Streaming and subscription music services are a dime a dozen on iPhone, and they seem to get past Apple's app store approval hurdles with relative ease. But Spotify was one whose fate wasn't so clear cut, given its offline playlist function -- which as the name suggests downloads songs ahead of time for you to listen to when there's no WiFi or phone service to stream from -- could very easily fall into the category of "duplication of core iPhone functionality" and get deep-sixed at the drop of a hat. Turns out that's not the case here, as an Apple spokesperson has told paidContent UK that the app's been given the metaphorical stamp of approval and would be hitting the store "very soon." A premium subscription will run about £9.99 ($16.20) per month, with an option to pay annually coming at a later date. Of course, there's a catch, as Spotify's service is only available in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain for now. The company expects to invade America sometime later this year, but that means another round of app store approvals -- and with Apple's track record on consistency, there's no telling how that'll turn out.

2.6GHz is fast emerging as a favored slot for LTE spectrum in Europe, but Finland's bucking the trend with an auction of some space in the 1800MHz band -- space that carriers TeliaSonera, Elisa, and DNA have snapped up. The frequency is touted as effectively being a lower-cost option for 4G deployment because it's better suited for range and penetration, meaning fewer base stations need to be deployed. Theoretically, the net effect should be that LTE networks get deployed faster in the country, but as we know all too well from 3G deployments, spectrum diversity always leads to fractured hardware availability; of course, with Nokia right in the backyard, we bet 1800 ends up getting all the support it needs to be successful.

You'd think a company like Nokia could just finance whatever it wanted, but just to be safe, it's signing a loan agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB) to the tune of €500 million ($623.9 million). Why the sudden need for cash? According to Reuters, the five-year loan will be used in part to "finance software research and development (R&D) projects Nokia is undertaking during 2009-2011 to make Symbian-based smartphones more competitive." More specifically, those R&D activities will "also benefit the work of the Symbian Foundation and its development of open-source software for mobile devices." Sadly, that's absolutely it for details, but we get the idea we'll be hearing more about this soon. We hear you can accomplish some pretty wild goals with a half billion Euros.

As with most other cellphone makers (and companies in general), Nokia managed to lose a bit of cash, market share and dignity in the completely brutal past quarter. That said, it's still doing leaps and bounds better than most, but that glimmer isn't stopping it from shutting down its Jyväskylä site and scaling back at its Salo production facility (pictured). According to Nokia, this is all part of its ongoing plan to "increase cost-efficiency and adapt to the market situation," and with the closings, it'll concentrate mobile devices R&D in Finland at Tampere, Oulu, Salo (though to a lesser extent) and the Helsinki metropolitan area. It's expected that all of the 320 employees at Jyväskylä will be sent packing by the end of this year, while temporary layoffs will be issued on a "rotational basis" (sounds thrilling, no?) at Salo. More details are stored away in the read link, but we'd avoid the depression that's lurking unless your day has just been entirely too awesome.

It was just yesterday that Reuters predicted Nokia's Comes With Music service was headed for something of a pilgrimage through the wilds of Europe, and now we have the official confirmation of this "pan European" expansion. The company has secured partnerships with music licensing and publishing big-wigs in Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, and is indicating that Singapore and Australia are next on its to-do list. Alas there was no mention of other nations getting any sort of attention, meaning Nokia handsets in the New World are unlikely to come with anything but guilt for the forseeable future.

It's apparently estimated that those wild Japanese handsets can cost anywhere from 10 to 20 billion yen to develop, which translates to a range of $110 million to $220 million -- yes, close to a quarter billion frickin' dollars just to pump out one phone (no wonder Mitsu tapped out). The Nokia-backed NoTA initiative, short for Network on Terminal Architecture, hopes to fix all that by compartmentalizing a phone's functions into swappable modules that all know how to play nice with each other out of the box -- think of it like a Lego set for phone makers. If Nokia's estimates are even close to right, the potential benefits of NoTA are staggering, with development time for new models slashed by two-thirds and costs cut by 98 to 99 percent. The company is working with parts suppliers to get NoTA adopted, and a number of Japanese handset manufacturers have apparently expressed interest as well. Don't suppose the interest has to do with saving 9.9 billion yen per model, does it?

Read - Nokia claims 98 to 99 percent development savings with NoTA [Warning: subscription required]
Read - NXP's NoTA primer

Ok ok, we hear you tipsters, iPhone now official for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia "later this year" thanks to a deal between Apple and TeliaSonera. At this point, only The Netherlands seems to be out of the loop in Europe.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

While those in London can use SMS to actually find a lavatory, folks passing through Western Finland will be required to bust out their handset in order to relieve themselves in select public restrooms. In an attempt to curb vandalism, the Finnish Road Administration has implemented a system along Highway 1 which requires restroom visitors to text "Open" (in Finnish, of course) in order to let themselves in. The idea is that folks will be less likely to lose their mind and graffiti up the place knowing that their mobile number is (at least temporarily) on file, but it remains to be seen if uprooters will simply take their defacing ways elsewhere or actually excrete in peace.

[Via Switched]

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has ordered Nokia's Japan unit to "report by next Friday on details of a series of accidents" involving Matsushita's li-ion batteries that were recently found to have, shall we say, toasty tendencies. Reportedly, the ministry had phoned up Nokia Japan President Tyler McGee to hear his explanation, but apparently, it has deemed that more details are necessary. It seems the purpose here is to examine whether there were "any problems with Nokia Japan's handling of the overheating accidents," and considering that it purportedly took 16 days (6 more than the limit) for that unit to report initially on the problem, it may already be in a bit of hot water.

We've all seen those kid-friendly plastic stickers that the younger set tends to slap on their handsets in order to amp their ego, but Nokia's taking the decoration idea pretty seriously. Apparently, the firm is working with Finnish artist Björn Weckström to actually offer a "customized, limited edition Nokia N76" that will only be for sale at the Helsinki Nokia Flagship store. Additionally, there will be other pieces available to jazz up your already purchased Nokia mobile, but there's no word just yet on what exactly you can expect it to look like. We'd say the best jewelry is just an entirely new handset, eh?

It appears that the FCC and Nokia have been quite the busy bunch with all the phones that are getting the go-ahead -- and we might as well add another to the list. The commission has decided to add Nokia's latest Nseries offspring to the list, the N76. The device is quadband GSM with some UMTS love mixed in for good measure, though it's only single band and we wouldn't hold our breath for North American compatibility. Roundin' out the feature set will be a music player with several formats supported, Bluetooth, and expandable memory via microSD. Nokia also makes mention for a 2 megapixel shooter with a flash under the hood as well. With Nokia's reputation for their attention to detail, we've come to expect a lot out of the Nseries, and it's lookin' like the N76 won't disappoint.

Just when we thought we had this whole cellphones do / don't cause cancer bit was behind us, here comes another study to say that they in fact do. The study, which was put together by Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, suggests that people who used cellphones longer than 10 years were 40 percent more likely to develop gliomas (a nervous system tumor) on the side of the head where the cellphone's radiation would enter the head. While we are aware of several studies that go either way on the matter, Microwave News' editor Louis Slesin thinks it is "compelling evidence" because, "We now have two tumor types found among people who use mobiles for more than 10 years shown by two different research groups." Of course, a rebuttal from the Mobile Operators Association said otherwise: "The findings related to tumor location are difficult to interpret." It's hard to really form an opinion considering the amount of data that consistently contradicts itself, but you can decide for yourself when the findings are published in International Journal of Cancer later this year. For now, we will have faith in our mobiles and pray that later on down the line we're not on the wrong end of the impending "I told you so."