Hardware
Nokia Unveils the N97 and Calls It “The World’s Most Advanced Computer”
Forget smartphone, forget handheld mobile device, forget MID. Nokia is calling the new N97 "’the world’s most advanced computer.’ At the Nokia World conference, Nokia is taking the wraps off of the N97 and saying that it will transform the way people connect to the Internet.
It has 3.5 inch touch display and al full QWERTY keyboard. Nokia is jumping on the social and location based computing bandwagon with its location services called ‘So-Lo’, short for social location. So-Lo uses integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass to know where you are when you connect to your social networks. The widescreen format of the 3.5 inch 16:9 screen can be fully customized with widgets and yes, the device will run Flash.
The N97 supports up to 48GB of storage with 32GB on-board, expandable with a 16GB micro-SD card. It supposedly will support continuous music playback for 1.5 days. It, of course, includes the now familiar Carl Zeiss optics in a 5 megapixel camera that will allow DVD quality video capture. It looks like Nokia followed the button-less approach of Apple as the device has only one button
Look for this to ship in the first quarter of 2009 and cost around $550 before subsidy in the US according to Robert Scoble. That may change as the price in Euros is listed at 550 which currently translates to just under $700 US.
Nokia seems to be striking right at Apple and the iPhone’s dominance and while it certainly seems to have more features (video, keyboard, etc ) the price will be a big factor.
Robert Scoble has a video up of the device as well as pictures.
Here is a YouTube video of the Nokia Presentation.
archiwiz
12/02/2008 at 2:31 am
My phone has finally arrived. I'm upset that the design looks similar to the HTC TyTN II though. But all the goodies under the hood are enough… 48GB possible storage? And its cheaper than when the E90 first arrived.
Willy
12/02/2008 at 3:53 am
Nothing new! Nokia is not specializing in phone and computing technology; more like, specializing in bs and youtube music video : )
davidm
12/02/2008 at 3:54 am
Very interesting and even a bit surprisingly promising. But we'll see in six months when it's finally released. Nokia has some serious work to do to clean up their operating environment to make it anywhere near as consistent, easy and pleasant to use as the iPhone. Maybe this will spur Apple to add a good camera, video, cut and paste and a keyboard solution to the iPhone, but that'll still leave their walled garden disadvantage.