The 5800 XpressMusic is stealing the lion's share of the spotlight today, but the first S60 5th Edition handset out there actually isn't the first to get hooked up with Nokia's all-you-can-eat Comes With Music service. That honor will instead go to the lowly 5310 XpressMusic candybar, which will get access to about 2 million track downloads when it hits Carphone Warehouse in the UK in prepaid form for £130 (about $228) on October 16, a day earlier than rumored. Other models will have to wait, though Comes With Music versions of the N95 8GB and 5800 are both planned.

A recent Reuters article doesn't mention a specific model (although we have our hunches), but one thing's for sure: some kind of Comes with Music handset is launching on October 17th. We had previously assumed that October 2nd would be the go-live date for the intriguing music bundle, but retailer Carphone Warehouse has now made clear that Britain won't be able to buy in until a few weeks later. As predicted, a Nokia spokesman declined to comment, so we'd go ahead and pencil (key word: pencil) this one into your increasingly crowded datebook.

[Via MobileBurn]

We put "free" in quotes for a reason, and now it seems the dark, nasty truth could be upon us. While pre-order prices on a retailer's website should be taken as pure speculation and nothing more, a couple of notable examples reveal £70 to £85 premiums on the Comes with Music version of two phones. For instance, Expansys offers up Nokia's N95 8GB for £394.99, but the CwM edition is a stiff £479.99. It's hard to say if the prices are jacked up by Nokia's directive, but again, we aren't getting too riled up until these things launch for real.

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

So Hop-On apparently got tired of showing rendered vaporware after rendered vaporware and finally came to the table with some real products, but there's a little problem: one of them, the HOP1803, is a dead ringer for Nokia's XpressMusic 5310. We figure Hop-On probably just went to their friendly local manufacturer in Shenzen and ordered a handful of products to start distributing, which is totally cool, but they either failed to turn on their blatant ripoff radar while they were shopping around or simply didn't care. If it's any consolation, Nokia, the 5310's specs totally smack around the HOP1803's, though we're guessing the "X-Press Music" branding on the side of the doppelganger might still attract some legal wrath -- especially since Hop-On allegedly plans to try hawking this thing in the States.

[Via Slashphone]

Nokia's 9.9mm wonder with the 3.5mm headphone jack, the 5310 XpressMusic, has found its way north from T-Mobile to Canada's Rogers. In a best-case scenario, the phone will run you $99.99 CAD (about $101) on a three-year contract after rebate, which includes a 1GB microSD card in-box -- but let's be honest, we both know that you'll want something just a little bit beefier than 1GB if you're serious enough about your music to put this one in your pocket, so expect to spend just a little bit more by the time it's all said and done.

[Via MobileSyrup]

T-Mobile's no stranger to Nokia's XpressMusic series of funky little music phones, and the tradition continues today with the introduction of the 5310. This colorful candybar has some pretty solid street cred as a viable music player, too, with a microSD slot, svelte 9.9mm body and -- most importantly -- a real 3.5mm jack for the headphones of your choosing. You've also got a 2 megapixel camera and a QVGA display to play with, both of which'll surely come in handy for entertainment while you're waiting for data to pull down over the EDGE radio (sorry, T-Mobile, we couldn't help ourselves). It'll run $49.99 on contract starting May 28 in black with your choice of purple, orange, or red accents.

TmoNews has published a laundry list of devices that it says will launch between June 16 and August 1 -- 13, to be exact, with another three that aren't listed. That's a positively Japan-esque release pace, a breakneck schedule that we're having a hard time believing. To its credit, several launches that are known or well-rumored to be in the pipe are listed here, including the Motorola E8, Shadow II, Samsung t229 and t339, and Nokia 5610, but to its discredit, fanciful devices like an alleged Shadow III are also in the mix along with the BlackBerry Bold, which AT&T has an exclusive on following its launch over there that should easily prevent T-Mob from picking it up by August 1. Of course, there could be some wiggle room on those dates, and again, most of these devices seem totally plausible -- but for now we've got to file this squarely in the "we want to believe" category.

[Thanks, Chris W.]

Ah, here's Nokia's new XpressMusic 5610 and 5310 in the flesh -- well, in the plastic. Right away one can tell the 5310 is quite thin (about half the thickness of the 5610), yet manages to fit a 3.5mm headphone jack, while the 5610 is far thicker and only has the 2.5mm jack variety. Oook. Both feel acceptably sturdy, and we actually do kind of like the left-right rocker on the 5610; we've only had these S40 devices for a few hours, so it's a little early on yet, but we likes what we're seeing thus far. Check out the hands-on shots below.

Nokia has added two models to its music oriented XpressMusic series today. The 5310 candybar clocks in at just 9.9mm thick, offers 18 hours of music playback -- through the 3.5mm jack if you're so inclined -- a microSD slot supporting capacities up to 4GB, dedicated music controls, and a QVGA display for €225 (about $307) when it ships in the fourth quarter. Next up, the 5610 rocks a slider form factor and features a nifty slide navigation bar underneath the display, metallic and high-gloss finishes, a 2.2 inch QVGA display, 3.2 megapixel camera, microSD slot, and close to a full day of music playback for a tad more than its sibling, €300 (about $410), with a drop date also in Q4.

The N81 slider apparently isn't the only device up Nokia's sleeve for tomorrow morning. Gearfuse scored some shots of the 8GB N95 along with the XpressMusic 5310, 5610, and 5700 series (looking positively lovely in black, may we add), all of which are presumably destined for the announcement docket. Anyone else getting pumped for the official news?