Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Well its been on the cards for a while and now we have the news. The N8 is coming and lets hope and pray Nokia have realised the mistakes they’ve made with the N97 and N900 and get back to being the top dog at smartphones, and looking at the specs, this shouldn’t disappoint.

• First Symbian 3 mobile from Nokia.  Will still look and feel like a Nokia phone yet add extra features like multi-touch yet still keep its functionality with social networking and Ovi store.
• AT LAST A CAPACITIVE TOUCHSCREEN!!! With stylus support, the pinch zoom and everything else Nokia phones of old have lacked.
• The first phone to bundle a 12MP camera : Capable of 720p video the camera features the largest camera sensor on a Nokia device, improving the quality of images and light received. not to mention the speed of the lens capable of taking pictures faster than most digital cameras.
• N-standard WiFi. Yes thats right increased range and increased speed making streaming, surfing and sharing all that much quicker.
• HDMI output with the ability to output surround sound with Dolby Digital Plus technology.
• Full Flash Support – nuff said
• Web TV – pre-loaded feeds from CNN, National Geographic and E!, hopefully BBC iPlayer will return.
• A brand new music player with improved UI and cover-flow interface not to mention an improved sound quality.
• 16GB of internal memory upgradeable to 48GB via microSD
• Improved battery life : 50 yes 50 hours of music playback and apparently it’ll last 16 days on standby(will have to see that to believe it)

Due out in Q3 it’s believed to cost around £320. Check this video to see the N8 in action.

Nokia N8 YouTube video

Nothing as fun as the iPhone 3G S announcement recently but nokia have just announced the successor to the oh so popular E71, the E72. The E72 is actually quite a decent upgrade with a 5 megapixel camera, 3.5mm headphone jack, integrated compass, 10.2Mbps HSDPA, and an optical navigation pad. It should be available from the 3rd quarter (any time from now?) for around €350 (£300ish).

Next up is the 5530 XpressMusic which is a budget version of the 5800 and has S60 5th Edition 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash, 3.5mm jack, and a 640 x 360 touchscreen display. There will only be 2G but it will include Wi-Fi

We first saw the Sony Ericsson Satio back in February at Mobile World Congress under the guise of the Idou.

While I am not sure if the change of name is an improvement it should still be a great phone as it has some very impressive specifications including:

• 12.1-megapixel camera (World’s first)
• Xenon Flash 16x digital zoom and geo-tagging capabilities.
• 640 x 350 3.5-inch touchscreen LCD
• Symbian Series 60, 5th edition
• Micro SD support 16GB, 8GB included
• HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 3.6 Mbps

The Sony Ericsson Satio should start shipping from October.

While Symbian S60 phones may not be quite as exciting as the likes of the Pre or iPhone they can still be great phones.

The Samsung i8910 HD is arguably the pick of the litter when it comes down to S60 with its massive 3.7” 640 x 360 capacitive touchscreen AMOLED screen, an 8 megapixel camera, an S60-specific implementation of TouchWiz with 3D enhancements, and HSUPA.

So if you can’t wait for the iPhone, Pre or maybe even Microsoft Pink then this could fit the bill perfectly.

It is currently available on Orange and costs £97.50 on a 18 month £34.25 plan

Ok so Nokia have not made an official announcement but they have been showing this badboy off in Singapore and they have released the spec sheets on the nokia site.

This will be Nokia’s first 8 Megapixel phone and boasts a Carl Zeiss lens, AutoFocus, dual-LED flash and Symbian S60, not to mention a 2.6-inch OLED display, 8GB of internal memory, a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, microUSB connector and Share on Ovi integration.

There is no word on availability or pricing.

Companies like Expansys and Play like to list products as soon as possible, partly for publicity, partly to get the search engine rankings and partly for the pre-orders.

Expansys are now listing the Nokia E75 allowing people to pre-order it for its expected release date of 13 Mar 09.

The features include:

• Quad-band GSM / EDGE, dual-band HSDPA (900/2100) at 3.6Mbps
• 2.4″ 240×320 QVGA display
• 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus, digital zoom, LED flash
• 30FPS QVGA video recording
• aGPS
• WiFi
• FM radio
• microSDHC
• 3.5mm headset, Bluetooth 2.0, microUSB
• Nokia Maps, PDF Document Viewer, ZIP File Manager
• Dual home screen (work/personal)
• 1000 mAh battery
• 630 mins talk, 408 hrs stand-by time

To be honest the specification seems a little weak especially if you compare it to the forthcoming Nokia N97, however it is an E-Series so it will no doubt be bought up by plenty of business users, also the 1000 mAh looks a little poor especially if you compare it to the excellent Nokia E71’s 1500 mAh battery.

Full specification from Expansys after the jump.

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Samsung have been releasing some impressively spec’d phones recently including the WM 6.1 powered Omnia with 8GB of internal memory and the S60 3rd Edition powered INNOV8 (i8510) with 8 megapixel camera and 8GB or 16GB of internal memory.

Unfortunately the INNOV8 (i8510) didn't seem to see much love in the UK, I don’t recall any of the main carriers stocking it on their website, and they certainly don’t seem to now. It is available from 3rd party companies such as mobiles.co.uk but in general only the 8GB version is available, it is also available Sim free from other online retailers but it can be pushing on £500 to buy.

However a follow up to the i8510 has now been revealed which is the Samsung Acme i8910. Hopefully this phone will get a little more love compared to the i8510 as it seems to of retained the excellent specification with some nice little improvements.

The Acme i8910 will run Symbian S60 5th Edition OS, it will have a glass Glass AMOLED touch screen display, 8 GB or16 GB internal memory, HD video recording, DLNA and DivX support HDMI output, 3.5mm audio jack, Wi-Fi, and GPS.

So it certainly looks like a beast of a phone, and will definitely act as competition to Nokia’s N97.

More photos and a comparison to its predecessor after the jump.

Original story via BGR via Daily Mobile

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Play.com has put out a release date for the UK on the Nokia N97 smartphone even though Nokia hasn’t officially given the Nokia N97 an official UK release date.

According to the online site that sells everything from DVDs to electronics, Nokia's latest top of the range flagship is going to land in the UK on 31 March for a princely sum of £479.99 without contract.

If this new is correct, the Nokia N97 will reach UK store shelves ahead of the proposed launch of the Palm Pre. However according to Pocket-lint, they have been contacted by Nokia which say this date is untrue and no confirmed date has been set for the UK launch of the Nokia N97.

The N97 will be the flagship model from Nokia and offer a full touchscreen that is 3.5-inch, 16 million colour, 640 pixel and 16:9 widescreen, a qwerty keyboard, and 32GB of on-board memory, expandable with a 16GB microSD card.