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.

That delightful little gift to original N95 owners in the form of firmware v30 has now spread to the European-spec N95 8GB, too, offering better battery life (allegedly), a new Flash Lite client, upgraded media player, "enablers" for Comes With Music (sounds promising), and a host of other tweaks that make the N95 better than ever. In fact, it might have some N95-1 and N95-2 owners saying "N96 who?" -- but North American N95-3 and N95-4 owners, as usual, might let their eyes wander toward the newer piece anyway since there's no indication when they'll be seeing the upgrade.

To be fair, Continental Mobiles' diamond-encrusted Nokia N95 is a real bargain at £10,000 ($19,813) when compared to Amosu's £12,000 alternative, but seriously, real richies should be holding off for the evolutionary N96, anyway. For those with enough cash to care, this particular handset / status symbol packs a Sterling silver front-panel stacked with "4.42ct of brilliant-cut, VS1 quality, color G-H, naturally mined diamonds." If you're craving one, you'd better get your order in now, as it takes the British craftspeople crazy enough to sell these things three full weeks to whip one up.

[Via Pocket-lint]

We don't know too much about the clip you're about to watch, but we can tell you this: someone has apparently gone and gotten Android up and running on a Nokia N95, and they've captured it on the lowest quality video we've ever seen. It's unclear whether this is natively installed or not, but it seems to be getting data (as you can see Google Maps doing its thing). The dialer is also brought up and appears to make a call -- but it's pretty hard to know if that's just a demo of the app or if this guy actually has a semi-functional Android device. Check the video after the break and judge for yourself.

[Thanks, John]

Call us loony, but it sure seems like Nokia's heralded N95 ends up in the middle of quite a few DIY endeavors. Sure enough, said mobile is at the heart of Sittiphol Phanvilai's latest project: NeuScreen. Put as simply as possible, the project creates a multi-touch engine for the N95, and in the demonstration waiting after the jump, a simple pen light is used to control objects on a TV screen that is connected to the aforementioned handset. Confused? Give the video a look, that always clears things right up.

[Thanks, Moses]

It isn't hard to see to perks to Apple's "one size fits all" approach to software for the iPhone and iPod touch. After making N95-3 (the regular ol' N95 for North America) users wait months to get the software updates of their European counterparts, it took 'em another few days to get the N95-4 (the 8GB version for North America) up to snuff as well. Of course, the N95 8GB already had a few of the software improvements, but this seems to pull it in line with the v20 firmware all the cool kids are rocking. Unfortunately it's not all gravy, you're going to have to do all the heavy lifting of backing up and re-installing your apps, and we've been having trouble getting the update to work at all on our particular 8GB -- we'll let you know how that goes. Still, the speed gains are (probably) worth all the hassle, so fire that sucker up and get updating!

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Update: Problem solved, turned out to be a bum USB port on the PC we were using. You may also run into Vista compatibility issues using Nokia's Software Update app, though we had no problems when we told Vista to front like XP SP2 using the shortcut. Proceed at your own risk!

Last week Nokia promised an update was coming to the North American version its venerable N95, the N95-3. But, the company played coy and failed to mention any details other than availability in "early June." We're not even out of May yet but the 20.2.011 firmware update is ready and initial reports are good. Boot time has been reduced to 19-seconds from about 30, camera start-up is now a quite snappy two seconds, support for Flash video has been added, and there's even a suite of new N-Gage game demos included in the deal. That's the sort of update we can sink our teeth into -- even if European N95-1 users have already been chewing it for months.

[Via Part-time phone reviewer; thanks Moses]

Nokia's N95 had made for a popular knockoff target, but usually, the result is... you know, about the same size as the original. Not so with the Leady MM95, though, which rests comfortably within the palm of a hand and packs an FM radio with scheduled recording capability, VGA camera (a far cry from the N95's 5 megapixels, granted), support for six languages, microSD slot, and a dual-band GSM radio that should be just enough to get by in Europe and Asia as long as you don't rely on data too heavily. Given the accuracy of the details and the variety of colors available, we can envision N95 owners buying this one to perform a few "magic tricks" on their friends, making videos entitled "Paul Bunyan talking on an N95," and just generally making sure that hilarity ensures. Your results may vary, of course -- especially when you realize that the phone functionality is worth a big, fat goose egg in the States.

[Thanks, Jack G.]

It's been a solid tick since the North American N95, also referred to as the N95-3, received a software update. For those clamoring for a little love from Nokia's dev team, listen up: an administrator over at the outfit's forums has admitted that the Software Update crew has a new version in the works. We're told that they've heard the demands for a fresh release, and they're toiling away in order to bring it to N95-3 owners by early June. Unfortunately, we're not told what new features we can expect, and even worse, "early June" seems like eons away, doesn't it?

[Via Symbian-Guru]

Get this: the first North American carrier to offer up Nokia's 8GB N95 isn't AT&T. Heck, it's not even a US-based operator. No friends, it's Canada's own Rogers Wireless. Just as we had heard late last month, the N95 8GB has officially landed in the Great North, and starting on May 6th, consumers up that way will be able to secure one for a hefty $399.99 with a three-year activation on the Rogers Vision Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan. Don't weep too heavily, AT&T users -- your time should be coming soon.

For a phone that came out in 2006, it's kinda surprising how much interest (both from carriers and end users) that the Nokia N95 series continues to enjoy. With any luck, we'll be seeing it launch on AT&T later this year -- but Rogers is apparently poised to beat 'em to the punch. Mobile In Canada reports that Canada's 800-pound GSM behemoth intends to launch the N95 (the North American, non-8GB model, as far as we can tell) as early as May 2nd -- which, alongside the already-launched Sony Ericsson K850i, makes for a powerful one-two combo of 5 megapixel 3G Europhones. Only time will tell, but we're feeling good about this one, folks; only question is, N95 8GB next?

Nothing shows your complete and unwavering devotion to a handset maker like buying an ultra-rare vehicle with its logos on there, wouldn't you agree? Those vigorously nodding up and down (well, those vigorously nodding up and down in Brazil) can get set to grab a limited edition Renault Sandero, which will come "fully equipped with Nokia's navigation system and [undisclosed] car add-ons." The super-special Sandero will come stocked with an N95 and cost around €17,650 ($27,693), but you'd better hurry, as only 1,000 of these niche motorcars are being built. It's like Nokia heard your cries for letting the chance to nab one of those co-branded Twingos slip through your too-busy-texting thumbs or something.

The user community already had a number of hacks available for this, but you can't help but get a warm fuzzy every time a manufacturer snatches up cool functionality and bundles it into the official firmware. N95 8GB firmware v20.0.016 is now out and about, offering automatic screen rotation based on the device's in-built accelerometers (why this wasn't functional out of the box is beyond us, considering the requisite hardware was already in place) along with browser and WiFi updates. As always, we suspect this is hitting the Euro-spec N95-2 first -- but we imagine an update for the N95-4 can't be far behind.

[Via All About Symbian]

So Mobile Review's got its Sony Ericsson G700 review up in all its epic, War & Peace-style glory that the site is so well known for. Don't get us wrong, that's all well and good; it's an interesting phone and there's no question that we'll get around to reading the sucker from beginning to end in the near future. What really has our immediate attention, though, is one of the test photos taken with the G700's camera depicting some sort of touch user interface on a Nokia N95. Judging from everything we've seen of Nokia's own S60 touch UI, we can say with confidence that this ain't it; besides, the N95's design language is dead (just take one hard look at the N96 to confirm it) so we can't imagine some future device out of Espoo retrofitting a touchscreen onto an N95's shell. So what's going on here? Even if it's a third-party program, it can't work. It just can't. Or can it?

[Via Perpetuum Smoking Mobile]

Update: Turns out this is from the new Knight Rider series. Cars with Mac keyboards, modified N95s with touchscreens -- what other implausible goodies do these guys get? Thanks, everyone!