At the N96, N78 and N82 Black launch event in South Africa, we had the chance to speak with Henri Mattila, Head of NSeries Go to Market Sales for Middle East and Africa.

We asked a lot of crucial questions regarding the phones, their competitors, and Nokia’s strategy for NSeries. We didn’t get some of the answers that we were really looking for, as some were more appropriate for the Product Managers, but Henri’s arguments provide a perspective of where Nokia is going, and where it’s coming from.

• We got to know why consumers aren’t getting more battery juice for the N96;
• Why only N95 8GB and N96 get movies;
• Why Dual LED instead of Xenon flash on the N96;
• Why isn’t there optical zoom on the N96’s camera;
• Nokia doesn’t think we need more than 3.6mbps on HSDPA speeds;
  
• If N96 and N78 are toys for us to play while Touch UI devices are coming;
• Why the N82 Black came so late.

Check the full interview after the jump.

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The Toshiba Sportio W62T is a phone dedicated to exercise, as it features KDDi Corporation’s Smart Sports Run and Walk service. For tracking purposes there is an accelerometer (motions sensor) and a GPS receiver.

The device can calculate how many steps you take, how far you have gone, and how many calories you burned.

The W62T has a 2 megapixel camera, a 2,2″ display with QVGA resolution (240×320 pixels), Bluetooth, and the 1Seg Tuner. The Sportio is available in red and orange.

Source: Toshiba via Mobile Whack

In these two images I just wanted to compare the LG KT610 opened against the Nokia E90 Communicator. It seems that LG design team has gone horribly wrong, and produced a 90s looking QWERTY keyboard for portable devices. The display is too small, and there are two speakers around it.

Source: PhoneArena

Custom-made theme phones are usually made by ModeLabs, but Walt Disney struk a deal with Sharp for this Cinderella phone.Unfortunately the phone will only be available in Japan through Softbank.

The DM002SH has a 2.6″ display with WQVGA resolution (400×240 pixels) and a 0.5″ external OLED display. There will be 50MB of internal memory which can be extended through the microSD memory card slot. Bluetooth and a 2 megapixel camera are also included, as well as the 1Seg Tuner. The device will be available in Clear Crystal, Brown Topaz, and Pink Diamond colours.

Source: Akhibara News via 2dayBlog

…because they have diamonds, simple as that. Forbes has compiled a list of the five most expensive phones in the world, and some of them were already covered by us. Not one of the phones gets to this list thanks to it’s component features, but they all have jewels and durable construction on them, for example: Vertu phones are so durable that if you run a car over it, it will work as normal, and that reminds you of the Motorola i335.

The world’s most expensive phones are:

• A diamond-encrusted Apple iPhone from London jeweller Amosu, which goes for US$39 600;
• A Nokia 8800 Arte with 680 pink and white diamonds, from Austrian designer Peter Aloisson, which goes for US$134 000;
• Christian Dior phone, which goes for US$5 000;
• Tag Heuer phone, which also goes for US$6 000;
• And of course, all Vertu phones.

Picture: English People’s Daily Online

Source: Yahoo! Finance Canada via SMS Text News