rumor

Nokia's new product announcement in London is less than a week away, and as usual, the product to be revealed just got leaked in advance. Citing unnamed insider source, Chinese tech site WPDang claims that Nokia's London event is about just one device: the previously leaked "Catwalk" aka Lumia 925 930.

Catwalk reportedly sports a shell design with a mix of polycarbonate and aluminum, as depicted in the leaked picture up above. 

Well, well, well. Look what we have here, a mysterious handset that's reportedly manufactured by Hawaei. The manufacturer has yet to fully open up into the Windows Phone market, though a number of leaks have been previously covered by the news, including ourselves. So, what are we looking at in the alleged photos?

Xbox Music to be improved with Rdio?

Microsoft may well be looking to purchase Rdio, if what sources informing The Next Web is accurate. According to their report, Microsoft is currently in talks to acquire the San Francisco-based digital music streaming service, which would suit both companies should a deal be eventually made.

Could we finally see a Windows 8-powered NOOK?

With Amazon wooing the world late last week with their new Fire and PaperWhite tablets (and eReader), many have been left wondering what Barnes & Noble’s response would be. The online book retailer has slashed prices recently on their NOOK tablets, paving the way for a new holiday refresh and release.

Now, sources to the site Digital Trends have confirmed with them that in late September in Union Square, New York, the company will unveil a new Nook tablet rumored to be powered by Windows 8.

Is this a new Nokia Tablet with Windows 8?

It appears that Nokia may have more than just new phones to show off next week in New York City. According to the site WPDang, internal images from Nokia show what appears to be a full on Windows 8 Tablet in a "a mysterious Banner map" hidden on the site.

The actual device body is mostly out of view but instead what we see is a rather large display with Windows 8 tiles, including one for ‘Desktop’. In addition, what appear to be new high Symbian devices are also shown, meaning Nokia may not yet be done with that OS yet either.

Of course this could be an error in a render, though we would like to think that Nokia would not make such an obvious an amateur mistake...

Let's file this under "rumors" for the time being. We know Microsoft doesn't have a great track record of keeping secrets, and China has been one major source of leaks. Combine the two factors, here comes another interesting leak.

The chaps at WPDang, the Chinese Windows Phone site who has been reasonably accurate on Microsoft leaks, state that the Redmond gang will be releasing the final version of Kinect for Windows SDK around September 15. Interesting timing, right after the Windows Phone 8 launch, and before the holy coming of Windows 8. What's most amusing is that according to WPDang's sources, Windows Phone division is involved in the development of Kinect for Windows SDK too...

The Nokia PureView 808

It’s a big question whether or not Nokia’s upcoming lineup will feature any PureView technology in it. While it’s nice to dream of a 41MP camera alongside Windows Phone 8, we’re holding down our excitement until we learn more because so far we have seen little to make us believe otherwise.

Now, the Nokia team (via Twitter) have teased users with the following exchange between themselves and Philip G. He was asking and hoping for some PureView love in the next Lumia series form Nokia. Nokia replied with the following:

“Just keep your eyes and ears open in the next coming weeks....”

That certainly seems like a reference to the joint Microsoft announcement that Nokia is hosting in a few weeks here in New York.  From our own sources, we’ve been leaning towards no PureView device this time but instead slightly further down the road, as Nokia plans to release numerous Windows Phones over the next year.

With Nokia’s tweet though, we could be looking at something sooner. But the question for us is What is PureView exactly?

Is this the Nokia 'Phi' Lumia 800 sequel?

File this under rumor but certainly plausible. The fan site Nokia Innovations is reporting that the alleged Nokia prototype phone that was leaked last night is in fact the Nokia ‘Phi’. Mind you that’s the code-name not product name, much like the Ace and SeaRay were used for the Lumia 900 and 800 respectively. What’s interesting about Nokia Innovation’s post is that it slghtly pre-dated those images by a few hours as that site was expecting their own images to come forward too.

The notion that Nokia would make a successor to the Lumia 800 is not far fetched at all. It’s a wildly popular design, one that we prefer even over the Lumia 900 due to the curved screen. Evidently Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was impressed with the Lumia 800 that he doesn’t want to let the design go, just have it evolve which to our ears makes sense.

So without further ado, here are some of the rumored specifications of the Lumia 800 successor aka the ‘Phi’...

In what has to be the biggest non-secret ever, Bloomberg note that 'sources familiar with the matter' have informed them that Nokia plans to exhibit their new Windows Phones 8 devices next month at Nokia World.  And to spice things up, according to our sister site iMore (and confirmed by other media) Apple is planning to reveal the iPhone 5 on September 12th—just one week later making the timing by Nokia seemingly perfect.

If accurate, we can’t think of a more exciting two weeks for the mobile industry, as arguably two of the best phone designers will be revealing their new devices to the world and setting the bar for everyone else.