New Nokia N97 Announced

December 2nd, 2008 by Thomas

We’ve been hearing rumours about this phone for a while, but now that Nokia have taken the bubble wrap off of the specs, we can officially get excited. A post over on the Dial A Phone blog reveals that the Nokia N97 is due to be released in the middle of 2009, and that it comes loaded with a very impressive resume of features.

The first thing that you’ll have noticed from the above pic is that Nokia have decided to grace the N97 with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a backwards-tilting touchscreen display, a configuration that’s reminiscent of the T-Mobile MDA Vario III. The 3.5″ screen of the N97 has a 16:9 widescreen display ratio, meaning that video content is bound to look a treat. The attendant 3G and HSDPA means that you’ll be able to easily watch YouTube clips and stream video from the net. Wi-Fi support also comes included, and did we mention that the screen comes with haptic feedback?

Perhaps the most exciting feature of the new Nokia N97 is the sheer size of the available memory; 32GB of on-board internal memory comes as standard, along with the capacity to expand this up by a further 16GB to 48GB. Yes, 48GB – that’s a lot of storage.

The same 5 Megapixel camera that put the N95 on the map makes a welcome return, and like the camera on that phone it comes with a dual LED flash and a Carl Zeiss lens. Again, the camera is also capable of video shooting at 30fps, and the same TV-Out feature makes a welcome return.

The N97 also comes with A-GPS with Nokia Maps v3, and N-Gage compatibility – as you can see from the image above, that directional pad positioned at the left hand side of the keypad is itching to double up as a gaming control.

Though little has been confirmed about the music playback capabilities of the phone, we can assume by virtue of the 3.5mm jack plug that Nokia haven’t overlooked this, and judging by the return of the camera and GPS functionality that we’ve seen on previous Nseries handsets, we can at least expect the N97 to be able to play what the N96 does (i.e. all of the AAC variants, MP3s and WMAs).

Something of a magic bullet, the Nokia N97 seems designed to appeal to everyone – the keyboard and the fast connections available will appeal to business users and social networkers alike, who will be able to easily respond to emails and effortlessly update profiles, and music fans will no doubt be enthralled by the possibility of cramming several gigs worth of tunes into the phone.

With its large touchscreen, GPS and sat-nav features, and connectivity options, the Nokia N97 looks set to take on the T-Mobile G1, the Apple iPhone 3G and the BlackBerry series all at the same time.

Everyone knew that after the 5800 Tube, Nokia were going to return to the touchscreen arena with a vengeance, and everybody knew it was going to be something good, but nobody predicted that it was going to be quite this good.

The countdown to Q2 2009 begins now!