During a meeting with representatives from Nokia, CNet Australia was informed that the Nokia N8 will be the last Nseries handset to ship running Symbian. After it launches, all future Nseries handsets will be running MeeGo. But that isn’t to say that this is the end of the line for Symbian-based handsets from Nokia. Instead of placing Symbian on its flagship devices, the S60 version of the OS will be relegated to middle of the road handsets from the X and Eseries, while S40 will be loaded up on handsets from the Cseries.

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According to the Maemo marketing team, it looks like it’s already in motion. Apparently Nokia still has some Nseries devices in the pipeline which will still use S60 as the operating system, but after those are out of the factory, it seems like Maemo will be the OS of choice for Nokia’s Nseries. That doesn’t mean that Nokia has plans to ditch Symbian altogether yet, as the enterprise-friendly Eseries and new Xseries will still run Symbian for the foreseeable future.

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Hardcore Nokia fans who are dying to get their hands on the N900, Nokia’s first Maemo-powered phone (as if you didn’t know that by now), will be happy to know that they can pre-order a unit today. There’s still that pesky little thing called patience to deal with, but sometimes it’s comforting to know that there is a yet-to-be-released gadget out there with your name on it. We know that folks who are bored with S60 are looking to snap this up the minute the packing peanuts spill out of packaging boxes, but before you get too excited you should note the early adopter tax. Then again, at $649 the device may sound pricey, but it’s Nokia’s first Maemo phone! And it will be unlocked! And it’s not S60! Do you need another reason?

Thanks, William!

[Via CellphoneSignal]

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We want it, we need it, we must have it. Russian phone God Eldar Murtazin of mobile-review fame has just treated phone fanatics everywhere to an extensive preview of Nokia’s N900 aka RX-51 aka Rover. This review comes just one day after we were treated to some nice shots of the Maemo 5 interface found within the N900. Overall, Murtazin is thoroughly impressed with the new Nseries handset but what exactly is the deal with that resistive touchscreen? Who needs a stylus when you have a large 3.5-inch display and a full QWERTY keypad? Certainly not us. Anyway, we bet there are more than a few T-Mobile users who are going to be having trouble sleeping tonight. What do you guys think — is Maemo 5 looking like a step in the right direction compared to S60 or is it too little, too late?

Thanks, Bryan!

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It looks like Nokia has a few tricks up its sleeve in the near future as a blurry photo reveals a number of unreleased and unannounced handsets. First is the N97 mini, which is easily distinguished from the full-sized N97 due to its lack of a d-pad on the keyboard. Next is a device that looks much like the 5800 XpressMusic, except the one pictured above (to the right of the N97 and N97 mini) has a chrome bezel. Could it be the rumored 5900XM? The white slider below the N97 mini has us baffled and yet completely uninterested. We’re also guessing that the black slider pictured to the next to the 5900XM is the same handset as the white slider, though the blur-factor makes it a bit tough to tell. Bottom line: 1) Expect a few new devices next month from Nokia World and 2) Nokia has a thing for chrome.

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Well apparently that Finnish blog Puhelinvertailu opened up the flood gates as a bunch of people spent their Saturdays nights/Sunday mornings combing through Finland’s trademark database for anything Nokia-related. Much of what was found, such as a laundry list of trademarked handset names, falls into the “who cares?” category. Yes, Nokia trademarks names like Exx and Nxx so it can use them down the road. There were a few trademarks of interest uncovered however, namely a trademark for “Xseries” — meaning we now have two possible names for new lines of Nokia handsets. If we had to wager a guess: Cseries will encompass handsets that would have previously fallen into various numbered ranges (ie boring) and Xseries will cover Nokia’s upcoming line of Maemo 5-powered handsets (ie not boring). Again, that’s just speculation of course. Trademark miners managed to dig up mention of some other possibly-interesting tidbits as well, such as “Nokia Money”, a potential new platform for mobile financial transactions, and Booklet, a possible name for Nokia’s upcoming line of netbooks/smartbooks. Hopefully at least some of the products behind these trademarks will be covered by whatever Nokia plans to unveil at Nokia World.

Thanks, CanisMajor!

Read (Xseries)
Read (Nokia Money, Booklet, etc)

Interesting, very interesting. We are all familiar with the branding nightmare that is Nokia’s higher-end line of phones. Eseries for business, Nseries for fun — but even fanboy blogs seem to have a tough time remembering how to spell the brands. E-series, N Series, E-Series, n series and so on. These lines have been around for long enough however, that Nokia is basically stuck with them at this point. As a matter of fact, it may even be expanding. By way of the Finnish blog Puhelinvertailu, it looks like Nokia filed a trademark application for “Cseries” back in April of this year. The new series, assuming Nokia does in fact get the trademark and make use of this new branding, could be for a number of things. We could see some of Nokia’s numbered phones, maybe the Symbian-powered models, move over to Cseries. Or perhaps we’ll see an entirely new line of Maemo devices bearing the Cseries name; we never did understand why Nokia slapped an “N” on its last two tablets. Speculation aside for the time being, the “E” in “Eseries” stands for Enterprise and the “N” in “Nseries” stand for, umm, eNtertainment? Not enterprise? Nokia? Whatever — the question here is what will the “C” in “Cseries” stand for if Nokia does in fact bring it to market?

[Via Puhelinvertailu]

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Symbian-loving photogs are officially on notice… Nokia has just announced that its first 8 megapixel offering is now on its way to the US. That’s right, the N86 8MP will be hitting store shelves within the next few weeks and if you have a hankering for S60 3rd Edition FP2 and more pixels than you can shake a stick at, this little guy might be just what the doctor ordered. Of course the camera isn’t the only focus here, though for many it will be hard to get past an 8 megapixel shooter with a shutter speed of up to 1/1000 of a second, an f-stop range of 2.4-4.8 and a wide-angle lens. Once you do however, you’ll find a 2.6-inch AMOLED QVGA display, quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-band UMTS, 8GB of internal storage, Wi-Fi and aGPS with Nokia Maps 3.0 pre-installed and plenty more. There is some bad news to report as well unfortunately — despite being announced at €375 abroad (about $530 at today’s exchange rate, $474 when announced), the NAM N86 8MP is going to run you $558. If photography is your game however, that’s hardly a tall order for an unlocked top-of-the-line camera phone. Anyone in?

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Nokia’s numbers for Q2 are in and while the bad news outweighs the good by leaps and bounds, the good news is that, well, there is good news. First, the bad: Nokia’s Q2 operating profit was down a mind boggling 66 percent year over year to €775 million. 66 percent! Net sales dropped 25 percent YoY to €9.9 billion and EPS came in at €0.15, a 60 percent YoY decline. Ouch. On the brighter side of things, Nokia is still selling tons of phones even if it forgot how to make money in the process. The company showed a solid improvement compared to Q1 with a 7 percent increase in net sales and 103.2 million handsets shipped, up 11 percent from Q1. Global market share was somewhat of a bright spot as well, rebounding from 37 percent in Q1 to 38 percent in Q2. The 5800 XpressMusic was most definitely the shining star in Q2 just as it was in Q1; 3.7 million units sold this quarter… 6.8 million units in all… Over a million sold each month. Nokia has also hawked a total of 5 million E71s since launching the device — definitely a solid showing from a gorgeous handset. There’s one final bit of bad news unfortunately, and this where stockholders really started getting lightheaded:

• Nokia expects industry mobile device volumes in the third quarter 2009 to be at approximately the same level or up slightly sequentially.
• Nokia expects its mobile device market share in the third quarter 2009 to be approximately at the same level sequentially.
• Nokia continues to expect 2009 industry mobile device volumes to decline approximately 10% from 2008 levels.
• Nokia now expects its market share in mobile devices to be approximately flat in 2009, compared with 2008. This is an update to Nokia’s earlier target to increase its market share in mobile devices in 2009.

Nokia shares were down about 12 percent over night.

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Sure it hit the street less than a month ago but that’s plenty of time to rope in the early adopters when it comes to hot new high-end handsets. As such, Amazon.com has just dropped the price on Nokia’s new flagship handset to $599.99 with free shipping; still a bit high for some but definitely inching closer to attainability. While this isn’t the best advertised price we’ve seen thus far for the Nokia N97 — Nokia USA had it on sale for $594 late last month — it is the lowest total price including taxes so far. Any takers?

Also of note: Amazon.com dropped the price of the N79 to $300 lining it up with the 5800XM and E71, and the N85 is currently listed at $330. All are unlocked of course, including the N97, and waiting for your SIM card of choice.

[Via Symbian-Guru]

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Hoping to have some solid bug fixes and a few new additions in place on your shiny new Nokia N97 before you start partying this weekend (or even today if you live North of the border)? Well we told you it was coming and this morning it dropped — say hello to 11.0.021. Even the most staunch Nokia fanboys seemed to take issue with the release firmware on Nokia’s latest flagship handset and as such, this update is most definitely a welcome one. The firmware should be available in most regions and if you can’t get it OTA, fire up Nokia Software Updater and give it a go. As for what you can expect from this release, hit the jump for the change log. If you’ve installed it already, let us know what you think in the comments.

Side note: The N96 was updated today as well to 30.033. Yay.

Thanks, Joseph!

• USB detection error fix
• PC does not detect N97 or USB charging connection not detected.
• Widget
• Home screen online/offline widget crash fix
• Fix for “Alphabetical and Number input are mixed in facebook until end key is pressed.
• Widget UI improvement – New facebook widget fixes a problem of Home Screen background visible on soft-key area.
• Browser fixes to improve widgets stability.
• MfE related fixes
• Partial fix for Messaging/calendar entry lost.
• Mail for exchange calendar entry synchronization error fix.
• UI transition error fixes (Portrait <-> landscape transition, there is a home screen corruption.)
• UI transition (Slowness and bad effects)
• Slow Touch UI response
• Picture of the device lock appears half of the screen when transitioning the UI sometimes
• Landscape: in some cases the soft buttons on touch (right hand) show the Home Screen in background (install maps.google.com)
• Photos thumbnail performance and stability improvements
• Device performance deteriorates when lots of content in the device – especially photos
• Partial fix no display backlight illumination when unlocking lock-key – CAP Genius reported already
• New version of Accueweather to improve the “Connection error” situation
• Device reset when browsing with high speed packet access (for Malaysia)
• “Browser soft key UI doesn’t work after putting Chinese character with qwerty keyboard”
• Java fixes (TCK, Pre-install app disappearing, *#7370#*)
• Operator fixes (CMCC, Hutchson and Telefonica, Vodafone)
• Ovi store client now embedded in the core image

Just in time to make America’s birthday even more special, it looks like N97 owners will be enjoying a shiny new gift from our friends at Nokia this July 4th weekend. Just as the firmware version was recently updated on Nokia’s RDS service, so too will the firmware be updated on the N97. According to Nokia Conversations’ Twitter account, “N97 SW 1.1 (11.x.021)” will find itself in the hands of the people this Wednesday, July 1st. Rejoice! Sure, a firmware update isn’t going to resolve all of the issues we had with the handset — such as an off-center space button on the keypad (how?!) — but it will hopefully go great lengths to eliminate many of the bugs users are currently experiencing. As for exactly which regions/product codes will have access to the new firmware right out of the gate, unfortunately there’s no way of telling until the 1st rolls around.

Thanks, Nok-eee-ugh!

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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Touchscreen not your thing? QWERTY not your bag? It looks like the new kid on the block will soon have a cheaper, photo-centric neighbor as Nokia has just announced that the N86 8MP is now shipping globally. As for when it might touch down here in the US… Soon. The N86 8MP is two parts camera and one part smartphone, touting an 8 megapixel sensor, variable aperture, automatic motion blur reduction and half the processing time between snaps. It also sports 8GB of internal storage and up to an additional 16GB thanks to microSDHC support, ensuring your photos and videos have plenty of room to breathe. Pricing in the US has still not been revealed but the N86 8MP was announced at €375 so we should be looking somewhere just north of $500.

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Ok so the N97 is finally close to hitting the streets but truth be told, it’s not for everyone. Sure it’s sleek, well equipped and relatively powerful but not every S60 fan is looking for a QWERTY keypad and a touchscreen — or a $700 price tag. So what about the rest of you? The N97 breaks ground in that it’s Nokia’s first Nseries to sport a touchscreen and S60 5th Edition but the N86 8MP is a unique handset as well. Nokia, long known for producing amazing camera phones, has finally issued its first 8 megapixel-equipped handset in the N86… Oh, and it touts a few other cool new features as well. Now that the support pages are live, the N86 8MP should begin shipping within a few weeks with an expected retail price around $530. Anyone plan on snagging one?

Thanks, Buster!

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