Nokia plans to renew its line of smartphones with the introduction of its new flagship model E7 as well as the N8 model next week.

The company will introduce new smartphone models next week at its annual media and industry event.

Although information about the E7 models is limited, the new flagship model E7 is expected to have a large 4" touch screen AMOLED-display and a full keyboard.

The N8, which was unveiled in April and due to go on sale later this month, will be the first phone to use the new Symbian 3 software.

Symbian ^3, the latest edition of the world's most used smartphone software, introduces several major advances, including support for gestures such as multi touch, flick scrolling and pinch-zoom. Symbian^3 is also delivering greater memory management allowing more applications to run in parallel.

The N8 has a 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Xenon flash and a large sensor. Additionally, the Nokia N8 offers the ability to make HD-quality videos and edit them with a built-in editing suite. The Nokia N8 also enables access to Web TV services that deliver programs, news and entertainment from channels like CNN, E! Entertainment, Paramount and National Geographic. Additional local Web TV content is also available from the Ovi Store.

The Nokia N8 also comes with free global Ovi Maps walk and drive navigation, guiding people to places and points of interest in more than 70 countries worldwide.

However, it has a slower processor than Samsung's top model Galaxy S and the latest iPhone.

The phone will sell for £429 SIM free or from £35 a month on contracts. It will be available on the Nokia Online Shop from the last week of September.

From 1 October, O2, Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Tesco, Phones4u, Three, Virgin Mobile and Carphone Warehouse will all begin offering the device as well.

Nokia controls 40 percent of the smartphone market with its Symbian software but has lost its leading position among the most expensive models to easier-to-use phones from Apple and Research in Motion.