Native support for WiFi
Over-the-air firmware updates (FOTA)
USB 2.0 on-the-go
HSDPA
push to talk, and
Improved memory management.

Hopefully this update will help fuel competition, and spur innovation in other mobile OS’s.

Read more about the Nokia E61.

I can’t say I blame them.

Read more about the Nokia N80.

Nokia N80 Specifications

• GSM / GPRS / EDGE
• Bluetooth
• Wi-Fi
• Mini SD Card Slot
• Symbian Series 60
• 40 MB RAM
• 3 Megapixel Digital Camera with flash
• FM Radio
• Sliding Keypad

Nokia N80 Reviews

3G Reviews the Nokia N80 and writes – ‘ The N80 offers every possible connectivity option you could dream of, with wireless LAN, Bluetooth, USB and infrared. The biggest boon is the Wi-Fi 802.11g, which brings faster speeds (capacity dependent) to the mobile internet: 54Mbps compared to 3G’s 384Kbps. The advantages to this method of accessing the internet on the move are blatantly obvious, but there is a bigger picture involved, namely VoIP. The N80 is being primed to let you make voice calls over the internet using UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) technology; this is basically the new mobile standard for switching between mobile and W-LAN networks. It’s surely only a matter of time before Nokia partners with a VoIP or broadband company (Orange is strongly rumoured) to offer a BT Fusion-esque service.

Infosyncworld reviews the Nokia N80 and writes – ‘Starting off on a high note, the Nokia N80 camera phone lines up a brilliant high-resolution screen and 3 Megapixel-pushing camera only to put its foot in its mouth seconds later through the absence of an autofocus, which hampers its ability to produce quality stills with predictive consistency. Although it also includes the most extensive line-up of printing, publishing and image management services of any camera phone to date, it still falls marginally short of its N90 predecessor – yet retains broader overall appeal due to its music, business and wireless photo streaming functionality, rendering it a superb 3G phone.’

All About Symbian reviews the Nokia N80 and writes – ‘In design and size the 7650 and N80 are reminiscent of each other, but appearances can be deceptive, because these phones are from different eras. Comparing the two phones we have seen the internal memory increase ten-fold and external memory add another five-hundred-fold increase, the screen resolution double, the camera resolution increased three-fold, the data speed increased eight-fold through 3G technology, the addition of USB and Wi-Fi connectivity, the continuing evolution and support of standards such as Bluetooth, Visual Radio, UPnP and the OMA specifications, the addition of music and video functionality, two major software revisions, and much more.’

Mobile-Review reviews the Nokia N80 and writes – ‘At the current moment this is the most functional smartphone on the market. However, let us return to the list of innovations and dismantle what actually stands behind them.

* The 3MP camera without autofocus and with a useless flash. Not the best photo quality. Nominally the number of pixels grew, and extra macro mode is provided, which are advantages;
* Wi-Fi and a new high resolution screen. That will be a standard for smartphones in 2006, however now that is an innovation;
* UPnP, which is in the start of its route and now it is interesting from only theoretic point of view;
* S60 of the third version. On the one hand these are new capabilities, on the other hand – still no workable third party programs for this operating system (all applications should be recompiled and signed). The situation will have improved only by the middle of 2006′

Crave reviews the Nokia N80 and absolutely loves it – ‘This isn’t the perfect phone — although we’re prepared to say it’s very close. It’s still too big as a viable ‘mobile’ phone, measuring a chunky 50 by 95 by 26mm and the battery life is zapped by the Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. After only one day of listening to music and browsing the Web, the battery died on us. We didn’t even have a chance to say, “Who cares if it costs over £300, we love this thing.”‘

MobileBurn reviews the Nokia N80 and expresses serious concerns about battery life – ‘Nokia’s N80 is a truly amazing mobile phone that has a couple of flaws – one of them quite serious. While the lack of a good voice dialing system is a shame, and the lack of a functional automatic keylock is annoying, it is the battery life issue that is going to be the potential deal breaker for many people. The brilliant features like WiFi, the web browser, the camera, and the music player will be of no use if the phone has no power. So if you are a heavy voice user, especially one that spends a lot of time in or travels through poor reception areas, the N80 probably won’t cut it for you. But if you are more like me, where a charger is nearly always close by and the signal is always strong, you will be awed by the N80 – and forgive it its poor battery life.’

Cnet reviews the Nokia N80 and is amazed by the cameras ‘The main draw of the Nokia N80 is its multimedia prowess–more specifically, its imaging features. The mobile sports a 3-megapixel camera with video-recording capabilities and 20X digital zoom. The breadth of customization and editing options available on this phone is astounding. You can choose from eight shooting modes, ranging from portrait to sports to night portrait, and five resolutions: 2,048×1,536, 1,600×1,200, 1,280×960, 800×600, and 640×480. You can tweak the brightness, contrast, white balance, color tone, and exposure value. There’s also a self-timer and flash. The secondary camera is of only VGA quality, but then again, how often do you find a cell phone with two cameras?’

Nokia N80 Press Release

Nokia Nseries enters the digital home with Nokia N80
November 02, 2005

Optimized for both work and play, the small WLAN-enab

ZDNET reviews the Nokia 9300 and writes – ‘Palm gets a lot of press for its popular Treo, but Nokia knows a thing or two about smart phones too. Starting with the 9000i Communicator and following up with the Nokia 9290, the Finnish company has produced some powerful Symbian-based smart phones. Now it adds the Nokia 9300 to its list. With an integrated QWERTY keyboard and support for multiple e-mail accounts, the 9300 Communicator has a lot to offer users who need a corporate-centric device. While there’s much that’s impressive in this unit for Cingular Wireless, there’s also plenty that’s frustrating. The keyboard is somewhat cramped, and the phone lacks Wi-Fi.’

From the Cingular Nokia 9300 Press Release : “Pricing and Availability
The Nokia 9300 business device will be available in the U.S. in Cingular retail stores, select Cingular authorized dealers, Cingular.com, and through its direct B2B sales beginning in November. Cingular will offer the Nokia 9300 for as low as $299.99 with a two-year contract and after $50 mail-in rebate. Customers can choose from either a $44.99 BlackBerry unlimited data plan or a $34.99 4Mb BlackBerry data plan when they also choose a qualifying voice plan. The $44.99 and $34.99 plans both include data service for BlackBerry Connect, Web browsing and other applications. In addition, corporate customers, as needed, can purchase BlackBerry Enterprise Server for a complete enterprise messaging solution directly from Cingular and select resellers. ”

At first glance, I think this device is interesting in its design. It reminds me a lot of the LG VX9800 in that regard. It’s pretty large, but it is still an interesting design. Where this device truly falls short is functionality. While the device does have bluetooth, it is missing WiFi, vibrate (really??) and of all things, a touchscreen. I was a bit speechless when I read this. A device of this size, with dual screens, should have the inner screen as a touch screen. I’d definately have to recommend not going with this device; it just doesn’t have enough features to justify the cost. If you are married to the form factor, and really want one, you can purchase one from Cingular.

Mobile Phone Fan reviews the Nokia E61 and writes – ‘Tactile feedback of QWERTY keyboard in nokia E61 was not so good – it felt cheap and without distinct click, but probably it was just prototype/engineering sample and not final phone, so one can’t say for sure.

The QWERTY keyboard in nokia E61 allows for SINGLE HANDED KEYBOARD USAGE and this is the single most important feature of this phone.’

Alll About Symbian reviews the Nokia E61 and they have an interesting take – ‘The E61, I think, finally crosses the line between smartphone and PDA. Whether companies and sites are going to pigeonhole the E61 as a super smartphone or a PDA with a phone attached is immaterial. What we have here is a portable computer, which has a huge range of built-in applications and can be extended by third party developers -Nokia are no longer simply a phone manufacturer.

The keys to the E61 are two-fold, and both are based around the business culture of instant (push) email. How well this works, and how effective Nokia are at marketing this device over other push and Windows Mobile devices, is crucial. It may well have over the air connectivity to MS Exchange via Active Sync and the Blackberry Connect service, but IT departments will need to be convinced to move away from solutions they are familiar with, for any success to be seen with the E61.’

This definately looks like a sweet phone, even with the smallish screen. My only question is why no EDGE? Seems like a strange omission, doesn’t it?

Update: The Nokia E61 will have EDGE – thanks Jason for pointing that out. Sorry I missed it guys.

Lord Percy reviews the Nokia N70 and writes – ‘Our main gripe is that the N70 doesn’t have WiFi and that the reduced size MMC card slot isn’t well positioned to allow any external form of WiFi card to be used, assuming you could find one that would do the job! The RS MMC card slot is filled with a 64mb card as standard but will expand to at least 512mb should you wish to spend a bit more, this is probably necessary if you intend to use the multimedia features at all as the internal memory is just 32mb with around 21mb free for your own use.’

GSM Arena reviews the Nokia N70 and writes – ‘Once you get connected to internet, you will find out that Nokia N70 is probably the best equipped mobile phone ever. It works with GPRS Class 10 and EDGE Class 10. In addition, it supports third-generation networks in the WCDMA standard. Unfortunately, I did not try out data transferring via 3G. I do not have exact proofs about EDGE either. The problem is that Nokia does not alert you, when EDGE is available. As a result, the user has no idea, whether he is connected through GPRS or through the faster EDGE. The situation changes when 3G come into the play, for its symbol gets clearly displayed.’

InfoSync reviews the Nokia N70 and writes – ‘As we’ve come to expect from Nokia, voice quality and signal reception proved outstanding in the N70, and we’re thrilled to see Nokia finally introducing speaker independent name dialling – which performed expertly except for an expected decline in recognition in increasingly noisy environments. Furthermore, the loudspeaker mode works very well indeed, and battery life proved exceptionally good despite heavy 3G use; a couple of days and in some cases more could easily be squeezed out of this particular smartphone. ‘

CNET also reviews the Nokia N70 and writes – ‘Our biggest gripe about the design is its tiny keys. While the buttons are intuitively placed and ergonomically designed to offer good tactile feedback, the number pad is just too small for comfortable SMSing, particular for those with big fingers. On both sides of the number keypad are four buttons (for menu, media gallery, cancel and text pencil input). ‘

Overal it sounds like another hit from Nokia. I hope one day they’ll migrate to either Windows Mobile or even Palm OS.. but they definately seem married to Symbian for now. Oh well, I still don’t think that takes away from this phone – it’s a sweet design, and only really lacks WiFi as far as I can tell.

The Nokia e70 is one of the most exciting upcoming smarpthones. It has one of those truly unique designs that just hasn’t been done before. I’m not sure what it’ll feel like in real life, but the design is extremely impressive. I’m really looking forward to this phone’s release. I know it’s probably a dream, but I sure would like to see a CDMA version for Sprint. I just can’t stand GSM voice quality.

Mobile Burn has some great news – the Nokia e70 just received FCC approval. Few companies go through the trouble of obtaining the FCC’s ok if they don’t plan to bring the device to market. Here’s a clip of their post – ‘On the other hand, the Nokia E70 is all business. Still featuring the same 2.0 megapixel camera, WiFi, and Bluetooth, but losing the hard drive in favour of a flip open QWERTY keypad. The E70 is clearly aimed at the messaging crowd, and has a very stylish business look to it.’

Mobile Review has aaaaaaaaaaalllll the specs on the Nokia e70. Looks like it’ll have Symbian OS version 9.1, bluetooth, wifi, 75 MB RAM, and a mini-SD slot.

Sony Ericsson has some of the best phone & smartphone designers the world has ever seen. This phone is, without question, beautiful. The design is just brilliant. Not to mention is has almost everything one could want – a regular keypad & a QWERTY, touchscreen, bluetooth, wifi, FM radio, MP3 & video player, and a 2 Megapixel camera! I really dig the back of the phone – how it looks like a camera. If only they would move to a Palm OS or Windows Mobile …. or maybe I just need to really give Symbian a chance.

Engadget has a short preview of the Sony Ericsson P970. This model is supposed to be a trimmed – down version of the upcoming Sony Ericsson P990. Looks like they’re keeping the touchscreen & the jog dial ( Hello Sony Clie! ). Here’s hoping that funky qwerty-esque keyboard goes far, far away.