi Contacts really is an excellent service, and one you should take advantage of before anything unfortunate happens to your Nokia. If you don’t know how to use Ovi Contacts, check back here over the next couple of days, as we’ll be bringing you a full guide.

Yesterday we showed you how to upload and share images using Ovi Share. It really couldn’t be easier, but one of the best bits is that you can also use Ovi Share on your Nokia.

For older Symbian devices, the ability to upload photographs and videos to Ovi Share couldn’t be easier, as the software is already built in and ready to go. To see if your device is supported, visit share.ovi.com.

Upload and share with Ovi Share

Ovi Share also works directly with a handful of other devices – which can be seen here – but you’ll have to download and install Share Online to get it working. If your device is on the list, click Download, followed by Share Online, and then download and install Share Online.

If you’re running a phone with Symbian S60 5th Edition – such as the Nokia N97 Mini, you won’t be able to access a direct Ovi Share client. Instead, you’ll have to upload and access content via the Ovi Share mobile website – share.ovi.com/mobile.

It’s not quite so ideal – as it means you’ll have to switch between your snaps and your web browser, but it still gives you access to an excellent resource. We also found it a lot easier to cope with when using a 3rd party web browser, such as Opera Mini.

Once you’ve gone to the Ovi Share website, you’ll have to sign in or register using your Ovi Account – the same details you’ll be able to use to access Ovi Mail and other Ovi services.

Signing in brings you to the simple Ovi Share interface, and it really couldn’t be easier to get to grips with. From the middle of the page, simply click ‘Start Uploading Now’ to get going, and upload your photographs and videos.

What is Ovi Share?

This then takes you to the upload page, which lets you change a couple of options. For quick use, you’ll be able to stick all of your content into a private media folder, or you’ll also be able to click on ‘Create an album’ for new specific albums.

To upload your content, simply click on the browse button, pick your files, and press ‘Start upload’. Once the file has uploaded, it’ll appear in the folder you selected.

From here, it’s possible to add a description to your photograph, and it’s also possible to add detailed comments, which is great for sharing with your friends and family.

It’s the sharing that makes Ovi Share such a great app, however, and this is also easy to do. Simply scroll down and click on the ‘Share’ button. This brings a pop up menu, letting you email or send a message to mobile phone numbers, with details of your Ovi Share account, even letting you insert a message.

We’ll be bringing you full details of how to get the best out of Ovi Share tomorrow – including how to use it on your Nokia mobile phone, but in the meantime check out our How To photo gallery below, and get uploading.

How to set up and use Ovi Share:

Nokia Messaging has the ability to transform the way you use your smartphone, delivering your emails and letting you keep in touch wherever you go, however you want to contact people.

You’ll have to use the device itself in order to set up Nokia Messaging on your Nokia. Go to the web browser, and type: messaging.nokia.com. It’s worth using the default Nokia web browser – we tried it using Opera, and the site recognised our Nokia N97 Mini as a full computer, opening up the desktop browser instead, and recommending we visit the site on our mobile.

What is Nokia Messaging?

Once you’ve opened the web page, click on the Download tab underneath Email. This lets you download the Nokia Messaging client, and takes just a couple of minutes to download and install. At over 2.5MB in size, however, you may want to download it using Wi-Fi rather than 3G, however, especially if you have a limited data plan. Once Nokia Messaging has downloaded, it will automatically install.

Once installed, your Nokia will automatically restart. You’ll need an Ovi Account to get going, but once you have you’ll automatically be asked to enter your password when Nokia Messaging starts up. Once you’ve entered this, you’ll be able to choose from a host of email clients – from Gmail, to Yahoo!, to Ovi Mail. Nokia Messaging supports up to ten different accounts, so you’ll also be able to use it for work and play.

Enter your account username and password, and you’ll be good to go. We initially struggled – after entering our details, Nokia Messaging completely disappeared, but look a little harder and it’s easy to find. Simply open up your Applications folder, and click on ‘Email’, or the large ‘@’ icon.

The beauty of Nokia Messaging is the clear and easy presentation, in which you can see plenty of your emails, check out a couple of lines from the contents without having to download the entire message, and the fact your mail will be delievered near instantly. It’s even possible to display your messages in your phone’s home page, depending on which device you have.

Nokia Messaging is also capable of a whole lot more – and we’ll be bringing you more details throughout the week.

Confused? Check out our how to set up Nokia Messaging gallery below: