Rumors have been swirling around on the Internet some time now about the Nokia N96, because it was supposed to meld the brawn of the N95 with the gaming goodness of the N81.As far as we can tell, this glossy black wonder totally delivers on all fronts. It really isn’t much of a stretch to say that the Nokia N96 super smartphone marries the best of both worlds for the N81 and N95.

On the one hand it has stuff like Symbian 60 and a 5MP camera like the N95, but it has more of the appearance of the N81, along with the N-Gage gaming platform. But the N96 brings more to the table too. There’s 16GB of internal memory in this puppy, which is double what the N95 8GB offers. What’s more, the display is a glorious 2.8-incher, they’ve tossed in DVB-H for digital TV, a kickstand for desktop viewing, and funky backlit touch buttons that morph to suit the current needs. Music brings up the usual rewind and fast-forward, whereas N-Gage brings up gaming controls. Expect the Nokia N96 to launch with an asking price of about $800, but it probably won’t have support for US 3G.

Sales of smartphones are expected to overtake those of laptops in the next 12 to 18 months as the mobile phone completes its transition from voice communications device to multimedia computer. Convergence has been the Holy Grail for mobile phone makers, software and hardware partners, as well as consumers, for more than a decade.

And for the first time the rhetoric of companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola, who have boasted of putting a multimedia computer in your pocket, no longer seems far fetched.” Converged devices are always with you and always connected,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia chief executive at last week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Last year Nokia sold almost 200m camera phones and about 146m music phones, making it the world’s biggest seller of digital cameras and MP3 players.

In the coming year the firm predicts it will sell 35 million GPS-enabled phones as personal navigation becomes the latest feature to be assimilated into the mobile phone. Form and functionNigel Clifford, chief executive of Symbian, said: “All of those single use devices - MP3 players, digital camera, GPS - are collapsing onto the phone.” We are going past the point where this was a phone with a few other things,” he said. Symbian’s operating system shipped on 188 million phones last year and a third of those came with GPlS. “We see mobile phones evolving into multi-functional devices that now support consumer electronics, multimedia entertainment and mobile professional enterprise applications; all converging,” said Luis Pineda, from mobile phone chip firm Qualcomm.

Nokia’s to the Xpressmusic series are finally here. The 5610 and 5310 Xpressmusic phones have a variety of features to users not including the obvious fact of having an apparently better music player than some of the previous models. Let’s not forget that Nokia has also decided to take on a rather edgy look with these phones with a black finish with either Blue or Red portions.

The 5610 is a slider phone that comes equipped with Aluminum side panels, a 2.2 inch display with 16 million colors and a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. The company says that it offers up to 22 hours of music playback. We’ll have to wait and see after the review to confirm that of course. It supports external memory with microSD cards up to 4GB. The 5610 Xpressmusic also features a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus and dual LED flash. The handset uses 3G technology, Bluetooth with A2DP, the new standardized microUSB v2.0 and also has an FM radio with RDS. It supports MP3, MP4, AAC, eAAc, and WMA formats.

Nova media has released version 5.1 of its iSync phone plug-ins. A free update for users who purchased the software within the past year, Nova’s iSync plug-ins cost 9.95 euros (US$14.65).

The plug-ins enable your Mac to exchange Address Book and iCal information with cell phones that Apple doesn’t support from the factory with Mac OS X v10.4 or v10.5. They extend the number of compatible phones to include 130 additional models from Ben, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. New to this release is support for Nokia’s 3500 Classic, 7900, E51, N82 and N95 8GB cell phones. The plug-ins require Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later, including Leopard.

Dimming Wall Street hopes for a profit, Motorola Inc. said on Wednesday it will post an operating loss in the current quarter because its mobile phone business is taking longer to turn around than expected. The company, whose weak cell phone product line caused it to lose customers to rivals like Nokia and Samsung Electronics in 2007, warned of further market share losses this quarter and back pedaled off its forecast for its mobile devices division to return to profitability in 2008. Motorola forecast a first-quarter loss per share from continuing operations of 5 U.S. cents to 7 cents, before any reorganization charges. Analysts had expected a profit of 9 cents per share, according to Reuters Estimates. “The figures had us scratching our heads, checking the date to see if we were looking at an earnings release from 2002,” JPMorgan analyst Ehud Gelblum said in a note to clients. Some analysts questioned if Motorola would stay intact after its outlook overshadowed quarterly results that were in line with expectations.

Activist shareholder Carl Icahn has called for a break-up of the company. He was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday. “They’re flirting with the handset death spiral. They’re losing share, which makes them smaller, which makes them less competitive on costs, which makes their phones less compelling, which loses more share,” said Charter Equity Research analyst Ed Snyder. Asked about the potential for a company break-up, Motorola Chief Executive Greg Brown would only say he was focused on cutting costs, getting mobile devices back to profit and expanding the set-top box and enterprise mobility units.

Another CES is in the bag, and we’ve successfully fled Las Vegas for San Francisco. Though fewer new cell phones debuted at the show than in the past couple years, we can say that the 2008 show was all about quality over quantity. Also, when compared with the last couple of years, we had some serious competition for the Best of CES award in the cell phones and smart phones category.

But after it was said and done, the Motorola took that prize. Its innovative morphing keyboard gave it the needed mojo to lap the Sony ericsson super world phone. It was a good fight, and we hope we’ll see a similar high-pitched battle in 2009. Motorola also introduced a high-end video phone with the MOTO and it gave us two new entry-level models with the W230 and W270 besides the W760, Sony Ericsson introduced two other new cell phones. The Z551 is a design-centric handset with a new “gesture-control” feature, and the W350 is a low-end Walkman model.

Though Samsung didn’t offer any new phones for North America, it did show some existing models it wasn’t planning to bring here including the  5-megapixel camera-phone. Also sitting pretty in Samsung’s booth was the company’s phone. Nokia didn’t have anything new, either, but we did see the Nokia3110, which is made partially from renewable materials. Nokia also had a couple cell phone speakers in its booth, and Samsung showed speakers of its own. And over in the most far-flung booths on the show floor, Neonode was offering its N2PHONE and Haier offered the dual SIM-card HG-499.

Nokia today unveiled a phone with a refreshingly new look and design and enhanced local language features. The Nokia 3610 is another product developed at Nokia’s Product Creation Centre in Beijing for primarily consumers in the China market.

Launched on the opening day of the ELE/Expo Comm Shanghai 2002 event, the cool and trendy Nokia 3610 will be commercially available in Asia Pacific markets during the third quarter,A key attraction for Asian consumers, particularly the Chinese speaking markets, is the Nokia 3610’s enhanced Chinese features, including the Lunar calendar which features Chinese festival days, improved Chinese phonebook sorting and PinYin predictive input. The Nokia 3610 is also the first mobile phone in the world to have Hindi input, making it an ideal choice for consumers in India. Other enhanced local language support include Thai, Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia input.Nokia has introduced a new style and design to the Xpress-on(TM) colour covers for the Nokia 3610. The unique use of light translucent materials and vibrant colours with pop art patterns give the Nokia 3610 a trendy and youthful outlook.

The introduction of a new three-dimensional animated screen saver feature will enhance user experience in a fun way. With WAP Push support, the Nokia 3610 allows users to download latest news or sports results as well the latest gamepacks.In addition, the Nokia 3610 has a host of fun, enhanced personalisation and messaging features which include a picture editor which allows users to create and personalise picture messages for all occasions, personalised SMS alerts, SMS chat, rhythmic backlight alert, 6 exciting games with rhythmic vibration, downloadable (OTA) graphics, icons, ringing tones, screen savers and picture messaging. More downloadable ringing tones, picture messages and graphics are available from Club Nokia.

“It’s very clear that Apple, Google and other players are bringing in a lot of new directions,” says company CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Among these is an increasing union of device functions; while Nokia has long made smartphones that perform most of the tasks of the iPhone, such as the Nokia describes Apple as the first credible newcomer to the cellular market in years, a , Apple’s product is a unique combination of this with the easy media playback of an iPod.

More important to Nokia may be the changes Apple and Google are bringing to the cellular market. Whereas US carriers have traditionally reaped most of the revenue from cellphones, and dictated how devices are used, Apple has managed to coerce better data plans out of AT&T, as well as implement that has inspired other companies to challenge old monopolies. In Europe for instance, Nokia has used revenue splitting to get its Ovi download service hosted through Vodafone.  Google’s contribution comes in the form of the, which aims to create a universal platform across phones and carriers that may turn the latter into entities more closely resembling Internet service providers. American carriers involved already include Sprint and T-Mobile, while phone makers include the likes of LG and Motorola — notably however, Nokia has not been invited by Google, despite the fact that the former is the largest handset maker in the world.

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced on Monday the public beta availability of Acrobats Readers for Symbian OS, a new software application that provides mobile professionals and others the flexibility to view Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files on data-enabled mobile phones. The product, which builds on the company’s vision to drive delivery of compelling content regardless of platform or device, is immediately available.

Acrobat Reader for Symbian OS extends the value of award-winning Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software by allowing enterprises the freedom to share a wide range of Adobe PDF documents on a third prominent mobile device platform. Acrobat Reader products for Palm OS and Pocket PC handheld computers, available for several months, have already collectively surpassed two million downloads from the Adobe.com site.

The latest Acrobat Reader product is initially offered.” We have been working with leading content application providers to make Symbian OS phones more attractive to mobile enterprise users,” said Jerry Panagrossi, Director of the Symbian Technology Partner Program. “As a result of our close working relationship with Adobe, we are delighted to see its compelling application now available on Symbian OS phones, providing business users the ability to read PDF documents wherever and whenever they need.” The Nokia 9290 Communicator and Nokia 9210 Communicator bring the best of wireless communication together, and allow business professionals to be effective anytime, anywhere,” said Darrell Sagehorn, Director of Business Applications, Nokia.  

“The ubiquitous nature of Adobe PDF files on the Web and email make Acrobat Reader one of the essential tools for sharing information across an extended enterprise of mobile workers. We’re sure Nokia customers will be delighted about the added utility Adobe’s product provides them.”

At a landmark 3G event in Helsinki, Finland, Nokia and Sonera demonstrated the evolution of mobile communications towards increasingly advanced 3G mobile services and devices. Both companies also reinforced their commitment to the development of interoperable mobile multimedia services and technologies. The companies further reaffirmed their frontrunner position by exhibiting live demonstrations of advanced Sonera services using the Nokia 6650 - the world’s first 3GPP-compliant dual-mode WCDMA/GSM terminal, also introduced today.

The practical and easy-to-use mobile Sonera services demonstrated to media representatives from around the globe at Kiasma, the Helsinki Museum of Contemporary Art, are also the first to use the Nokia 6650 in a live WCDMA network environment, marking an important milestone in the progress of 3G. The wide range of advanced services introduced today blend picture messaging, video clips, games and e-mail into a rich service offering. These advanced services can be delivered seamlessly using both GSM/GPRS and WCDMA evolution phases of current mobile communications technologies.

The development of next-generation mobile terminals such as the Nokia 6650, combined with attractive service development, will further accelerate the take-off of new advanced 3G mobile services. Openness and interoperability will meanwhile result in the seamless use of services across networks and borders, enhancing user experience and volume usage.Senior representatives of Nokia and Sonera speaking at Kiasma outlined how they see 3G services developing in the coming months.

“The transition of services between 2G and 3G ecosystems will be an evolutionary one, with the ultimate goal of total transparency between different technologies to bring a seamless user experience,” says Harri Koponen, CEO, Sonera. “The successful introduction and adoption of these new mobile services combining both visualization and user-friendliness are based on honoring true customer need and, thus, are suitable for everyday life.”