Nokia announced last night that it would be partnering with Microsoft to produce Windows Phone devices. As keen techies may have noticed over the past few years, Nokia hasn’t been doing too hot in the wake of iOS and Android. Symbian, Nokia’s previous operating system of choice, has become obsolete, and their planned replacement, MeeGo, now seems to be taking a back burner to Windows Phone (the former head of MeeGo, Alberto Torres, just quit).

The duo will bring the usual Microsoft services such as Xbox Live, Office, and something called “Bing” to Nokia devices, along with the much-needed Windows Marketplace ecosystem.

Today, the battle is moving from one of mobile devices to one of mobile ecosystems, and our strengths here are complementary. Ecosystems thrive when they reach scale, when they are fueled by energy and innovation and when they provide benefits and value to each person or company who participates. This is what we are creating; this is our vision; this is the work we are driving from this day forward.

There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them.

There will be challenges. We will overcome them.

Success requires speed. We will be swift.

Together, we see the opportunity, and we have the will, the resources and the drive to succeed.

Whether this partnership will be able to save the Finnish manufacturer from the brink remains to be seen. The early indications show that Windows Phone isn’t exactly a hot commodity, but the platform is still young. Props to Nokia for making the plunge, it takes kivekset of steel to turn a company around like this.

(via Nokia)

“Anssi Vanjoki, outgoing head of Nokia’s smartphone division, likens mobile phone makers that adopt Google’s software to Finnish boys who ‘pee in their pants’ for warmth in the winter.”

–This is an actual quote from a Financial Times article on Nokia’s commitment to its own OSes, most notably Symbian, over Google’s Android. Engadget wins with their headline on this — “CE-Oh no he didn’t!” — although Anssi Vanjoki was technically an executive vice president rather than Nokia’s CEO, and indeed one of the reasons he left the company is because he was passed over for the top slot.

(Financial Times via Engadget via Phandroid)

Alexander Vladimirovich Semenov shot this Transformers-inspired short film in two hours; the editing took a month, though, and you’ll see why. Come for the battling, rocket-launching cell phones, stay for the epic car transformation at 2:05.

(TDW via Laughing Squid)

Remember that time that Apple helped instigate a police raid of the house of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen to get back the leaked iPhone 4 design? We do. And it would seem Nokia remembered the part where it worked in getting the hardware back, but not the part where it got a lot of negative publicity and made Apple look kind of a like a bully.

This time around, Nokia has sent the Russian police, which just sounds way more intimidating, to procure a leaked Nokia N8 from the home of Mobile-Review.com editor-in-chief Eldar Murtazin. The raid was provoked by, unsurprisingly, an article written based on a yet unreleased prototype of the phone.

In its recent annual report on suppliers, Apple has admitted to using some child labor in its overseas facilities. At the very least, three of its factories were found to have employed eleven fifteen-year-olds. And it gets worse:

As tough as Rubik’s Cubes might be to solve for you, it turns out that all you need to solve a 4×4 cube is some LEGO Mindstorms parts, a mass-market LEGO programmable robotics kit, and a Nokia smartphone from three years ago.

The execution is the tricky part: