Nokia today unveiled the new N97, a smartphone boasting a slide-out QWERTY thumbboard and a 3.5-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. Judged by the prototypes we were allowed to see, though not touch, it's clear that Nokia has been eager to show off its HTC-killer for Europe. HTC, which has had great success with its advanced QWERTY sliders in Europe, has always benefited from its Microsoft Exchange support out-of-box.
Given their popularity, it's always been strange that Nokia hasn't made an effort at coming up with similar smartphones, but we guess the phone is exactly that. A few months ago, Nokia announced a historical agreement with Microsoft, meaning that the phone will synchronize with Microsoft Exchange out-of-box. Furthermore, it's got the aforementioned slide-out QWERTY thumbboard and 3.5-inch touchscreen. Additionally, the key third-party productivity software providers for Windows Mobile are already offering their software suites for Symbian S60.
When it comes to multimedia and services, the phone offers an integrated camera and a bunch of services such as Nokia Maps and N-Gage under the Ovi umbrella. The phone will even come with 32GB on-board memory and a 3.5mm headphone jack, accompanying extensive music and video playback support. Of course, it remains to be seen how smoothly media files will be managed by the phone.
All in all, we think the phone has the potential of becoming the smartphone of the year in Europe when released sometime in early 2009. In addition, there's the brand new iPhone entry in the European market, which has made the choice for many all-touch fans easy. That's also a market RIM is now targeting with the BlackBerry Storm for Vodafone.
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