We've long since known that RIM's BlackBerry Bold was AT&T bound, but in case you haven't noticed, the rumored October 2nd release date has come and went, and there's nary a Bold on any of AT&T's store shelves. According to RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, the handset is still undergoing testing at AT&T, suggesting that it wanted to avoid the complaints that arose when the newest iPhone hit in July. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel remained mum on the subject when asked, only affirming that the handset would eventually be available this year. Ah well, you've been looking for a reason to vacation in Chile, haven't you?

[Via phonescoop]

The 5800 XpressMusic is stealing the lion's share of the spotlight today, but the first S60 5th Edition handset out there actually isn't the first to get hooked up with Nokia's all-you-can-eat Comes With Music service. That honor will instead go to the lowly 5310 XpressMusic candybar, which will get access to about 2 million track downloads when it hits Carphone Warehouse in the UK in prepaid form for £130 (about $228) on October 16, a day earlier than rumored. Other models will have to wait, though Comes With Music versions of the N95 8GB and 5800 are both planned.

While it may not be Nokia's first touchscreen phone (anyone out there remember the 7710?), the 5800 XpressMusic is certainly the first to come out of Finland with a mainstream appeal. What we've alternately known as the "Tube" throughout much of its development cycle is the first production device to run S60 5th Edition -- the fourth major overhaul of Nokia's ubiquitous smartphone platform since 2002 and the first to support fingers, styli, and high-res displays. Speaking of high-res displays, the 5800 comes equipped with an impressive 3.2-inch 640 x 360 resistive touchscreen to go along with its 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam, Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash, GPS, WiFi, 3.5mm jack, and a microSD slot with support for 16GB cards. It'll be available in three versions -- European HSDPA, North American HSDPA, and GSM only -- and ships this quarter in black, red, and blue for €279 (about $392) unlocked with an 8GB card thrown in for good measure. Music fans with voracious appetites for new tunes might want to hold out, though, for the Comes With Music-equipped version that follows on "early next year" at a to-be-announced price.

Yeah, the solution seemed pretty obvious to us, and now it looks like Nintendo's willing to admit it. Nintendo will be solving its little Wii Shop game storage overflow problem by opening up the SD card slot for storing and playing games from (with DRM galore, we're sure). The update will hit in the Spring of next year, and don't forget that 2GB maximum when stocking up on the little buggers. It's not exactly as exciting as a new DS, but we're really glad Nintendo's going to do the right thing here, instead of building yet another peripheral to clutter our lives with.

As expected, Nintendo has announced the new DSi at its Fall presentation in Japan. The device features a dual touchscreen layout almost identical to the DS Lite, though the company is calling it a "third platform," which means it's complementing the existing system, not necessarily replacing it. Looks-wise there's not much different happening, but it's some 12 percent thinner -- partly because it omits the GBA cartridge slot. The displays are slightly larger, at 3.25 inches apiece, and there's an external three megapixel camera as well as a front-facing camera located on the inside hinge. The DSi has an SD slot and internal storage -- we're not sure how much at the moment -- but photos can be taken directly to the Wii Photo Channel on the card. Nintendo's also launching an online "DSi Shop," which will sell content directly over WiFi, including a free browser app and "DS Ware" game -- and the company will offer free wireless connectivity at "Nintendo Zone" hotspots located in Japanese McDonalds. The shop will take the newly-renamed Nintendo Points (formerly Wii Points), 1000 of which will come free with the handheld until March 2010, and content will be priced in 200 / 500 / 800 point brackets. The DSi will come in white or black finishes, and will cost ¥18,900 ($178) when it launches in Japan on November 1st -- the rest of us will have to wait until next year.

Update: We've added the official Japanese DSi site link, check it out! Our brothers at Joystiq have done a comprehensive spec-check of the DSi compared to the PSP-3000 and iPhone / iPod touch. Be sure and take a gander. You can also watch Nintendo's DSi demo video after the break, and trust us, it rules.

Update 2: Joystiq is liveblogging Nintendo's San Francisco media event.

You know how it goes -- first comes the far-out rumor, then comes something a touch more believable, and then the company itself issues an all-too-familiar non-denial denial. According to MCV sources, the next step in the process will happen tomorrow, as a revamped DS storms into action at 5:00AM GMT on the 2nd of October. As for specifics, we'll have to wait for Iwata's supposed announcement to find out more, but we'd be utterly shocked to see this ship after Christmas. That is, if this isn't just some elaborate scheme from the Big N to distract us all from realizing that Wiis will still be impossible to find this holiday season two full years after launch.

[Image courtesy of Parade, thanks Michael]

Apple's insistence on locking down iPhone developers with a restrictive NDA has been controversial from the start, and it looks like the company's seen the light -- it's just posted up a tersely-worded letter saying that the NDA is being dropped. It's a strange little note, actually -- the first paragraph comes off as a little defensive and whiny, if you ask us -- but we're not going to complain about anything that makes developing apps easier and faster for devs. Now let's work on not capriciously rejecting and deleting apps from the App Store, and maybe we can go back to focusing on the iPhone platform's actual merits instead of all these paperwork shenanigans -- we've got some suggestions if you're having a hard time figuring this out on your own.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Microsoft couldn't let the gory, highly-anticipated launch of Gears of War 2 (chainsaw duels! Rhhhahaararggg!) pass without bloodying a Zune or three in the process, Halo 3-style. Specifically, Microsoft has laser-etched that pesky little "Crimson Omen" onto a glossy black Zune 120, pre-loaded the device with 244 pieces of "Gears of War" media -- the soundtrack, concept art, behind-the-scenes vids and so forth, nothing you won't be able to find elsewhere -- and squeezed it all into some "collectible" Gears packaging, featuring our testosterone-addled protagonist pondering the meaning of life. The whole kit will run you $280, with pre-orders at Walmart.com and Amazon.com (and a whole mess of Canadian shops) starting at 3AM PT / 6AM ET. It'll start shipping on November 7th. And still can't sync to your Xbox. Close-ups after the break.

We thought he probably would've at least stuck around long enough to see the Tube get announced later this week, but Nokia CTO Bob Iannucci has announced that he's stepping down from the world's number one cellphone maker effective immediately for undisclosed "personal reasons." Though it might seem that the move leaves a gaping hole in Espoo's senior leadership, the company actually says that Bob will continue on in an advisory role while it decides whether it even needs a CTO going forward. Bob also served as head of the Nokia Research Centre -- also known as the place where you get to play with Haptikos -- where Henry Tirri, current head of the center's Systems Research group, will be taking over.

[Via mocoNews]

"Planned" and "executed" are two very different things, and while we knew Sony Ericsson was mulling the idea of hacking 2,000 jobs, the hammer has finally fallen in Research Triangle Park, NC. The company will soon be axing 450 employees at its North American headquarters as part of a large reorganization, with most everyone knowing by the week's end whether they'll stay or go. According to Aldo Ligouri, Sony Ericsson's head of global communications and public relations, the RTP cuts are "part of company-wide changes that Sony Ericsson announced in July," and in whatever context, he added that "this is our map of how we see things moving forward." Just to put things in perspective, the outfit only has about 750 workers in the North Carolina-based facility, which is primarily seen as an R&D hub. Tough news to hear, no matter how you spin it.


[Image courtesy of Flickr]

If you're a T-Mobile customer who's been dozing off for the past few days, you've already missed your chance to pre-order yourself a G1. With any luck, that won't be a problem and you'll just be able to march into a store on or around October 22 and pick one up the old-fashioned way, but the window of opportunity for an utterly stress-free Android buying experience is closed. We don't have hard numbers on just how many units were being offered through the pre-order program, but 60,000 is getting tossed around as a rumor, which would work out to about 10 percent of the total outlay HTC is said to be aiming for by year's end. Of course, if you're not a T-Mobile customer, this is all business as usual and you're just chuckling under your breath that everyone's stuck in the same boat now, aren't you, you sick puppy?

[Via TmoNews]

Update: Well, that was quick -- the "Log in to order" button is working once again. Any bets on how long until they're out a second time?

October 2nd: mark it down 'cause Reuters says that's the date that Nokia will launch its Nokia Tube -- aka, 5800 XpressMusic. According to a pair of industry sources, Nokia will launch the much anticipated, long overdue, S60 touchscreen device at a media and analyst event in London -- exactly as Pocket-lint's source told us earlier. All that's left now is for the invites to be distributed.

To put Casio's achievement into perspective, those 7-inch PMPs and UMPCs generally equipped with 800 x 480 LCDs are now kicking the dirt in embarrassment at being outdone by the pixel density of Casio's new 2-inch display. Using a proprietary Hyper Amorphous Silicon TFT (HAST) LCD, Casio achieves a 960 x 540 pixel resolution resulting in 546 pixels per inch supporting 16.8 million colors -- hoozah! Although not announced, we'll undoubtedly see these in future NTT DoCoMo superphones just as soon as these displays hit mass production.

[Via Akihabara News]

It looks like T-Mobile is listening folks -- and they appear to be responding. In a statement we've just received from the company, they tell us that they're killing the hard-line approach to data capping, saying instead they'll reserve the right to cap a "small fraction" of users who abuse the network. In their words:

"Our goal, when the T-Mobile G1 becomes available in October, is to provide affordable, high-speed data service allowing customers to experience the full data capabilities of the device and our 3G network. At the same time, we have a responsibility to provide the best network experience for all of our customers so we reserve the right to temporarily reduce data throughput for a small fraction of our customers who have excessive or disproportionate usage that interferes with our network performance or our ability to provide quality service to all of our customers.

We removed the 1GB soft limit from our policy statement, and we are confident that T-Mobile G1 customers will enjoy the high speed of data access over our 3G network. The specific terms for our new data plans are still being reviewed and once they are final we will be certain to share this broadly with current customers and potential new customers."

In a brief press release, LG has announced total sales of one million Prada handsets worldwide. Not bad for a March 2007 launch. The bigger news though is that LG and Prada will launch a new handset in Europe in Q4 of 2008. Prada II, we're ready.