Color us impressed (literally). If T-Mobile can manage to subsidize the 7510 down to, say, $50, they're dealing with a serious winner; it's attractive, different from your run-of-the-mill midrange Samsung, and offers that all-important UMA for crazy cheap calling. The phone can be best described as fashion-conscious with a Finnish sensibility, and for us, the formula works. 3G would've sealed the deal, but there's no such thing as the perfect phone, is there?

As expected, the Nokia 7510 has gone official on T-Mobile -- albeit with less "Supernova" branding than we would've figured on. We're not sure why T-Mob decided to drop the naming convention, because it sorta relegates an otherwise-interesting phone to anonymous number-dom, but that's why there are well-compensated marketing folks making these critical decisions, right? It's got WiFi, making it one of the hotter HotSpot-compatible phones currently offered, and features a translucent cover over a fancy OLED display that serves up interesting effects for your entertainment. It's QVGA, it has Bluetooth, a 2-megapixel camera, myFaves support, and three included changeable faceplates -- Espresso Brown, Fatal Red, and Emerald Green. Look for it in stores in "the coming weeks."

Well, that certainly was a quick little experiment, wasn't it? Just months after quietly becoming available, Nokia has just as quietly slapped an "end of life" label on the N810 WiMAX Edition, officially ending Nokia's consumer-level support for the wireless standard -- for the time being, anyhow. Though we've been able to confirm that the discontinuation is official, no word was given as to why it fell off the market so quickly -- Nokia inststs that it was a "natural" end of life -- but if we had to take a stab at it, we'd guess the Baltimore-only availability had something to do with it.

[Via MobileBurn]

Half of the would-be buyers are probably holding out for the N97 at this point, but for what it's worth, the first S60 5th Edition device is ready to rock in the UK this month. Starting January 23, 5800 XpressMusics will be shipping for £249 (about $377) -- while Moscow residents are already totally over with it and onto the next great thing, by the way, and North Americans can keep right on lusting for a few more months. Love that launch stagger.

[Via All About Symbian]

Want to "add a little fun to your social life"? Of course you do, and Nokia thinks that an American rendition of the 7510 Supernova is just what the doctor ordered. Unfortunately, AWS 3G apparently has nothing to do with adding said fun -- the T-Mobile version of the 7510 is EDGE-only, just like its international cousin -- but you'll get a fashion-forward flip with a hidden secondary display, 2-megapixel cam with LED flash, microSD expansion, FM radio, and a QVGA screen for what we can only guess will be a fairly awesome price. It'll come in red, aquamarine, and brown, but it hasn't really been announced just yet; Nokia introduced some T-Mobile stuff at CES last year, so we wouldn't be surprised to see them do the same this time around.

[Thanks, youngcalihottie]

It's a tough time to be selling mobile phones, let alone mobile phone add-ons, and that's evidenced by a recent report that Nokia's Comes With Music service is simply doing so-so. A Financial Times piece on Nokia's ability to survive the current economy briefly mentions the CwM service, quoting an unnamed source as saying that "initial sales had been okay, but not earth shattering." Not surprisingly, it was presumed that many budget-strapped consumers were shying away given that most of their favorite tunes could be acquired gratis via the intarwebz. Still, we can imagine this gaining way more traction than its foray into handset gaming, but the refusal of the major UK carriers to stock CwM-equipped handset sure isn't helping matters.

[Via mocoNews]

How do you say "boring" in Canadian? The Nokia 1680 is a good guess, especially considering that the company had intended this puppy for emerging markets -- which, nine times out of ten, is code for "boring." 7-Eleven's Speak Out Wireless is the upstanding organization that we have to thank for this particular launch, bundling the 1680 with 20 minutes of talk time for $89 Canadian -- about $73 -- and when you take into account the VGA cam and integrated FM radio, we guess the price ain't bad. Yeah, there are plenty of cheaper prepaid phones on the market, but how many of 'em let you snap uselessly blurry photos?

[Via MobileSyrup]

Remember that awesome firmware update for the N96 from a few weeks back? It's finally available for the North American version of the phone, carrying on Nokia's time-honored tradition of stringing North Americans along just a teensy bit longer than their European friends. The platform now rests at v12.043, bringing better image quality from the camera, better Bluetooth, a new version of the Switch app, and countless other goodies. One thing it won't do is magically turn your N96 into an N85, but nothing's perfect, now is it?

[Via IntoMobile and Symbian-Freak]

We've got a whopper this week over at Classic's Ask Engadget, and we're soliciting your help. Real simple: what's the best smartphone available for under $200 on contract? And... go!

Here's an odd one for you. Tobias Engel of the Chaos Communication Congress has discovered a rather nasty exploit that'll cause any Nokia S60 devices running versions 2.6, 2.8, 3.0 or 3.1 to stop receiving SMS and MMS messages. The "Curse of Silence," which has been independently verified by F-Secure, is triggered by sending an SMS that begins with an email address that's at least 32 characters long. The attacker must also change the protocol identifier to internet electronic mail before sending. Devices with versions 2.8 and 3.1 lock up after 11 such messages and still have some limited receiving capabilities, while 2.6 and 3.0 devices will go completely mum after just one attack. In both cases a factory reset is required to fix it, and he says there is no other known workaround for the user. We don't imagine this being a pervasive issue, but if you've got any tech-savvy enemies or malevolent pranksters in your life, you've been warned. Video demonstration is after the break, or hit up the read link to see if your device is among those listed at risk.

[Via Hack a Day]

Read - Vulnerability Advisory
Read - F-Secure Verification

Nokia's 6208c (or 6208 classic, if you prefer) isn't arriving as a surprise, though it is quite nice to see it being made completely official. The rather unique handset was designed with the Chinese market in mind, as it boasts an integrated, removable stylus modeled after bamboo slips for inputting Chinese characters via pen. You'll also notice a stainless steel back cover, 3.2-megapixel camera (with twin LED flash), a 4x digital zoom and a microSD slot for expanding storage. Mum's the word on pricing, but it should be loosed in "select markets" during the first half of 2009.

Personally, we're always excited to get free multimedia packs loaded on our phones -- wallpapers and ringtones don't come cheap, after all. We draw the line at multimedia packs of Cold War-era dictators, though, which is why Nokia's pretty fired up that some of its sets are being sold at retail in Russia preloaded with exciting Stalin-themed memorabilia. Apparently -- and we believe them -- Nokia has nothing to do with the unexpected bonus, saying that "even if Nokia was on the brink of ruin and release phones or panel with a portrait of Stalin was the only chance to save our business, Nokia [would not do] that." Admittedly, we're pretty curious to learn more about the doomsday scenario they're referring to where companies can only survive by Stalin-branding their products -- but for now, Nokia's recommending comrades shoppers steer clear of the "special edition" devices since they're clearly not factory sealed.

[Via textually.org]

If you're looking for the cream of the Series 40 crop, the Nokia 6260 slide's for you. Mobile-review, for one, is definitely not in the market for the cream of the Series 40 crop, but they've still gone ahead and put the 5-megapixel slider through an exhaustive review that covers every angle. The bottom line is that the half VGA screen's pretty good, the keypad's more than usable, the volume's loud, and the picture quality delivered by the Carl Zeiss optics is superb, but the site raises a good point: what's the market for a Series 40 phone that reaches well into S60 territory? Then again, if you're drooling as you read this, you don't really care about the answer to that purely philosophical question, now do you?

[Thanks, inf]

The same wild and wacky Russians that demolished a Motorola ZN5 are showing the same courtesy to Nokia's 5800 XpressMusic. The so-called Crash Test involves putting Nokia's first Comes With Music-enabled handset through a litany of horrible scenes, including a stay in the local freezer, a fall from grace, a ride in the washing machine, a dip in a freshly brewed beer and, of course, a crushing blow from a vehicle. The preview video is hosted up in the read link, and the full results of how it fared are promised in the near future. Let's just say we're betting the farm it doesn't handle unlimited downloads, calls nor texts very well (read: at all) after this hellish experience.

[Thanks, Adam]