Ready to get your NAM on, Nokia fans? Nokia’s first crack at an 8 megapixel beast is reportedly touching down stateside on August 22nd, which is just over 2 weeks away. But wait, there’s more good news in store for all you Symbian fans out there. It turns out the launch price of the N86 8MP may be lower than the current pre-order price — $59 lower, in fact. Yup, it’s looking like $499 will get you in the door when this little guy hits Flagship store shelves and NokiaUSA.com three Saturdays from now. No word on pricing from resellers yet but expect it to come in a bit lower than Nokia USA’s offering. And then there’s Amazon, which has been undercutting nearly everyone in the phone biz lately. In other words, waiting a few weeks on your purchase will likely serve you well.

Thanks, Mark!

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Following what must have been an intense prayer circle attended by each and every Nokia fan in the US, the N97 somehow found its way into customers’ hands in the US before its European counterpart. Unheard of. With the hopes that a trend of timely US releases will follow, it might just be safe to presume the N86 8MP will find its way to store shelves in the next week or so. As revealed by the Nokia Flagship store in London, the photog’s dream of a handset is due to drop in the UK this coming Friday, June 19th. Our hope is that a US release happens around the same time and considering the handset is already shipping worldwide, it shouldn’t be long now. Man, what a month…

Thanks, Marcus!

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Surprise, surprise! Shortly after showing up on YouTube, Nokia has officially announced the Nokia E72 alongside the 5530 XpressMusic at Connection 2009 in Singapore. The E72 is a worthy successor to the E71 with 10.2Mbps capabilities (where networks allow, of course), an integrated compass, S60 3rd Edition FP2 and a 5 megapixel camera. In slightly less glamorous news, the 5530 will be an EDGE phone with a 3.2 megapixel camera and a 640 x 360 touchscreen, which we’re hoping will at least be resistive. Although it has Wi-Fi, there is no 3G to be found and that leaves us speechless. Seriously, Nokia? You put out a phone capable of speeds over 10Mbps and you’re still making EDGE-only phones? Ok fine, this will help make the phone insanely accessible compared to the competition but sheesh, are 3G radios that expensive? The E72 and 5530 XpresMusic will be available in the third quarter for about $489 and $278, respectively.

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If you’re among the millions of E71 owners who felt somewhat slided to learn Nokia was launching an FP2-endowed variant of the handset with AT&T, just wait. According to everyone’s favorite Russian insider Eldar Murtazin, Nokia is preparing to release another new version of the device that will not only carry FP2 along with it, but a 5 megapixel camera and new color options as well. Eat your heart out E71x. As slender as the handset is, we doubt upping the megapixel count on the camera will have much of an effect on image quality — just compare the current E71′s shots to any decent 3.2 megapixel handset. At the same time, any upgrade from the current near-useless shooter is most definitely welcome. So Symbian fans, even if you were considering snagging an E71x for just a penny, you might want to reconsider before tying yourself to another 2-year contract. If you can somehow manage to wait for September or October you should have another, pretty affordable unlocked option in the E71i.

[Via Unwired View]

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Nokia made an interesting showing at CTIA this year, opting to focus almost entirely on apps and services rather than hardware. Ovi this, share that, social this, messaging that… Fair enough. A solid portfolio of value adds and supporting services is essential for the company as it continues its efforts to make the “Internet Company” branding stick, but we’ve yet to see Nokia enter the leader phase in this space. Nope, it’s still a game of catch up for the time being so for now we’re a bit more interested in what Nokia does best — handsets. Nothing that hadn’t been previously announced made a showing at the Nokia booth this year; in fact the company’s newest handset is the E71x that we scooped way back in November. It’s finally here though and it’s cheaper than we expected which definitely isn’t a bad thing. So with that, feast your eyes on the E71x after the jump, along with its relatively new unlocked brother-in-law the E75. More on Nokia to come.

E71x:

E75:

Symbian fans around the globe have been eagerly anticipating this puppy since it was first spied in a leaked product video back in September. A complete departure from currently available Nokia handsets, the E75 is an ultra-slim dual-keypad slider with a standard 0-9 pad beneath the display and a landscape QWERTY exposed by the slide. Chrome accents, sleek rounded lines, a nice wide full keyboard – it’s all good. A quick recap of the confirmed specs:

• 2.4″ 240 x 320 pixel display
• 3.2 megapixel camera
• HSDPA
• Wi-Fi
• microSDHC support
• 3.5mm audio jack
• aGPS
• S60 3rd Edition FP2

Pending battery performance reports, the E75 is most definitely shaping up to be a winner. As is often the case leading up to an official Nokia announcement, we can expect to see plenty more of the E75 in the coming two weeks. That’s right folks, all signs continue to point to an MWC announcement and word is we might have an uncharacteristically swift release and a very attractive price point to look forward to. Hit the jump for more shots.

[Via crave]

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It looks like US Nokia fans are in for a little treat once the E71x finally makes it to market via AT&T. Sure, it seems like ages since the E71 was first released and that’s because, well, it has been ages. One of the biggest complaints with the E71 however, looks to be resolved. Despite the fact that the release timing of the E71 could certainly have made it a Feature Pack 2 (FP2) candidate, Nokia opted for S60 3rd Edition FP1 instead. For the E71x however, newly-found screenshots show the FP2 Device Manager. That’s right people, no more battling with Access Points – and maybe even OTA firmware updates! Despite the fact that Nokia has pulled the E71x user manual from its site since we scooped its little faux pas last week, we still expect Nokia’s sexy little QWERTY to be announced by AT&T very soon.

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The new Samsung i7110 is slim, sexy, Symbian-powered and it hates Americans. Huh? Ok, we made that last part up, but this is yet another instance of a high-end Samsung phone that we would have loved to get our hands on if not for the all-too-common lack of US-appropriate 3G spectra. Samsung, dude, you deal with US approval on tons of your crappier other phones and a quick radio tweak to ready a US version is hardly complicated. What’s up? Is America unworthy of your high-end feats? Can we not handle the awesomeness that is your upper class handsets? Nokia came around after a while and sure, it hasn’t done much for its US market share but Nokia has other problems. Just try it. Once, for your pals here at BGR. Make a hot high-end phone, toss an 850/1900 3G radio in there and see what happens. Anyway, here are the specs for the Samsung something-or-other that will be available sometime in some markets somewhere:

• Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• Dual band HSDPA 3.6 Mbps, 900 / 2100 MHz
• 2.6 inch AMOLED screen with 262K colors and 240 x 320 pixels
• Accelerometer
• Optical mouse
• GPS
• WiFi, DLNA
• DNSe 2.0
• 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, Smile Shot, Blink Shot and VGA video recording at 30 fps
• FM Radio with RDS, FM transmitter
• Bluetooth 2.0 & USB 2.0
• 50MB of internal memory
• MicroSD & SDHC card support
• 118 x 52 x 12.9 mm 1200 mAh battery
• Talk-time: up to 11 h / 6 h (EDGE / WCDMA)

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Ahh FP2. There’s no question that there’s plenty that Nokia’s latest flavor of S60 doesn’t address, but there’s also plenty it does address. Remember the SSU functionality we just spoke about in our post on Diablo? Well it’s not just for Tablets! Feature Pack 2 brings with it Seamless Software Updating (SSU) that allows users to update pieces of the operating system without the need for a full flash. What does this mean for N78 owners? It means you can update your firmware without losing your data! This initial OTA update is a minor release but we ran the update earlier and confirm that it went perfectly with no data loss whatsoever. Firmware version 11.043 change log highlights:

• Improved Bluetooth stability
• Improved Music Player stability
• Improved Camera performance
• Naviscroll performance tweaks

The only other thing we’ve noticed so far is that the maximum display brightness has been turned down a few clicks. We liked the bright display but the simple fact that we’ve now confirmed lossless software updating works is more than enough reason to go through with it.

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There are some handsets that are born crowd splitters, no question. For some people it’s love at first sight and others won’t even bat an eye. Nokia’s first Feature Pack 2 device to come to market, the N78, is just that. It’s sleek, thin and different with smooth lines and and a nice form factor. At the same time it’s a quirky handset with an atypical keypad and a back cover with an odd pattern. Specs-wise, it has plenty of juice; 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and autofocus, internal GPS and OEM geotagging, integrated FM transmitter, and so on. Are specs enough incentive for the user to work through it’s oddities though? We’ll let you be the judge. Enjoy the 16 minutes of N78 walkthrough-love and then let us know what you think.

It looks like the changing of the guard may happen sooner than some would have thought. According to the play.com shop, Nokia’s N96 will begin shipping on July 31st for a whopping £600 or $1,185 as of today’s exchange rate. It will be interesting to see what price point it gets in the US, but our friends across the pond may end up saving money by flying over here to snag one. Ok, maybe not. The N96 as you know, is the peppy heir to the flagship Nseries throne and will be the second Feature Pack 2 device issued by Nokia. It’s a multimedia powerhouse with stunning specs, a solid design and a shiny new chipset that should help tremendously with power consumption. We’re very excited to check this sucker out. The big question of course: Does the N96 build nicely upon the precedent set by the N95 8GB or just basically repackage it? With details like up to 32 GB of memory, Feature Pack 2 and plenty more, we’re thinking the former might just be the case.

[Via S60 Blogger]

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