In the latest of iPhone killer phones, Nokia today used its own Nokia World to launch the N97. The phones runs on Symbian S60 5th Edition platform. Nokia also announced today it has acquired Symbian Limited, the maker of the Symbian OS.
The N97 has full 3.5-inch16:9 ratio (same as HDTV) touch screen LCD but also hides a slide-out QWERTY keyboard at angle simalar to the AT&T Tilt, for easy input.
The phone comes with software making it a social networking hub. The home screen can shows status update widgets from Facebook, MySpace and Nokia’s own Ovi service among others.
Besides the 16:9 ratio display suited to wide screen videos, the phone is one of the first to carry 32GB of storage built-in and still has room for a microSDHC card slot to add an extra 16GB. There is a native 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can use your favorite headphones when listening to music.
Nokia also touts a “real” web browser with embedded Adobe Flash video, something still missing in the iPhone, and a new version of Nokia Maps that supports 3D landmarks, satellite terrain data and a newer pedestrian guidance mode. The large battery that supplies up to 37 hours of music or six hours of 3G talk time.
The N97 is scheduled to ship sometime during the first half of 2009 in either black or white colors. Nokia is also pricing the phone as its new top end and plans to sell the phone for $700 before carrier discounts. At this time No US carrier has been announced. The device as-is supports GSM and EDGE on North America’s 850MHz band but lacks similar support for HSPA in the region.
