A small number of Nokia customers no longer need to make the trip down to the service center to have the firmware on their smartphones updated. That's because the Finnish phone maker recently launched a UK “Phone Software Update” site.

This is important news because Nokia has traditionally been reluctant to allow end users to update the firmware on their phones themselves, due to the supposed complicated nature of the procedure. The new service greatly simplifies the operation.

To update a smartphone’s ROM select the model name from a menu, whereupon you'll see if you can update its firmware either directly over-the-air or through a USB cable connection to a PC.

At this time only a few Symbian S60 Series 2nd Edition devices are supported, including the NSeries N70 and N72, as well as the 6630, 6680, 6681 and 6682. According to the site’s FAQ, new models will be added regularly.

We expect these should include S80 communicators like the 9300 and 9500, as well as the numerous additional S60 handsets, including the newer NSeries and ESeries 3rd edition models.

Members of the ESeries, including the BlackBerry-killer E61, are shipping in parts of Europe and Asia already. The version of that model that's supposed to hit this country, theE62, may be formally announced next month by Cingular.