Confused by Nokia's dual-platform, Maemo 5 and S60 5th Edition smartphone choices? You're not alone. Fortunately, things are starting to become a bit more clear thanks to some loose-lipped members of Maemo's marketing team attending an official N900 meet-up in London last night. According to The Really Mobile Project, Nokia will drop S60 from all of its flagship N-series consumer devices in favor of Maemo. Apparently, Nokia has been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response to the N900 OS even though the enthusiast package is not quite ready for mass-market appeal. Mind you, the transition won't be instantaneous as anyone with an N900 (and a clear mind) can attest -- the OS, services, and apps just can't compare to the mature S60 platform regardless of Maemo 5's superior user experience. As such, we'll continue to see N-Series handsets already in development pop with S60 on board alongside mass-market Maemo devices as the platform matures to the point that Nokia can make the full switch by 2012. Assuming, of course, Nokia doesn't end up adding webOS to its portfolio somewhere along the way.

Update: The Nokia Blog has what it claims is an official response from Nokia on this delicate matter. As you'd expect, Nokia says it remains "firmly committed to Symbian as our smartphone platform of choice." It then added this little gem: "Maemo is our software of choice for devices based on technology that you'd typically find inside a desktop computer. It delivers a different user experience and enables us to widen the market we can address." Perhaps you're even reading this on an ARM Cortex-A8 desktop PC right now?

[Thanks, Sockatume]

Amazon's US pre-order site hasn't heard the news yet nor has Nokia USA's on-line store. Nevertheless, Nokia assures us that the E72 is "in stores now" and should cost €350 (as announced) before taxes and carrier subsidies are applied. Remember, this S60-powered followup to the much loved E71 sports a new 5 megapixel autofocus camera, 3.5-mm headphone jack, microSD slot (4GB included in the box), A-GPS and integrated compass, 10.2Mbps HSDPA, and new optical navigation pad right where a thumb would like it. The E72 also packs the latest version of Ovi Maps and Nokia Messaging with homescreen access to your IM accounts. Now scram buster and let us know if your pre-orders have been filled -- this baby's not going to unbox itself.

There's solid evidence from its success on other platforms that Skyhook's unique WiFi-based positioning system makes a big difference in GPS usability on handsets -- and if you're looking for it on your Nokia, your moment has arrived. Maps Booster for S60 runs quietly in the background, augmenting the phone's built-in GPS capabilities to deliver faster, better results (theoretically, anyway) no matter what application you're using, which seems to make it a solid purchase if you spend much of your time trying to find your way through urban canyons, heavy vegetation, or some combination thereof. It'll be available early next week for $2.99.

With the N900 getting AWS support, there's every reason to believe that T-Mobile USA and Nokia want to make beautiful music together -- but in order to do that, they're going to need some quality hardware in the mix. Whether the S60 5th Edition-based 5230 qualifies as "quality hardware" is strictly a matter of personal opinion, but for what it's worth, Cell Phone Signal has raised some very good points about a recent FCC filing suggesting that the model is inbound. First off -- and most importantly -- the SAR report for model code RM-593 indicates that AWS 3G is supported, and overlaying the back of a 5230 with the filing's label document lines up perfectly. A slam dunk? No, it's not -- but considering how long it's been since T-Mobile's sold an S60-based device, the time might be right to get back into the game.

[Via Cell Phone Signal]

Android is in, Windows Mobile is in (despite rumors to the contrary), and Bada is definitely in for next year, according to Samsung senior vice president Don Joo Lee. Not making the phone manufacturer's cut? Symbian. Digitimes has it from the exec that its new proprietary mobile OS will be taking the place of the Nokia-friendly platform. Hey, all the phones to end a legacy on, the Omnia HD certainly isn't a bad swan song.

It's been a few months since Nokia's X6 hit the scene, but the touchscreen-based, S60-lovin' smartphone is just about ready to ship out to those who've managed to avoid all of the other stellar options that have launched since early September. It seems as if Nokia is gearing up to ship the phone in at least some parts of the world exactly a week from today in concert with a Rihanna release party. And if Expansys is correct, folks in the UK will see their orders ship out on November 12th. Too bad that £529.99 ($891) price tag is darn near debilitating, but hey, awesomeness has its price.

[Via Brighthand]

Read - Rihanna / Nokia shindig
Read - Expansys order page

Boy, we sure do love our early glimpses of pre-release hardware, and today we have not one, but two sources of purported pictures of the Sony Ericsson Kurara. Touted as a sibling to the Satio, the Kurara is mooted to have a 3.5-inch AMOLED touch-sensitive screen, 8.1 megapixel camera and, wait for it, 720p video recording. The image above seems to confirm this with a big "HD" inscription next to the camera lens, but that label is missing in the gallery below. We'll just put that inconsistency down to the extremely early samples on show, and start getting all frothed up in excitement over the possible UX inclusion on this Symbian S60 device when it starts selling in the first half of 2010.

[Via My Sony Ericsson and SlashPhone]

Read - PhonesDB
Read - Sony Ericsson Club

The good news: the alphanumeric dialer keypad was integrated into Symbian's codebase from a community-submitted suggestion.

The bad news: it took a community-submitted suggestion to make the dialer keypad alphanumeric.

We're not sure why the color pink tends to spawn special editions with greater frequency than other colors, but for pink lovers, it works out pretty nicely because you end up getting all sorts of free crap bundled with your phone simply for buying your favorite shade. Take Nokia's new Illuvial Collection, for example, which has taken the 5530, 6303, and 6700, dressed them up in a very hot shade of pink, and stuffed 'em in boxes with custom leather cases and straps. The pinkfest doesn't stop there, though: the phones also include custom themes which are dominated by -- you guessed it -- pink. It looks like all three models are already available from the UK's mobiles.co.uk, and other markets throughout Europe should be getting hooked up with at least some of these in the coming weeks.

[Via mobil.cz]

Read - 5530
Read - 6303
Read - 6700

Right on cue, the smaller-but-just-barely N97 mini is now ready for public consumption over in Europe. Granted, we're certainly at the tail end of October, but we can't say that we caught Nokia in a lie or anything based on what was said last month in Stuttgart. You've already committed the specifications to memory and read all about firmware 2.0, so now all that's left to do is run along, fork out €450 ($667) and wonder forever if this decision will positively or negatively change the course of your life.

Got an N97? Yeah? Reckoned that Nokia has forgotten about your loyalty and moved all of its focus onto the N900? Fret not, dearest early adopter -- the engineers in Espoo are making good on a promise to clear out lots of bugs in the aforesaid handset with firmware 2.0, and if we're seeing this right, it's available now to download all over the world. We know, you 5800 owners are clamoring for the same type of TLC, but for now it looks like the pricier sibling is getting its due. Hit the read link and get your download going, and make sure to report back on your kinetic scrolling experience, cool?

[Thanks, Daniel]

Nokia might be hemorrhaging smartphone marketshare to North America's meddling upstarts but it still dominates in total handsets sold worldwide. Today's news can only help that cause as Nokia taps into China's homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G marketplace for the first time. The Nokia 6788 does the honor via collaboration with China Mobile, China's (and the world's) largest mobile phone operator. The handset itself brings a 2.8-inch QVGA display, 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and dual-LED flash, 4GB of memory plus microSD expansion, GPS, 3.5mm headset jack, and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, all riding atop S60 3rd Edition -- not 5th as we're accustomed to seeing by now. Unfortunately, it won't start contributing to Nokia's sagging bottom-line until the end of December.

Strap yourselves in, folks, we're about to launch the Mudslinger 3000 again and figure out if any of it sticks. Lee Williams of Symbian starts off with a few attack volleys relating to Google's "fragmentation" of UI elements, and the resultant closed APIs being a nightmare to code for. With so many divergent UI elements and styles, he argues, developers would suffer, and the consequence would be a less vibrant app ecosystem. His major gripe with Google's mobile OS, though, has to do with the pervasive "cookie-ing" of customers, which raises the specter of privacy concerns. When asked directly by our buddy Om Malik whether he considers Android "more evil" than Apple's iPhone OS, Williams replied:

"I don't view Apple as evil, they're just greedy... Google, come on! When you have to say in your motto that we're not evil, right away the first question in my mind is, 'why do you have to tell me that?'"

All this must be tempered by the knowledge that Android is set to overtake large swathes of the mobile OS space, and some retaliatory trash talking is probably to be expected from the incumbent smartphone leader. Om does ask another sage question, in querying why Williams thinks companies are making such large investments into Android, and you'll find the answer to that and much more in the video past the break.

[Via MobileTechWorld; Thanks, fido]

Read - Lee Williams interview with GigaOM
Read - New York Times: 'Big Cellphone Makers Shifting to Android System'
Read - PCWorld: 'Android, Symbian Will Own Smartphones in 2012'