When I first saw the Nokia XPressMusic 5800 I was disappointed. We saw it last October, at a time when everyone and their dog was releasing a touchscreen phone to “beat” the iPhone. The version I saw initially was quite wonky with a touchscreen interface essentially bolted onto Symbian resulting in weird behavior.

But I’m sorry that I doubted Nokia. The 5800 is one of the nicest little touchscreen phones I’ve used in a long while and, aside from a few quirks, it’s one of the better implementations of touchscreen on the Symbian platform I’ve seen in a while.

The tiny 5800 is four inches long and two inches wide. It has three buttons on its face – dial, hang-up, and menu. There is a lock button on the side along with volume and camera control. You won’t notice it at first but there is also a stylus hiding in the bottom right corner of the phone.

A full-sized audio jack and mini USB port are on the top along with the power button. It has a 3.2-megapixel camera built-in with autofocus.

The Nokia N97 is almost here, but those that can’t wait to fork cash over to Nokia can now opt for a pre-order. There seems to be some sort of fire sale going on too ’cause Nokia has the flagship unlocked handset marked down $174 and coupon code CARTP409N brings the price down to $454.

If you’re down with the unlocked cell phone movement, you can get a new Nokia N96 for $450 today — on sale, presumably, to make way for the impending N97.

While some phones stay true to a single flick (take Sony Ericsson handsets and any Bond movie ever, for example), some leap around Hollywood like a heiress on a booze binge. One example of the not so loyal? The Nokia 5800. After making its ultra-early debut in The Dark Knight, it’s jumping over to the Star Trek camp.

Apps on the iPhone are huge. We know that. As if we needed more proof, Apple moved its billionth app earlier this afternoon. But some recent data from Compete suggests that smartphone owners who don’t have an iPhone, apparently don’t love apps. Or at least, don’t download them.

If you look at the graph below, you’ll see that iPhone owners are very diversified in the number of apps they download. Some have only 1-5, some 6-10, some over 31 (that’s me — several times over), etc. But look at the other phones surveyed. A lot of them haven’t downloaded any apps. And those that don’t have zero, seem to prefer downloading only 1-5.

Check out that mock-up over to the left; now, imagine the Nokia logo floating around on it somewhere, with a little “Verizon” badge slapped on the front. All together, it’s a Nokia-made S40 QWERTY swivel handset for Verizon. Think that sounds crazy? Don’t worry – so does everyone else. Well, except for Nokia and Verizon, it would seem.

The talented shutterbugs at the FCC recently got their hands on a sexy Nokia N97 ahead of the phones US release. Not only did the government suits photograph a previously unannounced color scheme, but also published all the details about the phone. We kind of already know most about the phone after spying it at Nokia World ‘08 last December. Really, all we wanna know about is Nokia’s upcoming app store, ovi, which isn’t discussed within the government filling.

Vice president for Nokia media Marco Argenti outlined the plans for the Ovi Store they are preparing to launch next month. According to him the store will be an entertainment channel with applications and other content such as video, audio and games.

It seems a bit silly to do a full hands-on of the just announced Nokia E71x for AT&T, seeing as it’s essentially identical to the original E71 – which we’ve already given a thorough reviewing. Besides the obvious color difference (Black on black, rather than silver on white), the changes are somewhat trivial: it has Feature Pack 3 rather than Feature Pack 2 (which is just about the same thing, from the end user’s standpoint), AT&T’s standard service suite, and it lacks the FM radio of the x-less edition.

But boy, is it pretty.

So Nokia has finally launched that Point & Find service into beta. Point & Find,you’ll recall, was first introduced at Mobile World Conference a few weeks ago, and it lets users—wait for it—point at things to get information. Right now, the service works with movies.

Although Nokia had previously promised to bring its gaming service to the firm’s hot N73 (they’ve sold roughly 20 million of these badboys), as of today, all bets are off.

When a Nokia 7205 with a silver keyboard and a Nokia 7205 with a pink keyboard love each other veeeeerry much, they … dance. Then they spin around while showing off their features. It’s an odd mating ritual, but it’s about as sensual as phones can get without, you know, goodie bits.

Some 8 months after the launch of the Nokia E71, the AT&T-branded E71x (which made its unauthorized internet debut four months ago) is finally set to hit the shelves next Tuesday.

Oh, Nokia. Over the next few months, the handset maker plans on cutting 1,700 jobs. These cuts will effect the handset and marketing unit, as well as corporate development and global support functions. It’s all because the company is expecting the weakest first quarter since the first part 2001. So, help ‘em out, will ya? Buy a N96 or two. (or just win the one we’re giving away next week)

Nokia hasn’t had the best luck with the XpressMusic line so far; the 5610 XpressMusic had bad screens, and the 5800 XpressMusic had no shortage of problems at launch. Ignoring the fact that the XpressMusic name is apparently cursed, Nokia has announced 3 more “Comes With Music“-focused handsets.

We’re not sure whether the big-wigs over in Finland gave this one the greenlight, but a series of photos taken by a prototype E75 have escaped their owner’s cubicle and landed on the internets. We certainly hope he got this approved, seeing as how one of the photo samples is his badge.

Tech companies are getting sued for patent infringement regularly, but this recent case of patent litigation might mean serious trouble for HTC, at least in Germany. Munich-based IPCom, which is not your usual insignificant patent troll, says the Taiwanese company is infringing its patents (IPCom doesn’t have a website).

Calling the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic’s North American launch a rough start would be a bit of an understatement. After inventory issues, faulty speakers, and reports of connectivity woes, it looks like the 5800 might be returning to the shelves soon. Nokia has issued a statement confirming that the lingering 3G issues were caused by improper firmware configuration, and have since been fixed.

The launch of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic North American model hasn’t been too smooth. First they had trouble getting the things out the door due to a broken inventory system at the flagship stores. Right as they patched that up, word got out that a whole lot of 5800’s had faulty speakers, and it wasn’t (and still isn’t) clear whether or not this problem plagued the North American model. Within hours, folks who braved the possibility of a shoddy speaker were complaining of 3G connectivity issues, completing the bad device launch trifecta. I’d imagine that Nokia’s reps are probably getting a bit tired of talking about the 5800’s problems by now, but they’ve just said a bit more about this latest one.