Last week I got a hands on with the Nokia N900 at CTIA San Diego.  I wasn’t totally floored with the device, but I really dug the Maemo OS.  For those of you who just can’t wait, good news, Dynamism has it up for preorder.  You can grab it for $629 and according to the retailer it will ship October 27th, or so they suspect.

Specs:

• TI OMAP 3430: ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz, PowerVR SGX with OpenGL ES 2.0 support
• Touch-sensitive widescreen display 3.5 inch, 800 x 480 pixel resolution
• GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz WCDMA 900/1700/2100 (HSPA)
• BL-5J 1320mAh battery
• 110.9 x 59.8 x 18 (19.55 at thickest part) mm
• 32GB of storage plus microSD card slot for expansion
• GPS

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Verizon and Nokia announced the Nokia 7705 Twist, a completely square phone that twists to reveal a full QWERTY keypad. The specs are anything but square, featuring a 3.0 megapixel camera, V CAST Music with Rhapsody, voice commands, and a unique Contact Light Ring (customizable to flash on a particular call or message).

The Nokia Twist will be available online on Sept. 13 for $99.99 after 2-year contract rebate.

Check out the rest of the features:

• Compatible with services including VZ NavigatorSM, V CAST Music with Rhapsody,
• V CAST Video, Visual Voice Mail, Mobile Broadband Connect and Corporate Email
• Habitat mode activates a unique interface for visualizing your social circle and allows customers to easily organize their calls and messaging history
• 3.0 megapixel camera/camcorder with flash and autofocus
• Dedicated camera/video key
• Resolution adjustment: 2048 x 1536, 1280 x 960, 800 x 600, 640 x 480, 320 x 240
• Self-timer: Off, three, five, 10 seconds
• White balance: auto, sunny, cloudy, tungsten and fluorescent
• Shutter sound: Shutter, Silent, Say “Cheese,” and Ready! 1 2 3
• Color effects: normal, antique, black & white, negative
• Capture mode: landscape and portrait
• Photo editing: pan and zoom, rotate
• Customized slideshow
• Video capture and playback
• Media Center-capable for downloading games, ringtones and more
• Threaded messaging helps customers keep track of a variety of conversations
• “Post to Blogs” feature allows multimedia to be posted to a blog or social networking site
• HTML browser
• Support for Mobile Email, Mobile Web Mail, Chat and Blogs
• Built-in mirror
• Supported Bluetooth® profiles include headset, hands-free, dial-up networking, stereo, phonebook access, basic printing, object push (for vCard and vCal), file transfer, and basic imaging
• 2.4-inch, 262K TFT QVGA screen
• EV-DO Rev. 0
• 2.5 mm headset jack
• Dimensions: 2.71″ x 2.71″ x 0.59″
• Usage time: up to 270 minutes or
• Standby time: up to 312 hours
• Weight: 3.44 ounces

Nokia expanded their line of ‘Comes With Music’ handsets today by introducing the X6.  Packed inside the 14mm device is 32GB of storage, a 3.2-inch touchscreen, a-GPS, 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, TV out, a full web browser with Flash Lite support and what Nokia claims is a battery capable of 35 hours of music playback or 16 days of standby time.  And if all that music doesn’t keep you busy they’ve tossed in EA’s Spore as well as a DJ Mix Tour and Asphalt4 for all your gaming needs.

You can expect the Nokia X6 to ship this fall for €459 ($655 US).

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Nokia officially announced the slimmed down version of their N97, the Mini N97.  The cut backs aren’t drastic as this version features a 3.2-inch versus a 3.5-inch touchscreen, lacks a d-pad and a slightly smaller footprint.  Nokia also says they’ve injected this version with “flick-scrolling”, which should mean iPhone like scrolling through web pages and applications.

Specs:

• Dimensions: 113 x 52.5 x 14.2 mm
• Weight: 138 g
• Display:     3.2 inch TFT nHD 16:9 widescreen (640 x 360 pixels) with up to 16 million colors
• Camera: 5 megapixels with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens; autofocus and flash
• Video capture: MPEG-4 VGA (640x 480 px) at up to 30 fps
• Video playback: supports RealVideo and Flash Lite 3.0 with PAL/NTSC video-out
• Music playback: MP3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, WMA
• Built-in GPS with A-GPS support
• 3.5mm AV connector for stereo headphone jack
• Memory: 8Gb internal memory with MicroSD expansion slot up to an additional 16 Gb
• Connectivity: High speed MicroUSB 2.0
• Data connectivity: WCDMA, GPRS/EDGE, HSDPA
• Talk time: Up to 7.1 hrs
• Standby time: Up to 320 hrs
• Music playback time: Up to 28 hrs
• Video playback time: Up to 3.5 hrs

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Nokia announced their N900 touchscreen tablet, based on Linux-based Maemo software. The sleek, sexy looking N900 features:

• ARM Cortex-A8 processor
• Up to 1GB application memory
• OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration
• 32GB storage, expandable to 48GB via microSD
• WVGA resolution touch screen
• HSPA and WLAN wireless
• Physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard

The Nokia N900 will be available this October with a estimated retail price of 500EU.

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Last week we got our first official peak at Nokia’s newest phone, the N900. While we’ve known of its existence for a while, previous to Mobile-reviews official hands on we had only seen renders and heard rumors of the device. Now, today someone has leaked an official press shot and as you can see it matches up to last week’s leak. Nokia is set to kick off Nokia World on September 2nd, which is when we should get an official announcement along with specs and availability of the touchscreen phone.

[via Engadget]

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Back in May we saw rendered images of Nokia’s N900 (aka Rover, aka Maemo Flagship). Now, according to Mobile-review.com this is the handset in the flesh. As you can see it’s very similar to Mobile Crunch’s renders and it includes Nokia’s awkward (misaligned spacebar) QWERTY keyboard setup. OS wise were looking at Maemo, and praise the lord because any more Symbian and I think I’d have to choke myself out on my own vomit (yes, I hate Symbian that much). Of course, I haven’t tried my hand a Maemo, but its my assumption that any mobile OS (Windows excluded) is an improvement over the Nokia standard.

So will this be a game changer for Nokia? Perhaps, but I have my doubts. The N900’s form factor looks very similar to the N97, and despite it having a higher resolution screen (800×400) I’m still concerned that the it will lack serious multitouch abilities, such as the iPhone.  It looks very chunky for the pocket, which was one of my gripes with the N97 (review coming tomorrow). I took a look at some of the operating system’s screen shots, Maemo, and I’m very impressed with how clean and simple it looks.

[via Mobile Crunch]

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It’s not exactly earth shattering news, but T-Mobile will launch Nokia’s 5130, a mid end music phone, on September 16th.  Whilt the specs are rather garden variety, the phone should appeal for those not looking for the flash or complexity found with some of Nokia’s higher end phones.  Expect a 6 hour talk time, 21 hours of music playback, microSD card slot expandable up to 16GB (includes 1GB), 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, music player with dedicated music keys and GSM 850/900 1800/1900 connectivity.

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Microsoft and Nokia announced a joint collaboration to bring Microsoft Office Mobile and Microsoft business communications, collaboration, and device management software to Nokia devices. What this means is that you’ll have:

• The ability to view, edit, create and share Office documents on more devices in more places with mobile-optimized versions of Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft OneNote
• Enterprise instant messaging and presence, and optimized conferencing and collaboration experience with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile
• Mobile access to intranet and extranet portals built on Microsoft SharePoint Server
• Enterprise device management with Microsoft System Center

Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile should be coming next year followed by the rest of the Office Mobile products. So good news all around for all you Nokia users.

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After market car part fans can now rejoice thanks to the introduction of Vertu’s latest collection, the Carbon Fibre.  They’ll be available this August and price, well you’ll have to ask, because Vertu doesn’t feel the need to publish or perhaps deter any potential buyers.  The phone depicted here is the Ascent Ti, and it includes a 2-inch QVGA display, 4GB of storage, 3G connectivity, and a 3 megapixel camera with an LED flash.  The other phones in the collection include the Carbon Fibre Grip, Carbon Fibre & Copper Grip, and Carbon Fibre & Aluminium Grip.

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