We know that the shindig Nokia’s putting on tomorrow has something to do with music, so it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that we’d see some new XpressMusic handsets there, and indeed, All About Phones seems to have scooped the goods. It looks like we’ll be treated to no fewer than three models — all Xpress-branded, naturally — starting on the low end with the 5030 candybar. This one eschews XpressMusic for the less audiophile-sounding “XpressRadio” name, pimping its in-built FM radio support and a large, squarish speaker around back at a crazy low price of €40 ($51) unsubsidized. Moving one rung up the range is the 5330 XpressMusic slider, packing a 3.5mm jack, some sort of special light effects for the ravers in the audience, and 24 hours of listening time; it’ll be available in the third quarter for €160 ($204). Finally, we have the rumored 5730 (pictured) — the only of the three to run S60 and lay claim to a genuine smartphone title. This one follows in the E75’s footsteps by packing both a numeric and a landscape QWERTY slide, WiFi, a 3.2 megapixel cam, HSDPA, and GPS, but the most interesting new feature here might be the “Xpress Home Screen” which exposes your loaded media right from the phone’s — you guessed it — home screen.

PhoneDog says a tipster sent them this image of the Samsung a877 —a non-smartphone—with a 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen, slideout, QWERTY keyboard and a dash of attractiveness. The tipster claims the phone will have a 3G, GPS, Bluetooth, 3-megapixel cam (w/geotagging), and will use Sammy’s TouchWiz UI. And apparently it will be here by the end of the March. For a dumbphone, I like what I see so far. [ PhoneDog via Engadget ]

Apple’s just reached a whole new level of stupidity in App Store approval shenanigans : the Tweetie 1.3 update was just rejected for displaying “offensive language” in its Twitter trend search view. Right, not for offensive language in the app itself, but for offensive language on Twitter — an insanely strict new standard that could conceivably be used to reject each and every iPhone Twitter client out there. (And if you haven’t noticed, there are quite a few iPhone Twitter clients.) Hell, Apple might as well reject the next versions of Safari and Mail, since they can display dirty words too — and let’s not forget the awful things people are doing with Notes and the camera. Better lock it down. Look, Apple — this is a nadir.

Life isn’t all fairies and moonpies, so you shouldn’t raise your kids as softies. Instead, you should teach them that life is a cruel, harsh bitch. Start this process early with creepy cellphone stands. These cellphone stands are made from the disembodied heads of stuffed Care Bears . They’re debrained, leaving plenty of space for a cellphone stand. Simply pop your phone into the top of its empty head to charge it or sync it with your computer while also creating a really creepy image

Sprint hasn’t been coy about its love and adoration for all things WiMAX , and while it obviously has a vested interest in seeing the next-gen wireless protocol thrive, even it isn’t completely ignoring the possibility of dabbling in LTE . Or, at least that’s the impression we get from a recent spokesman answer to a question on whether it was “evaluating LTE equipment.” Speaking on behalf of the carrier, John Polivka wouldn’t go so far as to confirm nor deny whether it was actually dipping its toes into LTE testing while its Clearwire buddies weren’t looking, but he did affirm that “as a prudent technology development organization, [Sprint] is always collecting competitive information about various technologies / equipment to monitor and asses the competitive landscape and any potential impacts to Sprint’s plans.” We’ve already seen a few CDMA mainstays admit to siding with LTE for 4G, and honestly, we wouldn’t be shocked to see Sprint eventually cave too. Whatever stops the bleeding , right? Filed under: Cellphones , Wireless Sprint keeping its options open with LTE?

While the world waits for a tried-and-true navigation app from Apple, XRoad is taking advantage of the situation by offering up its G-Map app in the interim. Kicking Tires decided to take the new software for a spin, and while the map quality took a pretty harsh beating, the overall offering was highly praised. More specifically, not every street name was present during testing, meaning that you had to rely implicitly on the turn-by-turn instructions if you weren’t familiar with your surroundings. Outside of that, however, it seemed to nail all the important points. Accuracy, routing, ease of use and design were all smiled upon, and it seems critics gave the street name snafu a bit of a break with the hope of future updates solving the issues. If you’re still a touch hesitant to drop your hard-earned cash, give that read link a gentle tap.

Android Dev Phone 1 owners are pretty much expected to handle their own business when it comes to firmware updates, but those of you who like to kick it official take note: El Goog’s just released Android 1.1 for its totally unlocked version of the G1. Most of the fixes are to do with POP3 accounts, although paid apps are now supported with a catch: you won’t be able to access any paid apps that use Android’s hilariously weak-ass copy protection features, because the ADP1 comes rooted out of the box and thus able to read / write the folder protected apps are stored in. So yeah, ADP1 owners now have access to paid apps that don’t have copy protection — we’re guessing that’s not a large number. Honestly, we don’t see the point of this: nothing’s ever going to stop piracy, and pissing off the people willing to buy $400 unlocked phones that don’t come with support doesn’t seem like the best way to build brand loyalty. Maybe you want to reconsider, guys

Okay, so we’ll go ahead and crush a few dreams up front — there’s nothing here that proves this isn’t some funky KIRF iPhone or just an ad hoc or jailbroken app making things look completely funkadelic. Now that our skepticism is out in the open, we’ll be honest and say we really, really hope this is legitimate. According to the eBay description, this here iPhone prototype was constructed a few months prior to the real iPhone’s release, and it actually powers on, makes calls and receives SMSs. It sports a totally beta plastic matte screen, and the software is obviously pre-release.

Pre fever’s in the air, yes, but beneath the elation and excitement of Palm’s mega-launch, there’s a cold, hard reality: bills are piling up. To that end, the company is looking to queue up a “secondary offering” of its stock to the tune of 18.5 million shares, which — thanks to a nice bump in value since the Pre’s announcement — should rake in over $100 million in capital. Some $49 million of that would be used to repay part owner Elevation Partners, while the rest would be funneled directly into Pre launch activities and future product development. Palm wants to wait until market conditions are just right for the offering to take place, but it’d like to have the stock sale wrapped up by the 31st; look for a hands-on from us shortly thereafter. Filed under: Cellphones , Handhelds Palm selling some stock to help with Pre, pay off Bono before he breaks kneecaps originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:02:00 EST.

Would you buy an iPhone case to match your shoes? I wouldn’t, but I’d certainly buy shoes to match my iPhone. This $35 copper/green number from Incase will be available “soon.” [ Incase via iPhone Savior ]