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Nokia launches slide-out N97

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 2 Dec 2008 at 08:19

Nokia has unveiled the N97, the company's new flagship smartphone, at its conference in Barcelona.

The device boasts a 3.5in 16:9 resistive touchscreen display, but also a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for those who can't abide typing straight on to the screen.

The phone runs on Nokia's touch-enhanced Symbian OS, S60 v5, and features customisable desktop widgets that can offer access to social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace. Nokia says the widgets will also be open to third-party developers.

Alongside, an accelerometer and compass, the N97 includes HSPDA, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, and will offer an "always-open window" to selected social-networking sites.

Indeed, Nokia is making quite a big play of the N97's social networking credentials, with execs touting the social location feature that can use the smartphone's A-GPS to broadcast your location to friends and family. Further details of this potentially controversial feature have yet to be released.

It comes with a generous 32GB of built-in storage, upgradable to 48GB via the microSD card slot, suggesting that Nokia will position the device as a portable media player in the same way Apple does with the iPhone 3G.

Nokia recently launched an unlimited music downloads service in the UK, and the N97 looks tailor made to support the Comes With Music service.

The N97 also sports a five megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and "DVD quality" video capture.

The company is claiming a battery capable of 1.5 days of continuous audio playback or 4.5 hours video.

The device will go sale in the first half of next year, with a retail price of around 550 euros (£467).

The company announced last week that its rival to the iPhone, the the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic would also launch in the UK at the beginning of next year.