T-Mobile subscribers have a pretty solid new option today in the form of an affordable music-centric handset from Nokia. The latest addition to our Finnish friends’ XpressMusic line, the 5130 XM is an S40 feature phone with tween written all over it. Spec highlights include a music player with dedicated external controls, FM radio, a 2 megapixel camera with video capture, stereo Bluetooth and microSD expansion. No, it won’t be knocking any socks off but as far as budget feature phones go, this lit...

We have to be perfectly honest with you — it’s been a long time since any of us bothered to play with our Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. A really long time. The handset was a bit dated before it even came to market and it has been a tiny bit difficult to keep caring about it. It’s definitely a milestone device though — Nokia’s first S60 5th Edition phone and a sign that that company is in fact trying to keep up with the times, to some extent — so we feel obligated to cover it once...

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 stan...

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 exc...

A lot of of chatter was generated when the team behind StarPlayr announced it was dumping its project to bring Sirius XM content to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Naturally, is was presumed that one of the main reasons for Apple’s decision — though logic is seemingly not always a consideration when Apple rejects apps — was a Sirius XM streaming app already in the works from the Satellite Radio provider itself. Sure enough this morning’s earnings call was the forum the struggling company ch...

D-Day has arrived for the struggling satellite radio provider and for the time being, all is not lost. Liberty Media has indeed swooped in and pumped $530 million into Sirius XM in order to prevent the company from defaulting on $175 million in debt owed to Echostar today. Echostar’s Charlie Ergen had offered to take control of the company in an effort to “help” it avoid bankruptcy but the Sirius XM board seemingly wouldn’t even consider Ergen’s offer as a possibility. Instead, S...

This past week we gave you a brief glimpse into the nightmare that Sirius XM’s business has become and since then things have basically been a cluster… err, mess. Sirius did take a big step in restructuring some of its future debts – $172.5 million that was due in December is now due in June 2011, a move that cost the company 60 million shares of stock. Forget the fact that Sirius XM has $227.5 million of December debt remaining, it also still has $175 million that comes due to Dr. Claw Char...

It might not have happened exactly as terrestrial radio had planned while it was sitting in the shadows, stroking a hairless cat and plotting the downfall of satellite, but it looks like the delays it caused by lobbying against the Sirius XM merger may have ended up doing enough damage. According to a report from the New York Times, the only game in satellite radio town is preparing to file for bankruptcy. With over $5 billion in assets the company would surely be gobbled up one way or another, but its curren...

Well, satellite radio lovers, we have good news and bad news. The good news is that the positive stipulations to the Sirius XM merger deal will finally begin to bear fruit and a variety of new programming packages will be available. The bad news is that many current subscribers will see their fees increased. First and foremost, the basic subscription fee for the current programming package will not budge – as the providers stated during the merger battle, the core subscription will stay fixed at $12.95 ...

Alltel is gearing up for the holidays with yet another special offer that’s definitely worth checking out if you fall within the Alltel coverage area. The US carrier currently in the process of being swallowed by Verizon has just announced a nice little holiday promotion for everyone who purchases a new handset. From now through December 25th, every new handset purchased comes with a free one-month trial of two great Alltel apps: Alltel Navigation, which gives users turn-by-turn navigation and XM Radio ...

It seems like a lifetime ago that Sirius and XM first announced the intentions to merge and form a single satellite radio powerhouse. Subscribers were generally overjoyed by the possibilities; twice the content, a la carte options, the promise that current subscription rates would not increase, etc. It sounded like everyone would be a winner. There was just one problem though… Terrestrial radio and its “relationship” with the FCC. We won’t go into this mockery of government yet again, ...

If you’ve been looking for a way to get your XM Radio fix while rockin’ your iPhone, we’ve got a bit of news that might make your day. Millard software has just released version .53 of uXM for the iPhone, which should bring most of the functionality of a standalone XM radio to your iPhone handset. For those of you with sharp eyes, you might notice that this is, in fact, the same company that brought us uSirius. They did a great job with their first iPhone satellite radio app, and this looks ...