So it turns out that Nokia may have been just a little presumptuous in its June announcement that it was buying the entirety of Symbian in its effort to open-source it. The press release's headline back then proudly proclaimed "Nokia to acquire Symbian Limited to enable evolution of the leading open mobile platform," but in reality, Nokia had only gotten firm commitments representing 91 percent of Symbian's outstanding shares in total at the time; Samsung hadn't yet agreed to the sale. Espoo merely said at the time that it "expected" a deal to happen there -- and now it finally has, giving Nokia the clean sweep it needs to make its Symbian Foundation dreams reality. It'll still be a good while yet before we see Foundation hardware at retail, but at least these guys can go about their business now without a nagging feeling that Sammy could be the party buzzkill.

[Via Phone Scoop]

We won't kid ourselves here -- you know good and well what Nokia's N96 looks, feels and tastes like, but given that it just started shipping in Europe within the last 24 hours, we figured it prudent to pass along the first proper unboxing of the retail unit. Like we said, don't expect any surprises with this one, but we still suspect you'll leave the video waiting after the jump with a smile on your face.

[Thanks, Steve]

Hey, it's not September 15th yet! Nevertheless, Nokia's flagship N96 is now shipping in Europe for €550 before taxes and subsidies. Yes, the very same 5 megapixel, dual-sliding media powerhouse with 16GB of storage spotted all the way back in December of last year. By now you should be familiar with the specs, hands-ons, tear-downs, and reviews. Unless, perhaps, you stumbled upon us while looking for Ms Trudy's Crochet and Needlepoint, we know that Engadget Mobile's Magenta colors can be confusing.

Barely a month after Nokia's North American E71 went on sale at the Chicago / New York flagship stores, we've received word that the QWERTY-less sibling (that'd be the E66) has now arrived at the same locales. The quad-band slider boasts support for AT&T's 3G network, and there's also a 3.2-megapixel camera, GPS, WiFi and all the other goodies you'd expect from another solid S60 contender. Snap it up now in Grey Steel for $540.

[Via IntoMobile]

Nokia's "free," all-you-can-eat, music subscription service is set to world premier in the UK next month before hitting continental Europe and Asia in 2009. Nokia already has Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music on board and plans to have EMI signed before launch -- in total, Nokia expects to offer some 2.1 million tracks at launch. While touted as free, the service costs will be baked into the price of Nokia's pre-pay 5310 XpressMusic Comes With Music Edition handset (currently priced between £70-£80 for the pay-as-you-go, non-CwM handset) when purchased though the UK's Carphone Warehouse. You must then purchase another CwM-compatible device at the end of the year in order to continue downloading tracks. For those not wishing to re-up with Nokia, your 5310 CwM edition phone will continue to make / receive calls and text messages and, like your computer, continue to playback all those DRM-wrapped WMA tracks -- they will not play anywhere else. While the approach is interesting, the DRM-enabled time-bomb and device lock-in makes the entire model sound fatally flawed to us -- though we're sure that'll be hacked away soon enough. Come on Amazon, now is the time to take your MP3 store global and show these fools how it's done.

Update: Expect the service to launch at, or shortly after, a Nokia Comes With Music press event scheduled for October 2nd.

[Via mocoNews]

Read -- FT
Read -- Guardian
Read -- Nokia press release

Nokia's slim and slick E71 has been touted -- OK, rumored, but we're hopeful -- to have its eyes set on the number two GSM provider in Canada, FIDO. While no pricing info is being bandied about, the "news" does see it landing during the November timeframe. Rogers, FIDO's parent company and only GSM competition -- at least for now -- has apparently passed on this little QWERTY gem, though these kind of stories do change with time. Look for more news once we get something a little more tangible.

A little URL hacking by Engadget fan Leo, has revealed Sprint's new My Xohm site and loads of service information. The site is clearly in a preparatory state with plenty of dead links and Latin dummy-text holding the pre-launch site format together. Nevertheless, there is quite a bit of detail here, some of which is certainly more than just idle filler. For example, based on the current text, we can expect the following at service launch in September:

• Nokia's N810 WiMAX Edition -- looks like a lock based on the liberal use of its image (above) across the pages.
  
• XOHM USB (ZTE's TU25) modem.
  
• XOHM Express Card (Samsung's SWC-E100) modem with optional PCMCIA adapter.
  
• XOHM Modem (ZyXel's MAX-206M2) Ethernet hub / router with optional 4-hour battery -- unfortunately, XOHM will not offer static IP addresses at this time.
  
• The XOHM portal (whatever that is) supports both Windows and OS X. However, the modems listed above and Sprint's XOHM Connection Manager software are PC-only, sorry Mac owners.
  

Unfortunately, we can't find any specific pricing information but the site does tell us that access will be sold by the day or by the month without binding contracts or cancellation fees. It also promises speeds between 2-4Mbps for downloads and 1-3Mbps for uploads. Not sure that's worth the move to Baltimore but it's certainly given us cause to pause at the thought. See the modems pictured after the break.

[Thanks, Leo S.]

Read -- General Support FAQ
Read -- Pricing and Speed
Read -- My Xohm
Read -- Devices

We pretty much gathered that the 6650 was real from that page on Nokia's domain that has since been pulled, but if there was any lingering doubt, this should take care of it. The specs here confirm what Nokia had spilled -- most importantly, that the radio is rocking HSDPA on the 850 and 1900MHz bands, just what the doctor ordered to get some action on AT&T. A quick perusal of the manual shows that it's N-Gage compatible, though we were a bit surprised to see mentions of video calling; our guess is that they just haven't updated it for AT&T's inexplicable aversion to that particular feature yet. It'll also feature S60 3.2, so if you're in the States and S60 is how you roll, this puppy's got to be on your short list. Our money is on it getting official at CTIA next week.

[Via Phone Scoop]

Hey, S60 owners, have you had this nagging sense over the past year or two that you're somehow getting slighted by Nokia, but you haven't been able to put your finger on why? No worries, we've figured it out: it's the calculator. Nokia's mainstream dumbphone platform has featured a far better and more capable built-in calculator app than S60 for a while now, which really doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense; granted, you can get better ones from third-party developers, but the point is you shouldn't have to. Thankfully, Nokia agrees, and they've started to toy around with the idea of replacing the S60 calc with its little brother's -- a relatively easy process, since the latter is written in Java. On one hand, it'd be a shame to see a core S60 app move from native code to Java, but on the other hand, if it's a better app and the JVM is transparent, who really cares? Anyway, the ported app is chilling in Nokia's Beta Labs as we speak, just waiting for customer feedback before the higher-ups make a judgment call on whether to integrate it into future S60 releases. The power's in your hands, people, so you may as well take advantage.

Well, here's one we didn't see coming: it seems that AT&T has wised up to the fact that Americans like their Symbian (well, at least a few of 'em do, anyway) and wants to keep S60-equipped options on the table. Yes, granted, AT&T is a founding member of the Symbian Foundation, but the proof is in the pudding, and the last Nokia smartphone to land there was the N75 in May of last year -- an eternity by mobile standards. More recently, the N75 grew up, got sexy, picked up some brushed metal, and emerged in Europe earlier this year; now, it's surprisingly and unexpectedly been retooled with North American 3G spectrum. It's got a 2.2-inch QVGA primary display, 160 x 128 secondary, 2-megapixel cam, AT&T Navigator (which means GPS), push-to-talk support, and HSDPA 850 / 1900 to compliment quadband EDGE. We don't know exactly when it's coming, but for S60 fans who cringe at the thought of having to blow several hundred on an unlocked set every time they want some fresh hardware, this should be welcome news.

[Thanks, Al and Oscar M.]

For Nokia, WiFi and VoIP have seemingly gone hand-in-hand for as long as 802.11 radios have been offered in S60 handsets. It makes sense, of course -- the internet is a great way to yap at little or no expense compared to plain old cellular voice minutes when a traditional WiFi hotspot is available, and Nokia was really ahead of the curve with jumping on the bandwagon and making sure that the capability has been available out of the box. Unfortunately, it looks like constant carrier pressure may have finally gotten the better of Espoo, with GigaOM confirming that 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 doesn't contain a SIP stack built-in the same way that FP1 historically has. That doesn't mean VoIP products are totally locked out, but it does mean that apps that rely on the native stack are out of luck until they've implemented a new stack of their own. Products like the N78 and N96 are affected by the buffoonery, while the E71, which uses FP1, is not -- a good thing, considering the corporate affinity for VoIP and the Eseries' business leanings.

[Via jkOnTheRun, thanks BFish]

We're not going to re-hash the details of Nokia's N79 and N85 yet again. After all, we just went through it less than 24-hours ago. We will tell you that both the N79 (tri-band GSM, 900/2100 UMTS/HSDPA) and N85 (quad-band GSM/EDGE with either 900/1900/2100 or 850/1900/2100 UMTS/HSDPA) will hit Europe in October for €350 and €450, respectively, pre-tax and pre-carrier subsidies. The N85 could also be Stateside sometime soon given those frequencies and prior FCC approval. Oh, and pictures, lots of pretty pictures.

Read -- N79
Read -- N85