The rumor mill is in full-force this weekend as Zach at The Boy Genius Report is clarifying earlier news that the Nokia Nseries team is working on bringing us a QWERTY device. Some confusion arose when spypics of an Exx Eseries device surfaced this morning, shortly after Zach gave us first word of an Nseries QWERTY in the works.  In the updated story , word is that that the new  device will feature a candy bar form factor, Feature Pack 2, a 5 or 6 Mpix cam as well as other goodies we've become accustomed to with the latest Nseries devices such as 30 fps video recording and GPS.  The big shocker came as he reported that this device will not only come in a NAM variant- it may be exclusively a North American device, or at least released simultaneously with a Euro-spec model. That's terrific news for this continent for once at the launch of a powerful Nseries device. This could be the beginning of a vicious attack on North America by Nokia who seems to be gearing up to grab a massive amount of market share for the first time in several years. Also worth noting is that we'll not be seeing this device until the second half of 2008- which might as well be a zillion years off as far as this year is shaping up. Nokia has already been reported to be preparing the release of 30 device within the next 6 months. Hopefully we'll be seeing official announcements instead of more rumors- but those are fun too sometimes.

Image and Source: BGR

There are some pictures popping up all over the net today of an unknown Eseries device labeled Exx (perhaps the E71?) which is rumored to be available in Q2 with WiFi, HSDPA, GPS and a 3mpix camera in a 57x112x10mm 120g sized package. 10mm- quite impressive, though of course the screen will be smaller than the E61. A 3mpix camera would indeed be a nice addition to an Eseries device- business people actually do like to take pictures too, Nokia. Looks like it's gearing up to be yet another incredibly solid well built Eseries machine with lots of good metal bits. It's one thing that's quite nice about the Eseries line is that they generally have fantastic build quality. 

Another E65 update is also rumored to carry the same 3mpix camera, as well as GPS and HSDPA- also apparently slated for Q2. We'll presumably see these devices and undoubtedly more at 3GSM- though I really hope we see something with North American 3G capability at CES next week.

Source: MobileReview discussion.

In case you’ve somehow missed it everywhere else yesterday, there’s more fantastic news for N95 owners- well, at least for the ones without US North American 3G frequencies… yet again. The 8GB variant has seen another tremendous update to v15.0.015, this time including full-on YouTube and other similar flash embedded content in the native browser. The Web Run Time is also bundled in this update, enabling the new widget platform from Nokia. Further speed boosts have also been cited.

Steve Litchfield was apparently first to grab the story early yesterday morning, and has a good deal of information for any N95 8GB users interested in hearing more- you’ll definitely want to hop over to All About Symbian for a load of images and a decent bit of discussion on the update if you haven't come across it yet.

Fantastic news right? Not exactly... click through and read why I'm not entirely thrilled with the news, and why I might have been screaming at my monitor in lieu of a representative from the Nokia firmware team yesterday.

There’s a good discussion in the Convergence Zone over at the S60 blogs that deals with the fact that today’s mobile phones are becoming serious competitors to dedicated cameras and the fact that people are unwilling to accept this. True- camera phones will in all likelihood never completely replace the stand alone digital camera but it certainly offers some features not found in such devices, and rivals the existing features for casual, yet high quality photography. With the added bonus of other converged features such as GPS, direct and fast access to photo sharing resources such as seamless flickr uploading combined with the fact that you don’t have to carry a second device with you, and aren’t likely to do so all day long, every day.

More inside…

We’ve just added a new section to the forums at n95users.com, our sister site obviously dedicated to the Nokia N95. So much discussion has come up regarding the recently ‘discovered’ accelerometer that we’ve added a separate category for the feature. With over 20 threads and about 1400 postings, there’s quite a lot of info to dig through over there already about every application out there that takes advantage of the sensor from the practical Pypoziomica v1.0 level and the myriad applications of recent coding hero Samir to the highly impractical and super geeky Lightsaber  and wicked cool ShakerRacer that allows you,  an RC car and your N95 to raise hell with the most intuitive control ever. Pop in and join the discussion, or just read about the silly and practical that is the library of applications available for  the N95’s accelerometer sensor.