We've known about Nokia's so-called Surge for months now, but at long last, AT&T has done its duty by making things official and giving us a price and release date to consider. The Symbian S60-based smartphone is aimed squarely at social media freaks, boasting a full QWERTY keyboard, a browser with Flash support (imagine that, right?), a pre-installed JuiceCaster app for easily updating your Facebook / Twitter status and a price tag that's sure to turn heads. For just $79.99 after rebate, you'll also get a 2 megapixel camera, AT&T Navigator, AT&T Video Share and the pleasure of handing over at least $30 per month for a required data plan. If you're sold already, you can get yours on July 19th.

So much for Nokia and Intel keeping quiet on actual product announcements, huh? Just yesterday, the two mega-corps joined hands in what they called a technical collaboration, and while they wouldn't go into detail about what products would sprout from the partnership, it seems that Commercial Times has done the honors. Reportedly, Nokia has already ordered up a few machines from Compal and Quanta, two OEMs that are largely responsible for most every netbook on the market today. Not surprisingly, we're told that the Nokiabook will rely on one of Intel's Atom processors, and considering that the new wave of Atom chips aren't slated to land until 2010, you can pretty much put money on a N270 or N280 configuration. In related news, we're told that Compal will engineer a Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Nokia smartbook, though there's no word on what kind of OS (Symbian, perhaps?) will be included.

Just under two months. That's how long it took Nokia's N86 8MP to go from FCC to store shelves here in America, as the cats in Espoo have just announced to the world that the aforementioned cellphone is now shipping globally. In case you've forgotten, this 8 megapixel slider touts variable aperture, a mechanical shutter and automatic motion blur reduction, not to mention 8GB of internal memory and a microSD card slot. There's no official mention of price, and as of right now, the phone's not even listed on Nokia's American e-store; still, based on early estimates, we'd say you best break out the bank just in case.

Sure, we feign a lack of bias, but deep down in our hearts we only have one love: Symbian Foundation's robo-duckie mascot. Unfortunately for Symbian, it's going to take all the charm it can muster to win over the iPhone App Store's crop of cash-flush developers. Symbian was apparently at WWDC today, doing its best to woo, with all-day festivities involving coffee, food, a "hackathon," prizes, and free Nokia 5800 handsets for attendees. We're expecting Ovi Store to fill in with some solid €1.00 beer drinking simulators and Zippo lighter apps any second now.

We're not quite sure what levers they pulled, but our compadres over at Engadget Spanish have managed to wrangle a retail N97 out of Nokia's tightly-clasped hands, and naturally, they've done us the honors of photographing it. We're hoping to snag a unit of our own soon, but 'til then, tap the read link for lots more shots and even a video. Yes, a video. Welcome to the internet.

Folks are already starting to get a look at production versions (well, closer to production than at MWC, anyhow) of the Sony Ericsson Satio and its baby sister, the Aino -- and even if you're not a fan of the joint venture's wares, it's hard not to appreciate what it's brought to the table here. The Satio looks identical to its Idou doppelganger -- albeit now in three colors instead of two -- but the real news here is inside, where we're finally getting a look at Sony Ericsson's interpretation of Symbian^1 with a unique UI. Overall, it's looking "chunky" (and we mean that in a good way) with an entirely finger-friendly presentation -- a sharp, healthy departure from the UIQ platform that it just threw in the dumpster a few months back.

Though the Satio's higher end, it's actually the Aino that intrigues us more; in a way, this is the closest thing to a "PSP phone" that Sony Ericsson has ever produced, largely on account of its support for Sony Remote Play which funnels PlayStation 3-stored media content down over WiFi or your cellular connection. Sadly though, "media content" doesn't include games; Sony Ericsson is billing the phone strictly as a multimedia-heavy non-gaming phone, so calling it a PSP phone in practice would be a huge frickin' misnomer. The phone includes a dock that syncs media wirelessly to your PC when connected -- hot -- and from a distance, it seems to be just about the sexiest phone Sony Ericsson's ever made. It's not clear what carriers will be offering either of these, but as usual, we've got to bet against the North Americans.

Read - Satio hands-on
Read - Aino hands-on

When Nokia unveiled its N86 back in February, we Yanks were given no hope whatsoever that a US release was in the cards. We're doing our best to stifle our excitement, but it sure looks like a stateside launch is a lot closer now that said handset has made its way through the dark and murky halls of the FCC. Seen here in a lovely, washed-out shade of black, the 8 megapixel, OLED-equipped dual-slider seems no different than the one we toyed with in Barcelona, save for the whole US-friendly aspect, of course. C'mon Nokia, come clean with the price and ship date, won'tcha?

[Thanks, eleminop

If flash animations and S60 5th edition are your idea of a good time then you'll want to head on over to Nokia's new interactive N97 landing page. From there you can get as close as you'll ever get to Nokia's flagship slider with 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel resistive touch-screen display prior to its expected June launch. So go ahead, take 'er for a spin and then hit the newly live pre-order button after you're convinced that this is the smartphone for you. Sure, there's lots of potential June competition out there but take heart: the Android-powered Samsung i7500 lacks a QWERTY, there's no guarantee that a next-gen iPhone will launch in June, and the Palm Pre might be a big fat dud. There, feel better about your choice?

Update: Tipster Chris just let us know that the N97 shows a $699 phone-only price on the "find products" tab over at Nokia USA. That's $6 cheaper than the N96, strangely enough. See screen-grab after the break.

Update 2: Pre-order is go for the US.

[Via mivadika, thanks Nikos K.]

It's been an awful long time in coming, but AT&T's customized remix of Nokia's lovely E71 -- the E71x -- is now available for sale direct from the carrier's site. As was revealed a little over a month ago, pricing comes in at just $99.99 on contract after rebate, which seems like a steal for a device with this level of capability and sex appeal. Of course, you'll need to be okay with S60 3.2 -- but if you can get past that, you've got a gorgeous all-metal shell, full QWERTY, HSDPA, 3.2 megapixel cam, and WiFi waiting for you. What now, Bold?

[Thanks, Ivaylo]

Good one, Cincinnati Bell -- you totally got us. Oh, wait. This isn't a joke? For the second time in as many months, the aforesaid carrier has somehow managed to land a white-hot Nokia handset before any other operator in America. This go 'round, the company is becoming the first in the US to offer a subsidized version of Nokia's polarizing XpressMusic 5800, bringing it to customers in the Ohio region for $149.99. Those looking to do without any strings can procure one for $349.99 (which is still $50 less than what Nokia's asking), but it's the bragging rights here that make it all worthwhile. So, how long before a real carrier follows suit?

Update: And here's the press release.

[Thanks, Adam]

Companies and enterprising individuals have been dabbling with the tantalizing concept of slapping Android on a cheap netbook for months now, and seeing how Android and Symbian could end up locked in a heated battle for the hearts and minds of the open-source mobile platform world, it stands to reason that the boys and girls at the Foundation would want to counter the OHA's every move. Some good people in the S60 On Symbian Customer Operations group (try fitting that on a business card) have managed to compile and run an S60-skinned Symbian build on one of Intel's Atom reference boards, showing a stock S60 screen and an OpenGL demo -- which, as you might imagine, runs circles around the performance of a garden-variety S60 handset. To quote the Foundation's boss, "I was most impressed with the responsiveness of the UI and upper application layers" -- the only question left to be answered is whether there's a place in the world for a Symbian-powered netbook.

Our time with it was all too brief, but we had just a few moments to play with a SIM-less E71x last evening -- and yes, we're pretty sure this blacked-out beauty is going to sell like Canadian bananas when it launches on AT&T in the next few weeks, especially at that enticing $99.99 price point. Anyone who's handled an original E71 will know exactly what's going on here: slim, sexy, totally usable keypad, and WiFi. Too bad they weren't able to cram in a 3.5mm jack on the E71x to complement the addition of S60 3.2, but hey, we're just going to count our sub-hundred-dollar blessings and move on.

While the shortly flaunted N83 never did amount to anything back in the day, we can safely say the device you see above is definitely not what the suits in Espoo had in mind. The touchscreen-based smartphone looks about as thick as an N95, though we can't recall ever seeing a flavor of Symbian look anything like this. If you care to know, the phone sports a 400 x 240 resolution panel, 0.3 megapixel camera (ha!), dual SIM card slots, Bluetooth, FM radio module, about two to three hours of talk time and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. But hey, it's only a buck 'o five off-contract, or exactly the price of freedom according to certain puppets.

[Thanks, facelessloser]