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+ Nokia’s sailing a brand new flagship device. All aboard the N97?

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Today the internet is a-twitter over Nokia’s announcement of the N97, which is undeniably a very sexy looking device. Here’s a quick look at the specs:

  • 3.5″, 640×360 resistive touch screen
  • QWERTY slide out keyboard Sweet!
  • 3G, WiFi, GPS
  • 32GB
  • 5 megapixel camera Awesome!
  • That being said, it’s hard not to reserve judgement on the overall experience as hardware never seemed to be Nokia’s problem. The true test will be whether it can enable that seamless hardware + software integration that Nokia desperately needs to be able to challenge Apple from a UX POV. Is Symbian up for the challenge? This version of the OS looks much slicker and I’m really looking forward to playing with it but it’s hard to really lay down an opinion without having it in your hands. It also won’t be out in the US until June 29th for a cool $650.

    Until that time, here are a few links detailing the launch and even some initial impressions from bloggers over in Barcelona.

    As an aside GigaOm calls out a potentially exciting feature:

    With integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass, the Nokia N97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. The Nokia N97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their ’status’ and share their ’social location’ as well as related pictures or videos.

    Read more from Mr. Malik here.

    Also…

    + Scoble’s going bananas about it being the best Facebook phone evar! (OMG!)

    + Gizmodo’s got a pretty good hands on account.

    I’m interested to hear how the announcement is received by Nokia community. Post your thoughts in the comments!

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    In: Design, Gadgets, Locative, Mobile, Product, Thoughts


    • I don't know... that feature sounds like just a lot of buzzwords to me. A-GPS isn't new, how does it intuitively know where it is? That they are adding some kind of geomagnetic sensor is nice and will lead to some clever usage, my experience with Nokia's A-GPS is that it is very slow to lock. I've been told that Nokia is developing non-GPS methods of locations (e.g., tower triangulation), maybe internally, and that some apps like Nokia viNe should be able to do it but either that's wrong, or their location database is incredibly weak in the US right now and that's why I haven't seen it work yet.

      And again, it won't be the ultimate Facebook phone unless it has the software to go with it -- there's still no S60 client unlike the Blackberrys -- so I'm still waiting for someone to review the software widgets that go with the phone. If they're based on WRT, then I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they've improved the technology, because right now it seems too rudimentary to build anything really useful.

      In other words, I'm really hoping that the Facebook feature is not just a glorified RSS feed that forwards you to the Facebook mobile website.
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