The respected enterprise-class handset from Nokia is finally available to US residents with about $500 to spare. As expected, the Nokia E71 has been released with full quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM support as well as US 3G/HSDPA (850/1900Mhz) capabilities.

Following on the Nokia E71’s launch in Nokia’s flagship store in Chicago, Nokia has made the heralded businessphone available to the general public. But, just because the QWERTY-keyboard toting E71 is tailored to businessmen (and women, to be clear), doesn’t mean the Symbian-powered Nokia E71 skimps on multimedia features.

There’s a 3.2 megapixel camera mounted on the backside of the .39-inch thick handset, Nokia Maps 2.0 pairs with aGPS to deliver pinpoint-accurate location data, WiFi complements the 3G data connection, and the E71’s sleek styling ensures the Nokia E71 isn’t going to be confused for any other Palm or RIM BlackBerry handset.

Various electronics retailers around the country and online are now offering the Nokia E71 for $500 free and clear of any contract-obligations.

Now, we just wait for Nokia to make good on their promise to release their Nokia N96 in the US.

The Touch Diamond has passed through the FCC in CDMA flavor, making September 2nd look like a very good possibility. Of course it’ll be stopping by Canada first on its way to Sprint, and eventually Verizon. Chatter about the GSM version landing stateside has been pretty non-existant, so it would seem that the CDMA carriers will be the first to offer the Diamond, and maybe the Touch Pro too?

Sure, it was already possible (if complicated) to jailbreak a first-gen iPhone running the 2.0 software under Windows, but this is the one-click tool all you crazy cats with those extra G’s need if you don’t have a Mac — too bad no one’s come up with a better name than “pwn” yet. Please, people. Let’s do better.

PS.- As usual, you run the risk of totally destroying your phone mucking around with this stuff, so don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Samsung’s ultra-powerful Symbian S60 based i8510 smartphone has been officially announced as the Samsung INNOV8. The 8 megapixel camera equipped device is ready to go head-to-head with Sony Ericsson C905 and most probably leave it far behind thanks to the open OS it runs.

Let’s recap the specs:

• Network: HSDPA 7.2 Mbps (900/2100), EDGE/GPRS (850/900/1800/1900)
• OS: Symbian OS v9.3, S60 v3.2
• Display: 2.8-inch QVGA 16M TFT LCD
• Camera: 8 megapixel CMOS with AF and dual-power LED. Smart Reader, Image Stabilizer, Auto-Panorama Shot, Smile Shot, Blink Shot, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR), Face Detection, QVGA video recording at 120 fps / VGA at 30 fps
• Memory: 16GB Flash + microSDHC memory slot
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, Wi-Fi
• Other features: A-GPS, optical Mouse, accelerometer, FM radio with RDS, 3.5pi output
• Battery: 1200 mAh
• Size: 106.5×53.9×17.2 mm

In a nutshell, the INNOV8 is the best camera smartphone announced to date. Symbian OS gives it more power than C905 could possibly have. Or at least that’s my take. What do you think?

RIM first clamshell BlackBerry offering, the BlackBerry KickStart, has taken a back seat to the media-darling BlackBerry 9000 Bold of late, but that could all change in the near future. Alas, we’ll have to wait for RIM to actually announce the BlackBerry 8220 KickStart flip-phone before it gains some more marketing-steam. RIM has apparently decided to drop the KickStart’s “9100″ model number in favor of the 8220 and 8210.But, as you wait for BlackBerry KickStart to get real, the rabid BlackBerry fans at Crackberry.com have managed to put hands on the BlackBerry 8220 KickStart. True to RIM’s handset naming convention, the BlackBerry 8220 KickStart sports a WiFi radio to complement its generous yet compact SureType keyboard, impressive QVGA display, and 3.5mm headphone jack.

Unfortunately, BlackBerry KickStart hopefuls looking for GPS functionality will have to forgo the WiFi radio in the BlackBerry 8210 KickStart.

On July 21 Sprint announced key enhancements, including support for EV-DO Rev. A data speeds, as part of a software upgrade available for the Touch™ by HTC. The Mogul™ by HTC software upgrade will now support Windows Mobile 6.1.

Introduced in October 2007, the Touch combines the familiarity of Windows Mobile with advanced multimedia features for accessing business and personal essentials. The new software, along with downloading instructions, is available at www.america.htc.com/touchupdate. It enables:

• EV-DO Rev. A – wherever EV-DO Rev. A coverage is available, average download speeds will increase from 400-700 kbps to 600 kbps-1.4 mbps and average upload speeds will increase from 50-70 kbps to 350-500 kbps. These increased data speeds provide customers the instant gratification of the ability to quickly download large e-mail files on their phone while in a taxicab, finish and send a sales report before their plane takes off, and wirelessly download music to listen to directly from a Sprint handset.
• Enhanced GPS Capabilities – provides advanced GPS functionality allowing support of popular applications such as Sprint Navigation. Sprint Navigation provides audio and visual turn-by-turn directions, more than 10 million local listings, and one-click traffic rerouting, similar to an in-vehicle GPS system.
• Opera Browser – Opera brings full Internet content and images to mobile phones and offers several new features for functionality, security, usability, customization, searching, saving, taking shortcuts and accessing Web content. Whether users are going to work, working from home, developing Web sites, or just looking for a quick, solid browser that can help users access the Internet, Opera delivers a superior Web experience for every aspect of your online life, with lots of tech tools for power users.
• Onscreen 40-key QWERTY Keyboard – A new virtual QWERTY keyboard gives customers another option for easily responding to emails, text messages and inputting other information.

Only a few days since the first photos of the Sony Ericsson’s rumored new Walkman - W902 surfaced online and its first preview popped up. The five megapixel handset did get a nice photo-session but didn’t manage to impress the reviewer. At least the preview brings answers to most of the questions regarding the arguably best cameraphone among the Walkman lineup.

According to the reviewer, the Sony Ericsson W902 isn’t equipped with a dedicated audio processing chip much like its predecessors. The internal memory turns out to be 152 MB and the phone is running on the regular Sony Ericsson A200 feature phone platform (no real surprise here). The good news is that the 8GB memory card included in the retail package is once again confirmed but unluckily so is the lack of a built-in 3.5mm audio jack.

As expected, Opera Software has released the Opera Mobile 9.5 beta for Windows Mobile. The long-awaited web browser now looks more like Opera Mini or the iPhone’s Safari, allowing users to view the entire web page and instantly recognize the site. In addition, there’s a new, improved user interface, pan and zoom option, improved standards support, option to save pages and/or images, Opera Dragonfly developer tools, and more.

Sprint has added another 14 markets across the U.S. that are now capable of using its new QChat-powered Nextel Direct Connect services. The new areas served are: Buffalo, N.Y., Upper Central Valley, Calif., East Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Central New York, Capital District Region of N.Y., Norfolk, Va., Phoenix, Rochester, N.Y., Vermont, and Utah. These cities/regions bring the areas covered by this new service to 47.

The flagship of the series is Nokia 7610 Supernova. It comes with a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash and a 16M color QVGA screen. The stylish slider will rely on EDGE and GPRS for its data transfers as there is no 3G support available on-board.

A really cool feature of the Nokia 7610 Supernova allows the keypad illumination color and the theme to be changed automatically depending on the current environment. It will also feature the old-but-obviously-not-forgotten XpressOn covers. Those allow easy changing of the color of the phone by simply changing its cover. The final extras include stereo Bluetooth (A2DP), microUSB slot and 30MB of internal memory (expandable through the microSD card slot) as well as FM radio with RDS.

The quad-band Nokia 7610 Supernova will hit the shelves somewhere in the third quarter of this year at an estimated retail price of 225 euro before taxes or subsides. It will be available in two color versions - Pristine White (with Bright Lilac and Steel Blue XpressOn covers) and Muted gray (with Steel Blue and Red covers).