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.

We know what you're thinking -- it's Windows Mobile 6.1 fool, we've got the developers kit already. True, but not the SDK that allows developers to create custom, interactive panels for the touchscreen QWERTY's Panel Interface. Sony Ericsson claims that, "The Xperia X1 will offer the richest mobile user experience, putting the world at the fingertips of the user." In other words, the expectations have been set, developers, so you'd best get to downloading the free SDK -- you've got your work cut out for you. Sony Ericsson will offer a panel download service in the future, showcasing all the panels built by you, Google, and other partners.

The Panel Applications are meant to be simple, rich, and fully-interactive allowing quick access to your data -- eMail, calendar, multimedia, games, IM... you name it. But don't take our word for it, SE explains the new panel ecosystem in the video posted after the break.

Read -- SDK download
Read -- Press Release

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

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

First off, the chance of this Japanese super-phone coming to the US or anywhere else outside of Nippon is slim. FCC approval or not, it's likely only being tested for global roaming. However, as slim is its chances are, they've improved dramatically now that Japan's government is behind a push to promote its twisty, folding phones abroad. This Exilim-branded Casio / Hitachi mashup sports an 8 megapixel camera and with any luck, it's using that new Omnivision sensor meant to revolutionize cameraphones. As followup to the W53CA, this 3G W63CA flip will no doubt feature the same high-resolution, 800 x 480 pixel swiveling display of its cousin. With autumn nearing, we expect to see the W63A announced any day in a typical shotgun blast of seasonal phones from KDDI.

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

You've seen the review, now get ready as Nokia just announced a Q4, North American release for its high-end, N96. That means localized 850/1900 HSDPA radios to go along with its GSM quad-band set, 2.8-inch QVGA display, 16GB of storage, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss optics, WiFi, and assisted GPS. Interestingly, there's no mention of mobile TV which makes it seem that they've scrapped DVB-H entirely without a mediaFLO replacement. How much? $895, that's how much -- sorry you asked?

Yesterday we got the height and width, today it's the full wireframe model with scale measurements. While we can't confirm the authenticity, several details including that arcing base certainly dovetail nicely with the images found in the original FCC filing. It's also a near-perfect match to that early reference design seen kicking around the Googleplex courtesy of Andy Rubin. While not obvious before, we can clearly see that the arc belongs to the handset's rigid, non-sliding "chin" with lots of logos from HTC, T-Mobile, and Google fighting for visibility.

Notably, the right-most image contains measurements which can be applied to the rest of scale model as well. This confirms the 115 x 55-mm height and width shown by the FCC yesterday as well as a new, approximate, 16.35-mm depth after applying the calipers. That would make it fatter (as expected) than the 12.3-mm iPhone but skinnier (and a hair wider) than the 18.1-mm HTC Touch Pro and 17-mm Xperia X1. Not bad. Now let's get to it boys, else there won't be much left to announce in September.

[Via Android Community]

There's been a lot of discussion lately about iPhone 3G reception issues. Whether they exist or not is largely irrelevant in a world dominated by sound-bite driven perceptions. Nevertheless, some industrious Swedes decided to apply a little scientific method to the argument and found something interesting: the iPhone 3G performed just as well (or just as poorly, depending upon your mood) as a Nokia N73 and Sony Ericsson P1 when compared head-to-head in a mobile communications test chamber. The test was conducted by real-life antenna engineers just like those camera-fumbling souls contracted by the FCC. Of course, who's going to let a few facts stand in the way of contrary opinion and litigation, eh?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Here's how the smartphones compare:

• HTC Dream: 115 x 55-mm
• iPhone 3G: 115.2-mm x 62.1-mm
• Xperia X1: 110.5 x 52.6-mm
• HTC Touch Pro: 102 x 51-mm

Image of HTC's label exchange request after the break.

[Thanks, OC]

What was just a footnote to 2007 has finally come to fruition. Sony Ericsson just went live with details on the August 25th launch of its PlayNow Arena media download site. Initially the site will offer 1 million, DRM-free songs (ramping up to 5 million) from Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI. It will also offer games, ringtones, applications, and themes for your mobile downloading pleasures. Other European countries will come on board later this year before it goes global in 2009. Tracks are expected to be "on par" with Apple's iTunes ($0.99 / €0.99) pricing but will cost SEK9 (about $1.43, credit card required) for the Nordic launch. Full press release after the break.

While multi-touch input might be all the rage in handhelds and laptop trackpads at the moment, alas, it's not on the feature list for HTC's latest Touch Diamond and Touch Pro. However, the capability is indeed present and exploited on video by HTC's own debug application. Even more interesting is the way that the handsets' entire front, capacitive surface (not just the 2.8-inch, 640 x 480 pixel display) can be used for multi-finger input. So like Dell's Latitude XT Tablet which launched multi-touch ready, expect to see future, multi-touch capabilities come to HTC's latest... someday. Click through for the vid.

Besides the RAZR, few handsets have milked longevity like Nokia's 8800 slider -- first introduced in April 2005 (spied in March). Unlike RAZR, however, the 8800 somehow manages not to annoy... too much. The latest Carbon Arte model brings 3G, a 3.2 megapixel camera, 4GB of flash memory, and OLED display with anti-fingerprint coating. Fine, but it's the rocket-esque carbon fiber, titanium, and stainless steel materials that help push the price tag to €1,100 (that's about $1,600) before taxes and of course, carrier subsidies. Expected to brazenly appear in the smoking dens of Europe's finest gentlemens' clubs sometime in Q3.