In late-breaking actual honest-to-goodness Nokia news, the Wall Street Journal reported that the phone manufacturer is currently in talks to purchase mapping company Navteq.

Navteq provides digital maps and content for use in software applications (Nokia Maps, Microsoft Flight Simulator) and web sites (Google and Yahoo maps to name a few). The company is valued at $7.61 billion dollars.

Tele-Atlas, Navteq’s chief (and only) competitor, was recently acquired by TomTom, a navigation software company, for the paltry sum of 2 billion euros.

Nokia in talks to acquire Navteq: report – Reuters

Apple’s new firmware update doesn’t play nice with unlocked iPhones: thanks to the latest 1.1.1 update, numerous iPhone users with hacked handsets found themselves with “bricked” phones – aka mere paperweights.
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Well, after getting home from the two days of revelry in Los Angeles that included a stint at a Nokia Nseries-themed mansion and a short tour around the city, all I can say is: it sucks to be back. Having wasted most of my day sleeping, I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll be able to write up the full-length account of what actually went down in LA.

Until then, you’ll just have to read up on my newly rehashed news, starting with: the Palm Centro phone.

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I’ll give you the answer in the form of a picture:

That’s a really inviting pool.

Tomorrow will be a pretty crazy day to say the least – I’ll be flying to LA to attend a Nokia Nseries event at a mansion deep in the heart of Beverly Hills, CA – and all on Nokia’s (or is that WOMWorld’s?) dime. Very cool.

So what’s this exciting, star-studded (maybe) event about? I can’t say for sure, but I’d expect it to be a first-hand look at Nokia’s sexy new devices announced in the past couple of weeks: the N81, the new N95, and who knows – maybe some Prisms too.

With some wi-fi access and some luck I’ll be blogging from Cali late tomorrow night after the event.

The Nseries line is known for fully-featured mobile phones that just happen to ignore normal size restraints. Handsets such as the N90, N93, and N80 set the bar with impressive feature sets but took some criticism for being just way too BIG.

With the N76, Nokia’s aiming to get into the thin market, one that’s been long dominated by the RAZR. Touted as a music smartphone, the N76 combines the Symbian operating system with stereo speakers and a 2 megapixel camera in a device that’s actually thinner than the RAZR.

So how does it fare? More inside.

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Forbes reports that an RBC analyst named Mark Sue upgraded shares of the #2? #3? cell phone manufacturer. According to the analyst’s research, sales of the RAZR2 are doing well, and Motorola’s “business has stopped deteriorating.”

Sue said Monday that the Razr2 is living up to its predecessor’s name. He said that a poll of 125 retailers shows that so far sales of the new phone have been good. The phone was released in July.

Mr. Sue also recommended a price cut to stimulate more sales of the Razr2 for the upcoming holiday season.

Could this be the beginning of a ninth-inning comeback?

Shares of Motorola rose 1.2% on the news.

Motorola Back On Track

Now this is funny. Apple actually issued a warning today that the company’s next iPhone update – to be released later this week – may disable any handsets that have been unlocked through software hacks.

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A couple of days ago, Nokia released the beta Conversation application for Symbian 3rd Edition smartphones. It’s a nifty add-on that extends your current texting features by grouping messages by Name instead of a huge blob of a list that is just hell to deal with if you’ve got lots of text messages. Kind of like the way gmail handles emails by turning them into conversations…

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A long time ago Nokia released the N93 Golf Edition. While I don’t know how much of a hit the phone-turned-golf-video-analyzer was (my guess is not that much), I do know that the software is now available for individual sale. So no, you don’t have to purchase an outdated N93 to break down your crappy golf swing, you can now buy it for your soon-to-be-outdated Nokia N95.

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This time UK residents get all of the glory. Nokia’s RockUpandPlay website is taking names (and email addresses, and you know what the means…) for its 5300 (Black) XpressMusic phone contest.

Of course, by entering the contest, you’re also registering for the site, which appears to be a Nokia Unwired-ish site for the UK. Basically it’s got the music videos, the band info, and the frightening ability to upload yourself onto the site.

The contest ends on September 24, so that leaves you with a measly 2 days to get cracking.

Nokia’s RockUpAndPlay.com