The economy has been very tough on many technology companies. Some of the largest companies in the industry have been hit hard and forced to lay off workers and report losses. Cellular infrastructure provider Nortel was forced into bankruptcy by the global economy.

Nokia has announced that it has entered into an agreement with Nortel to buy the firm’s CDMA and LTE holdings. The purchase will allow Nokia to expand its infrastructure presence in North America. Nokia says that the purchase will cost it $650 million.

The Nokia E72 made a brief appearance the other day in a leaked promo video. Now we have more details. The phone sports a stylish QWERTY keypad, a 5 megapixel camera, HSUPA (up to 2Mbps) and faster HSDPA (Up to 10Mbps).

The E72 also has a new optical Navi key, which acts like an optical trackpad for navigating through the menu, and applications. It also acts as an electronic compass to enhance GPS navigation. The Nokia E72 is expected to hit in the third quarter of 2009 with a 4GB microSD card in the box and a lifetime license for Nokia messaging.

The successor to the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic was unveiled at the Nokia Connection event in Singapore. It’s the third S 60 5th edition handset for the company, after the popular Nokia N97 and 5800 XpressMusic. The 5800 XpressMusic is a touch phone, sporting a 2.9″ 16M color display with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels.

It features a 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash, along with an accelerometer sensor and proximity sensor for precise pictures. Since it’s a music phone, it has powerful stereo speakers and a 3.5 mm standard audio jack. Surprisingly, no GPS unlike Nokia’s other touch phones, which is probaly to keep the price down.

The Nokia E71x isn’t a very old phone at all, but it’s about to get outdone by the business-class E72, seen here in a leaked promotional video. One of the most interesting things is the optical mouse instead of the clickable D-pad usually found in similar models.

Other upgrades include a five megapixel camera, a relocated headphone jack. That’s about all of the info we have. The YouTube video’s been pulled, but luckily IntoMobile snagged it quickly if you want to have a look.

Look what we have here, Nokia’s successor to the N810 Internet Tablet, specs and all. The N900 is Nokia’s most powerful and capable tablet to date and comes with HSPA connectivity.

The N900 weighs 180 grams and is 59.7mm x 111mm x 18.2mm in size. It features a 3.5 inch touchscreen with a resolution of 800×480. Some other features are: a 5 MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens with dual LED flash, autofocus and sliding cover. It will become official in June.

Nokia’s Ovi Store has soft launched in Australia. The Ovi Store is now accessible on the Australian operator Vodafone. Ovi Store is Nokia’s content/app store for applications, games, wallpapers, themes, ringtones etc.

The Australian launch will soon be followed by other carriers in the next few hours and days. According to a post from Nokia’s Conversations blog, (That was pulled later) Nokia confirmed the rollout and said that it was moving the Ovi Store to “production servers,” and that users can “expect a broader announcement and consumer availability soon.”

On Tuesday Nokia added the 6600i slide to its roster. It’s Nokia’s smallest slider yet, with a 5-megapixel camera that includes dual LED flashes. That brushed-metal housing should get your slider some attention. It also has a tap interface for quickly waking the phone, muting alerts and ringtones, as well as turning down calls.

The phone accepts microSDHC cards up to 16GB and has both a 1GB card in the box and a combo headset, FM radio and mic. Expect it to ship to “select markets” this summer for 200 Euros ($272) before carrier discounts.

Nokia’s upcoming 7020 clamshell phone is a fashion phone that boasts a 2.2-inch TFT display with 240 x 320 resolution, an external display with 128 x 160 resolution, 2MP camera, 45MB of internal memory, a microSD card slot, an MP3/MPEG-4 player, stereo FM radio and a standard Li-Ion 860 mAh battery.

If you can’t wait to get your hands on this new handset, you won’t have to wait long. It will be available in the fourth quarter of 2009 for about $121. Obviously this one is geared toward the fairer sex. So, what do you think ladies?

Many of you are loving the new Star Trek movie, while many of you are having high geek blood-pressure over things like Beastie Boys songs and this…Nokia product placement. One thing is for sure, this isn’t the Star Trek many of us grew up with.

If you’ve seen the reboot, then you probably noticed the Nokia commercial cleverly inserted in the flick. The touchscreen device is in the dash of young Kirk’s Corvette that he is taking for a joyride. Check it out below while it’s still available on youtube.

The long overdue E71x is available at long last. Any businessmen out there who are interested better get to ordering one pronto, because it is at the incredible price of just $99.99.

It will be a two year contract after a $50 mail-in rebate. This one comes in a full metal body and runs on Symbian S60 ver 3.2, HSDPA/3G support, Wi Fi, full QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth and GPS. It even has a 3.2 megapixel camera for snapping pictures of whatever you snap pictures of.

Nokia has just announced a special edition 5800 XpressMusic phone that’s destined for the final consumer frontier and ties in with the Star Trek movie. The phone will feature new custom items with a Star Trek theme including four screensavers, three wallpapers and eight new ringtones.

Here’s the best part. It comes with a Phaser application. The Star Trek edition 5800 XpressMusic phone will only be available through Phones 4U in the UK at first, as a part of a limited run on May 1st.

This thing looks absolutely bonkers, but a tipster to Boy Genius Report claims that Nokia is working on a “swiveling E71-type handset” for Verizon. It features a full QWERTY keyboard and runs Series 40. It’s very much like the Sidekick.

It would be launched around the July/August time-frame. A swiveling QWERTY Nokia phone sounds crazy, but the folks ovet at Engadget have been contacted by a bunch of individuals who claim to have seen the phone in person.

This sort of thing would have seemed like magic to us many years ago. Imagine pointing your handset at an object, taking a photo of it and sending it to a database to get further information. It’s like a real life Google. It’s called Point & Find by Nokia. The beta version is now available in the UK and the US, and it will be expanded to other services and countries in the future.

According to Nokia Point & Find general manager, Philipp Schloter, “With Nokia Point & Find, businesses are able to target engaging experiences and calls-to-action to consumers. We believe that this first Nokia Point & Find-based service for movies will add something special to the cinema experience. Simply by pointing their camera phone at a poster for a new movie, people can watch the trailer, read reviews, and find the closest cinema where it is playing.”

There has never been a Nokia phone that I have been interested in. In fact most of the handsets on the market are boring by my jaded standards. I do like the iPhone, but I will say it’s getting a bit boring and I am looking for the next cool handset.

Nokia has been offering its 5800 XpressMusic handset for a while in Europe, and not so long ago it brought the device to America. There were some issues with connectivity that forced the phone off the market for a while shortly after is US launch.

Nokia’s Music Almighty headset design competition attracted 6,000 entrants, and Nokia is showing off the five winning designs, which have been manufactured as fully-functional one of a kind headsets. The rules were that all of the headsets had to be inspired by a song.

So naturally that inspired a wide range of designs, like the Daft Punk “Robot Rock” set above, which we like the best. It was inspired by Daft Punk’s “Robot Rock” and was designed by G. Smith. Pretty clever competition.