Nokia is taking one more step to push its mapping and devices services as a standalone business. Today, the company announced during the handset maker’s press conference at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it would be rebranding all of its Nokia-branded mapping and navigation services as “HERE” going forward.

The Here suite comes pre-installed on the Lumia 520 and includes HERE Maps, HERE Drive and HERE Transit — a public transport guide “that you can use even in unfamiliar surroundings” Nokia’s design chief Marko Ahtisaari said today. You can pin your home location on it as well — and use that as the base for all the data. “These personal experiences are meant to help you spend more time engaging in the world around you rather than navigating your smartphone,” he said.

Elop noted that Nokia will begin integrating the Here suite into non-Nokia phones later this year to help enhance the data. “The growing scale of the platform is beginning to be recognized by more and more partners,” said Elop at the press conference. Those include Amazon and (of course) its OS partner Microsoft.

Nokia has just announced two new Lumia smartphones at its Mobile World Congress press conference – broadening its Windows Phone 8 portfolio to five devices and filling in some of the pricing gaps in the mid and lower end of the range. The two 3G newcomers to the Lumia line are the Lumia 720, which slots into the portfolio just above the Lumia 620, and a new entry level handset, the Lumia 520, which pushes the price of Nokia’s Window Phone 8 devices to a new low of €139 ($180) before taxes, down from its previous low of $249.

CEO Stephen Elop described the new more populous Lumia line up as “the most innovative portfolio of products ever” — reappropriating the tagline the company uses for its Lumia 920 flagship to underline how some of the features found on its flagships are trickling down to more affordable devices, including its ”super sensitive” touchscreen technology which allows users to interact with the screen using a fingernail or when wearing gloves, and its digital lenses image filters and its Cinemagraph animated GIF creator.

“What we’re doing with this Mobile World Congress in many respects is taking some of the great innovation you’ve seen in flagship products like the Lumia 920 and we’re broadening that down through the portfolio,” said Elop. ”We’re now at a point where you’re seeing an organisation which has undergone a great deal of restructuring and changes but now you’re seeing the full power and might of Nokia being applied to the broadest range of portfolio for the Lumia products.”

Nokia has unwrapped a new handset — not a fancy smartphone but a budget feature phone: the Nokia 301 (pictured left) is an $85 mobile that doesn’t have a touchscreen or a Qwerty keyboard but does pack HSPA (aka 3.5G) and includes some enhanced camera features, as well as supporting YouTube streaming video via Nokia’s cloud Xpress browser for the first time.

Right now Nokia is holding its Mobile World Congress press conference where CEO Stephen Elop and his team are banging the drum for a newly expanded line of Lumia Windows Phone smartphones. But Nokia’s mobile strategy is two-pronged: with Windows Phone at the higher end and its own Series 40 OS powering a broad swathe of basic and budget devices, such as the 301. The thing is, right now, Nokia simply can’t afford to ignore the low end. Here, far from the glamour of Lumia smartphones, is where Nokia’s volumes are.

For all its marketing efforts to push Windows Phone, Microsoft-powered handsets still only account for a fraction of Nokia’s device sales. In its Q4 the company shipped just 4.4 million Lumias vs 79.6 million mobile phones — mostly S40 based, as Symbian limps to its end.

With Bell Canada's announcement yesterday of MiFi 2's imminent launch in the great white north comes an update from Novatel for both the device's skin and radio. While we couldn't get any pictures of the updates to support LTE in Canada, we did capture a good pile of the tweaked housing and the skin updates in the touch UI. Physically the device remains exactly the same as far as its dimensions are concerned, though the metal trim has lightened up a wee bit and battery life is still a monstrous 11 hours or so on LTE. Launch price and an exact date aren't available yet form Bell but we expect those any time soon.

Novatel MiFi2 hands-on

Terrence O'Brien contributed to this report

The Ascend P2 is getting the bulk of the attention at Huawei's booth at MWC 2013, but the Chinese company has a history of hiding an unannounced phone or two in less-visited corners of the booth. This time around it's the Ascend G526 that blends into the background, hanging out with a few other LTE-enabled devices. The G526, which hasn't been assigned any pricing or timeframe for availability (we've reached out to Huawei for more information), features a 4.5-inch qHD IPS display, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and a dual-core 1.2GHz processor paired with 1GB of RAM. Additionally, it enjoys a 5MP rear camera and VGA front-facing cam, as well as a 1,950mAh battery and WiFi Direct support. There appears to be three variants of this device -- L11, L22 and L33 -- each one offering different frequencies for various carriers and markets. More details are forthcoming, but we'll update this post as we hear more.

The phone, which measures 133 x 67.5 x 9.9mm, is actually rather comfortable to hold in the hand. It's about par for the course when it comes to midrange handsets, with a slick plastic back that curves inward on each side so as to hug the edges. A 3.5mm jack can be seen up top while the power and volume buttons are on the right. Tragically, the micro-USB charging port is located on the upper left side of the phone, which is an incredibly awkward place when you're trying to use the device whilst it's chained to an outlet. We have a full gallery of images of the new device below.

Huawei Ascend G526 hands-on

BlackBerry introduces the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone in India

New Delhi, India, 25 February 2013 – BlackBerry® (NASDAQ: BBRY; TSX: BB) today introduced the new BlackBerry® Z10 smartphone powered by BlackBerry® 10 in India. The BlackBerry Z10 is the first BlackBerry smartphone to launch with the re-designed, re-engineered, and re-invented BlackBerry 10 platform, which offers customers a faster, smarter and smoother experience than any other BlackBerry smartphone they have used before.

"Without a doubt the BlackBerry Z10 is among the most important and much awaited BlackBerry launches in the history of the Indian smartphone industry, and we are thrilled to launch the new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone with our carrier and retail partners across India. With BlackBerry 10, we have re-designed, re-engineered and re-invented BlackBerry to create a new and unique mobile computing experience, and we are uniquely positioned to change the way in which our customers view mobile technology. With BlackBerry 10, every feature, every gesture, and every detail is designed to keep you moving," said Mr. Sunil Dutt, Managing Director for India at BlackBerry.

We'll get this out of the way upfront: you will probably never be able to buy this phone. And by "you" we mean the American consumer. The Arrows X F-02E will, at least for the immediate future, be a NTT DoCoMo only device. But, now that you know not to get your hopes up, lets get a feel for just what you'll be missing. Fujitsu's waterproof flagship is powered by a 1.7GHz quad-core Tegra 3 and 2GB of RAM. And that horsepower is put to good use pushing pixels to a brilliant five-inch 1080p display. We'd stop short of saying its the best phone screen we've seen, but it's definitely in the running. Colors are bright, text is crisp and viewing angles need to be seen to be believed. Thankfully, all that lovely screen real estate isn't being eaten up by some insanely outdated version of Android. On board you'll find Android 4.1.2 -- not the latest and greatest, but at least it's Jelly Bean.

The device itself has a slightly agressive and angular design that reminds us somewhat of the OG Droid. Unlike that device though, there are no physical buttons up front -- be they capacitive or mechanical. Instead Fujitsu uses the on-screen keys, just as God Google intended. The build is a bit plasticy, but the rear plate does have a nice soft touch finish that keeps it from feeling exceedingly cheap. Also giving it a premium feel is the 2,420mAh battery that, in addition to providing some decent talk time lends a satisfying heft to the handset. Also on the rear plate you'll find a fingerprint scanner for a touch more security than a simple PIN provides (and a lot more than the gimmicky face unlock). Above that is the impressively-specced 16.3-megapixel primary camera. We couldn't really put that through its paces, so we'll have to wait to find out if it can live up to the understandably high expectations.

Not every smartphone needs to have piles of RAM an inhumanly fast quad-core CPU and a comically large 1080p display. For some niches of the market those things are not only unnecessary, but potentially a huge negative. Fujitsu's Stylistic S01 is one of those phones that eschews high-end specs for practical features aimed at a particular segment of the market -- namely, your grandparents. The four-inch WVGA display and dual-core 1.4GHz Snapdragon would have been par for the course a year or two ago, now they're getting a bit dated. But that's ok, they're serve up the heavily skinned Ice Cream Sandwich here just fine.

The UI has large buttons and simplified widgets that are carefully crafted to be easy to manipulate for those with less dexterity in their digits. And, unlike most phones, a glancing touch wont be enough to accidentally launch the camera or maps. While an initial touch wil temporarily select an option, you'll have to actually press just a bit harder than you're accustomed to in order to confirm your selection. In addition to minimizing accidental app launches, it also gets a little bit closer to recreating the tactile sensation of dialing on a physical numeric pad. Fujitsu Stylistic S01 hands-on: a smartphone even grandma can use See all photos

Samsung's really playing up its media chops here at Mobile World Congress. In addition to demoing the new HomeSync Android box, the Korean company is showing off its recently announced service for finding and watching TV content. The product was originally called TV Discovery, but just five days later it's resurfaced under the moniker Video Discovery. This new name is more accurate, as the service does deliver content recommendations for both live programming and movies and TV shows on demand.

We saw Video Discovery demoed with a Galaxy Note 8.0 and a Samsung Smart TV. You'll need a device with an IR blaster to adjust the TV channel or volume, with the app serving as a touchscreen remote. There are several modes for browsing content, including a timeline view that looks almost identical to the standard TV guide menu. You can also browse by genre or view current programming across all channels. When we skimmed through live TV listings, we simply had to tap the large "Watch Now" button next to a listing for the show to turn up on screen a few seconds later.