Jeebus, Nokia, what's going on with your stupid flip phone over there? Not to harsh on you too much -- we love you, really we do -- but we're not exactly talking about an N96-caliber device here. If an updated view of Verizon's Mobile Email launches is accurate, it seems that the launch of Nokia's CDMA-equipped 7205 will now come no earlier than January of 2009, which would put it a full year after the first spy shots leaked. We also see here that LG's VX5500 and VX8360 are both tracking for late October, while the mysterious VX9600 should be hitting in November if all goes well. From Motorola, the VU30 has been pushed out to the end of this month and the MING-esque ZN4 is looking like it's trying to break out in time for Halloween. Samsung is offering the u810 global phone later on this month, while the u650 "Sway" sneaks in somewhere in October. Altogether a promising autumn for Big Red's dumbphone line -- but we've seen enough date slips at this point to be fooled into believing there won't be a few more.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Bad news, Greg Brown of Motorola fame: when you told Crain's Chicago Business last week that the portfolio of 34 phones you intend to announce before the year's out includes devices capable of "touch and messaging," it turns out the reporter with whom you spoke already knew. In fact, Crain's specifically calls out a Touch competitor codenamed "Halo," and existence of the full-touchscreen Blaze for Verizon is no secret; while we're not exactly sure what you mean by "messaging," a healthy portion of your handsets already support SMS and MMS (as well they should), and you've got the QWERTY thing taken care of with devices like the Q9 series and the Sidekick Slide. You also mentioned that we can reasonably expect to see such electronic wizardry on shelves by Christmas, which is totally bangin' considering the financial pickle your firm is trying to work its way through at the moment. Seriously though, Greg, we didn't mean to harsh your buzz here -- just thought you might want to know your cover's blown, so you can move right past the "ooh, mysterious unreleased phone!" phase.

[Image via Boy Genius Report]

Remember that touchscreen Motorola Blaze we'd mentioned a while back that was on the hook to get Verizon's visual voicemail service? It may not be in Verizon stores yet, but it's all up in Boy Genius Report's labs with a dark red body, MING attitude, and almost limitless mediocrity on board. The touchscreen apparently requires ridiculous amounts of effort to actuate, and that problem is compounded by a lame on-screen keyboard that makes texting tricky at best. EV-DO Rev. A is cool and all -- and the visual voicemail support should be a pretty popular add-on feature -- but that giant Motorola logo up front with the red ring and three pounds of chrome leaves the Blaze with a face only a mother could love. Let's hope Verizon's positioning this one as its low-end touchscreen offering, because we're not seeing it cha-chinging many registers otherwise.

Details are still trickling in on this whole visual voicemail sitch on Big Red, but we're starting to wrap our noodle around it. In addition to the four devices we've already mentioned -- the Voyager refresh, Chocolate 3, Blaze, and Utopia -- it turns out that none other than the mighty BlackBerry Thunder will be among the first devices to benefit from sooper dooper 22nd century high-tech voicemail management.

We've also learned that it's actually the Vu30 (little close to the LG Vu, eh, guys?) that's being called the Motorola Utopia, while the Blaze will be some heretofore unknown touchscreen device -- pretty uncommon by Moto standards, particularly in the States where we don't get to benefit from the MING series' awesomeness. As always, we'll roll out more info as we get it.

A reader was sent a rather revealing "consumer survey" this week, and though the carrier (or manufacturer) responsible for commissioning it wasn't revealed, we're thinking AT&T may have been behind this one. Why's that? Well, several phones -- most real, one rendered -- were shown during the course of the survey, and one of the devices was an AT&T-branded Pantech QWERTY slider that we've straight up never seen before, so unless there's some funny business going on, no other carrier should have access to that intel. In fact, the whole survey was focused on text messaging and text-centric, QWERTY handsets, asking questions about what sorts of form factors and features customers would like to see to improve their messaging experience. Also pictured were a Sidekick Slide (presumably for comparison's sake), a Samsung QWERTY slider sporting looks similar to the i620 and i640 (minus Windows Mobile, seemingly), and a rendered, unbranded device touting a gargantuan display and a number of available colors. The reader was asked what name they thought best suited this particular phone, and the choices were "Blaze," "Quickfire," and "Reveal." Needless to say, we're not so sure how we feel about putting an "AT&T Blaze" in our pockets -- but if it happens, at least we know who to blame.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]