Well hello there, mister Blurrycam. It seems that lately, Rogers is all about firsts. Yesterday, Rogers released the world’s first two Android handsets north of the border. Hell, even Joshua Jackson came out to celebrate. Next up for the carrier — Nokia’s first S60 5th Edition handset, the 5800 XpressMusic. According to promotional signage found in various The Source locations, the 5800 is well on its way to joining the Motorola ROKR E8 and the upcoming Sony Ericsson W705 to form a solid music phone lineup. No pricing yet unfortunately and as for release timing, we have word that not all Rogers employees have received training on the device so it could be a while. Apparently The Source got a little excited. So… If Pacey was on hand for the Magic and Dream launch, do you think Rogers will be able to break Joey out of whatever cage Tom Cruise is keeping her in for the 5800 launch?

Thanks, Hassan!

You know that really fun game you play, Nokia smartphone owners, where a firmware update is released in one region and you get to sit there all angry until your product code is finally recognized and NSU allows you to update? Well apparently Adobe is familiar with that game as well because an updated version of Flash Lite for the 5800 XpressMusic has just been released. Rather than force users to wait for Nokia to finally get around to issuing a firmware update, the new Flash Lite build is available as a stand alone update. Woo! Here’s the change log according to Adobe:

• Improved Web Browsing, 91% of top 500 internet sites
• Flash 9 (AS2 only) support
• Local Connection / HTML Text / GetURL_target / CSS support / WMode
• H.264 support / Improved video support (smoothing, seek)
• Improved memory handling for images
• MP3 Streaming support
• Support for hardware acceleration – Flash Lite 3.1 supports OpenVG 1.1 to improve flash rendering performance on capable devices
• Linux Reference port

Now it’s true that the update might not be available for all regions just yet, but at least we can anticipate a shorter wait than if we were waiting for new firmware. Users who can access the update are reporting much smoother in-broswer video playback so it should be worth the [hopefully brief] wait. To see if the update is available in your region, check the App Update app on your 5800.

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Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic might have first appeared in The Dark Knight but as much as our Finnish friends love product placement, it looks like its first S60 5th Edition phone might be making another cameo on the big screen. Nokia has just revealed it will be releasing a special Star Trek edition of the popular touchscreen phone — which will be free on contract with Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and O2 — featuring special Star Trek animated screen savers, three Star Trek wallpapers and eight exclusive Trek-themed ringtones. It also packs an exclusive phaser application but sadly, no teleporting capabilities. The 5800 Star Trek edition might not be able to beam you anywhere but all your Trekkie pals will surely be envious when you brandish it at the next Star Trek convention. Just make sure you sneak away to a corner when you use it to call your mom for a ride home.

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The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic NAM had a bumpy launch last month with 3G connectivity issues forcing Nokia to halt sales. The music handset is reportedly now back on the shelves at Nokia Flagship stores however, and pre-orders will be shipped from Nokia’s fulfillment center within the next 1-2 weeks. All new handsets have been updated to firmware v20 which supposedly fixes the connectivity issues that had plagued the phone. No word on when current 5800 owners can obtain this latest firmware update so you all will have to sit tight until Nokia is ready to roll it out to the masses. In the mean time, cross your fingers and hope your speaker doesn’t blow .

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After one of the rockiest launches Nokia has ever seen, it looks like the 5800 XpressMusic NAM is almost set to put this whole mess behind it. Sheesh. For those who missed, here’s a quick timeline: Nokia was ready to begin selling the handsets a day early on the 25th. Nokia’s inventory system however, was not ready. Finally, late in the evening on the 26th, the 5800 got the green light. Then we found out the speakers would probably die somewhere down the line, and 3G wouldn’t connect in some regions which caused many to return their purchases. As a result, Nokia pulled the 5800 from shelves. Did you get all that? Luckily for Nokia it looks as though the connectivity issue was software-related and a new firmware updates renders the 5800 3G-friendly once again. We don’t have exact timing but we expect Nokia to resume sales very soon — as for whether or not the speakers will go kaput in the next few months and start this mess all over again, that remains to be seen.

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According to mobile maniac Eldar Murtazin of Mobile-Review, Nokia is in for a world of hurt as more than one million 5800 XpressMusic handsets currently in the hands of users may be defective. Ouch. Long story short: Muratzin bought 10 5800XMs a while back and the speakers died within a few months — on all of them! He began to investigate the matter and, in the process, got Nokia Eurasia’s head of PR to fess up to the issue. Apparently Nokia’s original speaker supplier turned out to be a dud. Nokia switched as soon as it could but 5800XM handsets made before February likely have the defective speakers in them. So in other words, the 5800 NAM is finally here but you might want to think twice before purchasing one until Nokia Europe and Nokia US have an official statement on this, which will hopefully be ASAP. If you already have a 5800, your local Nokia customer care line should be able to tell you if your handset is affected based on your IMEI. Hit the jump for the purported statement from Vitoria Eremena, head of Nokia PR for Eurasia courtesy of Mobile-Review.

The problematic speakers were replaced with speakers from another supplier, both in production and warehouses. I’d like to emphasize that we have replaced not only the speakers but also their supplier, i.e. at the moment we use speakers from the new supplier at our manufacturing plants, as well as in our service centers. It is very easy to confirm this, because the new speakers are visually different (see the picture above.)

Service centers started receiving the new speakers during the last decade of January, so all users who replaced the speakers since then shouldn’t face this problem.

It should be also noted that Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is one of our focus products, so its sales were watched carefully by our R&D department from the beginning; and, as soon as we heard about this matter, an R&D rep was dispatched to Russia to work on the problem on site.

The secondary replacement issues reported by Mobile-Review were related to the first phones and, at that moment, there was no solution to the problem, so the defective speakers were replaced with speakers from the same (at that time)  supplier. When the problem was studied more carefully and it became clear that the new speakers (from the same supplier) do not solve the problem, the supplier was changed, the plants started putting new speakers in, and service centers started getting speakers from the new supplier too. I can not name the supplier of the defective speakers, but it is a very respected company with a world-known name, whose  quality of products nobody doubted. But, unfortunately, these things happen, most likely, to everyone.

It should be emphasized that, for these kinds of quantities, and for a global company like Nokia, to solve a problem within a month is a very short time. Sure, a record number of devices were sold during December, and fewer buyers would have been faced with this problem if the sales had been lower. But please believe me, we have been seriously working on the speaker quality problem and we think that, for the moment, the problem is solved.

So, the 5800 XpressMusic can now be bought without any fears. And if you had to replace your speakers, from the end of January – everything should be all right;  if you bought the phone earlier and you have problems, now they can truly be solved in service centers by replacing the speakers.

[Via UV]

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Just a few short days after we learned the release details for the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic here in the US, Nokia dropped a little Valentine’s Day surprise on us all. As of today, the 5800 is available for pre-order on Nokia’s site and the price is indeed $399. But wait! Nokia also launched a Valentine’s Day promo to go along with it, giving buyers a 10% discount on any single item purchased or 15% off the total order when two or more items are purchased. In other words, the 5800 will run you $359.10 if you pre-order it today on its own. Throw in another handset or even an accessory such as a Bluetooth headset and you’re looking at $339.15 – not bad at all. Nokia is also offering free shipping on V-Day orders so if you’re thinking about forking over some cash for a Nokia handset in the near future, today is your day. Of course you’ll still have to wait until the handset is officially launched in the US before your 5800 will ship (on or around February 26th), but once it’s in stock you should receive a shipping notification the same day. Any takers?

Thanks, Rich!

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