There's something about a $750 mobile that incites conflicted feelings of shock, awe, lust, and disgust in its beholder. It's unavoidable. Every time you lay eyes on the N95, you can almost hear Nokia saying, "we're through playin' -- this is our phone multimedia computer to end all phones. We know it's not for everyone, but whatever, here it is." As a reviewer with a unit on loan, your paranoia runs deep; you start to have irrational thoughts about your precious cargo being run over by garbage trucks, lost down sewer drains, and stolen by shadowy figures in darkened alleys, so we can't even imagine what kinds of nightmares keep actual owners of this superphone awake at night. Alas, we hear sales have been strong, with units hard to come by just days after its US debut. Is the love justified? Read on for our quick take.

Calling the N93i an "upgrade" over the N93 might actually be a bit heavy handed. Though the monster clamshell gains S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 on its predecessor and shaves a solid 3.2 millimeters of thickness, virtually every other change is more of a sidegrade than anything else. The keypad ditches that pesky third dimension to take on a RAZR-esque etched metal look (a first for a Nokia device), the front gets a mirrored finish with a concealed 128 x 36 OLED display, and software for photo / video blogging to the newly-minted Vox service. Granted, the mods add up to something a little meatier than your average Internet or Music Edition, but N93 owners are still probably best off hanging onto their wallets here. Non-owners, though, well... that's another story entirely; you folks can get your N93i on before the quarter's out for €600 (about $785).

Nokia has taken its Nseries line of smartphones in a decidedly more fashionable direction than it's used to going, announcing the 13.7 millimeter thick N76 clamshell this week. Specs aren't quite up to snuff with Nokia's latest and greatest, but hey, they're not bad either: QVGA display, 20MB of internal memory, and 2 megapixel cam, topped with a standard 3.5 millimeter audio jack (which may not be internal to the phone itself, but rather provided via dongle -- we need to investigate this one) and UMTS data for 2100MHz-friendly portions of the globe. As we've seen with other Nokia models, a second variant of the N76 will be made available for us broadband data-hating Americans that simply removes the UMTS support while retaining quadband GSM with EDGE. Look for the N76 to find its way into fashion-conscious hands starting later this quarter for around €390 ($510, give or take).

In the most official confirmation we've seen to date, the alleged Nokia N93i has hit the FCC (true, the pictures appear to identify it as an "N00," but we somehow doubt that's its go-to-market model number). All told, the device appears to be a fairly modest upgrade to the N93 it replaces, bearing the same 3.2 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens with optical zoom that dominated its predecessor's hinge. Sadly, we've been able to glean very little about the mirrored exterior -- we still can't tell whether there's a display under there somewhere, though the Get Started guide makes reference to a "cover indicator" that's only visible when there are missed calls, messages, and the like. Perhaps most interesting is the RAZR-like etched keypad, one small concession to fashion made by a company that's now famous for not bowing to industry pressure to make ultra-thin handsets. No word on a release, but given the lack of GSM 850 and UMTS 850 / 1900, we're meeting this one with tempered excitement. Cingular, care to make it worth Nokia's while to pump out a version for us?

Nokia gets the lion's share of the attention when it comes to the S60 platform and Symbian generally -- perhaps rightfully so, considering they ship far more Symbian-based smartphones than any other vendor -- but Samsung would like to politely remind everyone that they're an S60 licensee, too. Their latest effort, the SGH-i520 slider, had its coming-out party this week at the Symbian Smartphone Show, and the spec sheet looks to give Nokia's E- and N-series multimedia powerhouses an honest-to-goodness run for their money. The typical 2-megapixel camera and QVGA display aside, the i520 packs an HSDPA radio -- something no released Nokia handset has managed to do; granted, the N95 does it, but we've got a little wait ahead of us for that monster. Lucky owners also get a microSD slot should they find the 45MB of usable storage a bit light, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, and a front-facing VGA shooter for those ever-popular video calls. Per protocol, it doesn't seem that a US launch is in the works, but one can never be sure; stranger things have happened.

We're not getting played for a fool again until we actually have a real, actual device resting comfortably in our hands, but Nokia's promising to bring the 3G love to the US for reals this time with its new N75 clamshell, announced today as part of its Nseries onslaught. The S60 3rd Edition handset looks to pack a decent punch into its 95 x 52 x 20.2mm form -- which Nokia is dubbing its "smallest multimedia computer," bearing in mind the E50 isn't considered such a device -- bringing a 2-megapixel cam, 40MB of internal storage with microSD expansion to 2GB, integrated stereo speakers, Bluetooth 2.0, QVGA internal and 160 x 128 external displays, quad-band GSM / EDGE, and some of that sweet, sweet WCDMA on the 850 and 1900MHz bands. Best of all, it's being promised for US release in the fourth quarter of 2006; we don't if you-know-who has decided to pick it up, but if not, we've every reason to believe the unlocked versions will be flying out of Nokia's own warehouse at a brisk pace. Check after the break for more smooth, creamy, flippable S60 goodness.

As we recently reported, Nokia's been dabbling with the whole do-it-yourself firmware upgrade phenomenon as of late. We applaud the effort -- in our opinion, getting the latest and greatest software for your devices should never be any more challenging than connecting a cable to your PC. Murphy's Law being what it is, though, initiatives like this are never going to be without their flaws. Many E70 owners who gave the update process a whirl in the past few days (present company included) were horrified to find that the procedure magically transformed their multi-hundred-dollar bundles of S60 joy into paperweights in just a handful of minutes. It happened to us, and it's not pretty; the phone teases you by turning on and dutifully displaying the "Nokia" logo, but that's as far as she goes. Rumor has it Nokia did the right thing by pulling the offending firmware and quickly replacing it with a new one, but that's little consolation for the folks bidding farewell to their handsets as they get shipped off to Nokia service centers around the world. We're going to give the upgrade another shot with our fresh E70 today and we'll pass on the word if we end up with a second brick -- wish us luck.

Update: We've got good news and bad news. The good news is that we don't have another bricked E70 on our hands. The bad news is that the latest and greatest firmware being offered by Nokia isn't yet available for the US-friendly E70-2 variant (which is what we have). Let's go, Nokia! Americans want faster refresh times when switching to landscape mode just as much as Europeans do!