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Mere mortals will need to wait until the third quarter of the year — if not longer, depending on their region and tolerance for some probable price gouging in the early going — to get their hands on the mighty Nokia N96. On the other hand, Mobile-review apparently knows the right hands to shake and eyes to wink to get hold of a prototype unit extraordinarily early, and they’re taking full advantage of the opportunity. A few hours of your time devoted to the novella of a review will net you a deep understanding and appreciation for the N96’s strengths and follies, but in a nutshell, the site seems to come away with a pretty ambivalent opinion of a device that should be knocking everyone’s socks off — especially for a sticker price that’ll hover in the $800 arena. Problems included a penchant for picking up dirt and fingerprints (the price you pay for a beautiful glossy face, we suppose), a cramped nav key layout with the tricky touch-sensitive Navi Wheel front and center, audio performance that wasn’t bad but was expected to be far better in light of the dedicated DSP, and a “shovel”-like feel in the hand, a symptom of the phone’s generous dimensions. Everyone owes the production version of the N96 a chance to show its true form when it’s released later this year — and hey, at least Nokia’s got a checklist of things that need improvement in the prototype now — so we’re keeping our chins up that this’ll still make the N95 8GB a proud daddy when it comes time to hand over the crown to the Nseries kingdom.

[Via Tech Digest and NokNok]

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Those hankering for an exhaustive rundown of the just-announced 5320 XpressMusic’s specifications need not conduct their search any further. Forum Nokia, Espoo’s developer outreach branch, has gone ahead and done the dirty work of dredging up the details and plopping ‘em all in one place, revealing roughly 85MB of usable memory on startup (a key stat, as any heavy Symbian user can attest) atop S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. The lack of HSDPA 850 / 1900 (or a separate version of the phone rocking those bands) still stings to read — like, physically causes our eyes to burn — but hey, what can you do? Wait for the N78, that’s what.

[Via All About Symbian]

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What’s blue, silver, and boring all over? If you guessed the Nokia 6205, well, you clearly knew something about the phone you were holding back to us — but nonetheless, go ahead and give yourself a gold star and a pat on the back for a job well done. The low-end flip for Verizon, which we’d mentioned not long ago, has finally been exposed in all its entry-level glory; don’t get us wrong, we’re delighted that Espoo seems to be back in the thick of the CDMA hunt, but we think we’re going to hold out for something just a little more visually stimulating than this. The lack of EV-DO isn’t helping its case either, though we suppose the external controls and camera flash are welcome additions for the folks who actually hold out until its alleged mid-June release.

Update: Peep that little “EV” signal strength indicator up there? Looks like there might be a 3G radio hiding in this one, after all. If so, kudos, Nokia! Thanks, VZW_Emp!

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Considering that some countries are mulling the idea of making texting a recognized subject and allowing students to use text-speak on exams, we suppose it’s not too outrageous to hear of handsets being used as educational tools and not seen as a hindrance. Nokia has teamed up with Mindset Network in order to spearhead the M4Girls pilot project, which utilizes Nokia 6300 handsets loaded with educational material to “help improve the mathematics performance of Grade 10 girl learners.” Reportedly, the initiative will be piloted in two South African schools, and students lucky enough to take advantage will have access to educational games and other material created to meet the needs of the national curriculum. No word on whether the program will filter out to other locations if it proves successful, but here’s to hoping that eventually gets answered with a resounding “yes.”

[Via textually]

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Despite shockingly strong sales worldwide, Nokia has kept a fairly low profile in the US as of late — not Sony Ericsson low, but still pretty stealth. Espoo wants to take a bigger bite out of the American pie, though, and as BusinessWeek notes, it pretty much has to play nice with the US megacarriers in order to do that. Historically, that has run counter to Nokia’s corporate culture of rampant innovation with a general disregard for carriers’ specific needs — think Ovi, for example — and that’s where the winds of change start to blow. In the States, Nokia has now assigned a whopping 300 product development folks to AT&T and Verizon each, and it turns out that the 6555 is one fruit of that labor; in fact, AT&T specifically requested that the 6555’s PTT button be moved to the top, and Nokia complied. That’s a whole new level of cooperation that American carriers aren’t used to when dealing with the Finnish giant that likes to throw its weight around, and if it keeps up, it sounds like we should start to see plenty more models available on contract in the not-too-distant future.

[Via PHONE Magazine and GadgeTell]

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When we’d heard that T-Mobile Germany was at loggerheads with Nokia over its Ovi services, the carrier was quick to point out that it didn’t offer any Ovi-compatible devices in its lineup to begin with and that it was “in discussions with Nokia about this topic and [was] confident to find a common path in the near future.” Sure enough, it looks as though that “common path” has now been found with an announcement that Nokia will be working closely with T-Mob to integrate its web’n'walk mobile internet service with Ovi for deployment on future devices customized for the carrier. There’s no telling what sorts of contracts got signed behind the scenes here, but if we had to guess, we’d say most of T-Mobile’s existing content-based revenue streams are going to end up being preserved by appearing within the Ovi sandbox on these new phones. A loss for Nokia? Not if it wants its phones to keep appearing on T-Mobile Germany’s store shelves, it isn’t.

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Get this: the first North American carrier to offer up Nokia’s 8GB N95 isn’t AT&T. Heck, it’s not even a US-based operator. No friends, it’s Canada’s own Rogers Wireless. Just as we had heard late last month, the N95 8GB has officially landed in the Great North, and starting on May 6th, consumers up that way will be able to secure one for a hefty $399.99 with a three-year activation on the Rogers Vision Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan. Don’t weep too heavily, AT&T users — your time should be coming soon.

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While clearly not aimed at the deep-pocketed folks looking at those fancy N96s, the purported 7310 Classic makes us remember why S40 mobiles are still viable in a plethora of scenarios. Though we haven’t seen anything official from Nokia, word on the street has the candybar likely checking in with a 2.2-inch QVGA display, multimedia player, built-in Bluetooth, a FM radio and some form of expansion slot. Granted, all of those specs are still speculative at the moment, but feel free to tap the read link for a few more pics and lots of rugged machine-translated conjecture.

[Via Mobile Bulgaria, thanks Momchil] 

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For a phone that came out in 2006, it’s kinda surprising how much interest (both from carriers and end users) that the Nokia N95 series continues to enjoy. With any luck, we’ll be seeing it launch on AT&T later this year — but Rogers is apparently poised to beat ‘em to the punch. Mobile In Canada reports that Canada’s 800-pound GSM behemoth intends to launch the N95 (the North American, non-8GB model, as far as we can tell) as early as May 2nd — which, alongside the already-launched Sony Ericsson K850i, makes for a powerful one-two combo of 5 megapixel 3G Europhones. Only time will tell, but we’re feeling good about this one, folks; only question is, N95 8GB next?

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Looking to keep the heat on after its XpressMusic reveals last week, Nokia has gotten real with a three-pack of dumbphones that eschew S60 but hang onto a laundry list of relatively high-end features. The 6600 comes in both “fold” and “slide” designations, but the spec sheets are surprisingly different considering that they share a model number in common. The fold rocks out with a 2.13-inch QVGA OLED and 2 megapixel camera, while the slide gets upgraded to a 3.2 megapixel sensor but loses the OLED designation on its 2.2-inch display. Both models also include a rather fascinating feature that allows the user to double-tap on the phone’s surface to wake it up or silence it (which begs the question, could we heave it at a wall to achieve the same effect?). The fold comes in at €275 and the slide at 250 — about $430 and $390, respectively, before carrier subsidies bring those puppies down from the stratosphere.

The pictured 3600 slide, meanwhile, gets no fold companion — but with its in-your-face color scheme, it really doesn’t need any help. This one gets a 3.2 megapixel autofocus lens with dual LED flashes, TV out, and microSD expansion for 175 (about $273). All three devices lack 3G but feature quadband EDGE, so pretty much everyone around the globe without a need for fast data can get in on this action when it all ships in the third quarter.
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