Nokia’s 8800 arte Platinum Snow Fox Edition from Goldstriker is one sleek and sexy phone. It’s not for those who lead an average lifestyle. Just like it’s not for those who are a little light in the checkbook. The phone is enhanced with 40 individually set AAA grade ultra white synthetic diamonds. It will be released on May 1st of this year for £1095.

It impressed Goldstriker’s director Katherine Hughes enough to comment “I have been lucky over the last few years to be involved and witness so many different customizations of mobile phones but this handset seems to stand out from the rest. It is for sure the most stunning to date”. I’m not much for AAA grade ultra white synthetic diamonds myself, but like I said it is sexy and certainly makes a statement.

This shiny and pretty gold phone is a modified Nokia N95 that’s been decked out in a Buddhist theme. It looks both enlightened and at peace with the universe. This is Buddha bling if I’ve ever seen it. (I don’t believe I have.) It’s got a Buddha on the back, and fancy imagery all over. It’s onboard custom wallpapers and ringtones complete the theme.

It’s pretty awesome looking and if you’re Buddhist, even more awesome I would think. Unfortunately, it’s only in China and not currently available to westerners. Pretty neat. It just goes to show you that cell phones don’t have to be boring and void of personality.

Nokia recently showcased a cool new app for Nokia mobile phones. The app is named shoot-to-translate and it translates from Chinese to English by taking a photo of the Chinese text that you want to read. This is super handy for those frequent travellers who have no idea how to read the local language.

You won’t have to worry about flipping through some translation book. You’ll know quickly what it says. Though the application shows only Chinese to English translation, we are obviously going to see the ability to do more languages in the future.

The N-Gage mobile games service from Nokia goes live today and here’s hoping it doesn’t suck as badly as the original N-Gage. At least this time around Nokia is making more than one compatible N-Gage device rather than one odd looking phone like we got with the original service.

Nokia says that players on the N-Gage service will be able to connect to other players to play games via the N-Gage Arena community. Nokia also says that the N-Gage platform has exclusive titles that will only be available on the N-Gage platform.

Here’s a new cell phone from Nokia that’s got a lot of features and is relatively cheap at the same time. The Nokia 5000 boasts a high-res QVGA display plus a 1.3 megapixel camera, MP3 player with recording capabilities and FM radio, bluetooth connectivity, GPRS, and it supports Nokia Xpress Audio Messaging. Expect it sometime in the 2nd quarter for about $140.

Nokia announced a new clamshell in it’s Prism line. The Nokia 7070 Prism comes with a 128 x 160 TFT display, 11MB of internal memory, MP3 ringtones/24polyphonic, GPRS connectivity and light indicators. It’s a basic phone, with no camera, no Bluetooth and no memory slot.

This sort of phone is ideal for those who want to use it only to make calls and use SMS, pretty much. The 7070 Prism is expected to be shipped in Q3 of 2008 with a price of €50. Despite the fact that it’s got no frills, it does have a cool geometric design with external light effects , which reminds me of some of those old Rubik’s puzzle games.

Nokia had some ambitious plans to produce a transformable cellphone that would be called the Morph, which would have used nano technology to produce flexible electronic components that could alter their own shapes to suit the users’ needs. But now the Nokia 888 communicator which was proposed and designed by Tamer Nakisci, would be the way to make it come true.

The 888 is said to feature a flexible touch screen and speech recognition system. Liquid batteries allow bending flexibility. It’s also got a completely new feature called E-motions. (electronical motions) E-motions allows you to send or receive forms to or from friends. For instance, you could send your girlfriend a heart shape that would make her cellphone turn into a heart icon. It will probably take years, but I can’t wait to see it.

Nokia announced a new color for its ever popular N82 today. A new sleek black N82 will join the line alongside the Silver N82 that we wrote about in November of 2007. Other than the color change the black N82 is the same feature wise as the silver one.

The N82 sports the ability to operate on the WCDMA 2100 (HSDPA), EGSM900, GSM850/1800/1900 MHz (EGPRS) frequencies. The phone weighs 114g and has up to 100MB of dynamic internal memory for messaging, ring tones, images, video clips and more. A hot-swappable microSD card slot is available for memory expansion.

T-Mobile customers in European markets will later this year be able to exclusively get their hands on a rather sweet new Nokia mobile. It is called the Nokia 6650 and you can expect it during the third quarter of 2008.

The Nokia 6650 is designed to offer up access to several different wireless features, including integrated GPS and FM radio. It sports a 2.2-inch QVGA color display and high speed HSDPA data connectivity. There are also dedicated keys for the built-in media player.

Nokia’s new Morph concept phone is a futuristic beauty. The idea is that it would use nanotechnology to give it a flexible body with a transparent display. It would feature the ability to re-shape itself to the user’s needs, which is a quantum leap away from today’s solid and chunky phones.

The electronics inside would be transparent and flexible as well, so that the whole phone could be twisted and stretched into bracelet shapes or even a tablet. Thanks to nanotech, it would even clean itself. It was developed with some help from Cambridge University, and can be seen at the MoMA in New York. One day even this will seem obsolete, but for now, it’s the future. The future looks awesome.

The idea behind this tablet/pda device is not to lure the elderly into gaming with a cute device full of pretty icons.(though I’m sure that would work) It’s to track every movement the elderly make. Not because we fear them…they’re old. It’s because Nokia believes this is the best way to keep them around longer.

By monitoring what they consume via RFID tags; from expired foods, medicine, possible allergens and nutritional info. It could probably even tell you if they have been putting toys in their mouths while watching Matlock, like babies do. It’s easy to read and use and that’s the key. This pad hopes to be a vital tool for the upcoming explosion of elderly Baby Boomers.(Which is bound to be a mess. Baby Boomers explode with twice the power of your typical spontaneous combustion.)

It’s tough to give a good one-line summary of this new mobile handset from Nokia because as the younger sibling to the N95, this multimedia computer has a lot to live up to. Fortunately for us it appears to be handling it quite well.

For starters the N96 doubles the internal storage capacity providing a 16GB capacity that can be expanded further with MicroSD cards. It also packs in a 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens allowing quality photos and video to be shot at 30 frames per second. Video and DVB-H TV (if you are near it) can then be displayed on a generously sized 2.8 inch QVGA display. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and A-GPS round out the connectivity of this HSDPA 900/2100 MHz phone.

This concept phone by Nokia is being called the Scentsory and it’s a fascinating device. It uses the human senses of sight, sound, touch and even smell for a multi-sensory experience. If this concept ever sees the light of day, it could revolutionize remote communication and interfacing. The dual-screen mobile has an LED touchpad, speakers, a camera and temperature sensors.

It has the basic audiovisual features, but Scentsory could also detect, transmit and emit smells, as well as radiate colors, lighting, and temperature from the caller’s environment. It has a sort of electronic nose that works with highly sophisticated sensors. The nose samples the odor of the caller’s environment and transmits this to the recipient electronically. Apparently this works due to distinct genetic patterns that are associated with every odor, and it’s simply a matter of matching electrical harmonics with gene activity. The perception of a smell by electrical stimulation could be technologically induced.

Nokia is out today with word of a new design focused mobile for the fashion focused in us all. It is called the Nokia 7900 Crystal Prism and you’ll find this sweet looking cellphone hitting Europe soon.

The Nokia 7900 Crystal Prism has what Nokia describes as a “seamless diamond-cut design with a crystal centre key.” The phone was designed by Frederique Daubal and includes wallpaper inspired by him as well. It sports a large OLED screen as well.

The idea behind Nokia’s latest concept phone is the merging of communications and health and environment. One would be able to share environmental data that the sensing device collects and view other users’ shared data, increasing global environmental awareness.

A sensor unit will be worn on a wrist or as a neck strap made from solar cells that power the sensors. NFC (near field communication) technology will relay information by touch from the sensors to the phone, or even to other devices that support NFC technology. Both the phone and the sensor unit will be as compact as possible to minimize materials used, and those materials would be renewable and/or reclaimed. Inside the devices, would be more energy saving technology.