Nokia unveils new phones, services

At a press event Tuesday in London, Nokia unveiled a whole slew of new handsets as well an over-the-air music download service and an online gaming service. First things first: those new telephones that you see to your right. Clockwise from the top left are the N95i, the N81 gaming phone, the 5610 XpressMusic (candy bar), the 5310 XpressMusic (slider) and finally, the 5700 XpressMusic. The N95i sports 8GB of storage, longer battery life, a slightly larger screen and a black chassis but is otherwise identical to the regular old N95. The N81, meanwhile, is a "multimedia computer," designed to find, buy, manage and play music and games purchased via the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage service (more on those in a bit). Then there's the XpressMusic phones: the 5610 promises up to 22 hours of music playback and capacity for 3,000 songs on an optional 4GB microSD card, the 5310 boasts up to 18 hours of music playback with support for the same 4GB SD card and the 5700 is, quite simply, a black version of the same old 5700.

Alongside the cornucopia of new devices, Nokia announced two new services for fans of mobile content--a music store and the N-Gage gaming service--as well as an overarching "Ovi" portal in which those services will live. Ovi--meaning "door" in Nokia's native Finnish--promises access to social networks, communities and content via the mobile handset. In conjunction with Ovi, Nokia officially announced the Nokia Music Store, which will allow users to download 192Kbps  WMA tracks (DRM protected, boo!) over-the-air for €1 (about $1.36) a pop. Finally, the company resurrected its N-Gage branding (made famous by the failed, sideways-talking Taco phone) with a new N-Gage gaming platform. The N-Gage platform will allow games to be purchased, rented and tried over-the-air and will bring a number of online community features to the table to boot. Nokia plans to launch the service in November for S60-based devices and has plans to eventually support a wider range of phones, including non-Nokia handsets.

Though it goes without saying, it's probably pertinent to note that all of these goodies are Europe-only for the time being (and possibly, forever). If it's any consolation, however, we are getting the regular N95 soon--peep the link below.

For more on all the Nokia's new lineup:
- see this press release
- this story from FierceMobileContent
- these photos from Gearfuse 
- and Engadget Mobile's hands-on with the U.S. N95