Nokia Launches 5230 ..Possibly the first Sub Rs.10K Touch handset?

Nokia has just popped open its paint pot and pulled out the new Nokia 5230 in a range of custom colours. The latest handset to join the touchscreen fold, the Nokia 5230 has been designed to serve up slick on-the-go entertainment, location-based services and act as an easy pocket portal for social networking at low cost.

Brandishing a 3.2-inch widescreen touch display with full-screen QWERTY keyboard and handwriting recognition, the Nokia 5230 is geared up to enable you to rattle out messages at speed. Paired with speedy HSDPA connectivity, this means staying in the loop and keeping your Facebook and Twitter streams promises to be a no-wait affair. Ovi Store is nestled neatly on the homescreen from the moment you switch on the device, ensuring you can get instant anywhere access to quality bite-size apps.

Music is its first love though, with the 5230 bringing 33 hours of playback time (long battery life was recently voted the most important feature in a music phone by you guys – so we’re stoked to see that), a 3.5mm headphone jack and memory expandable up to 16GB via a microSD card. Two versions of the phone will launch – a standard device costing 149 Euros, and in some select areas a Comes With Music version will be available for 259 Euros for those keen on all-you-can-eat downloads.

Jo Harlow is Vice President at Nokia, and had this to say about today’s news of the upcoming 5230:

“Competitively priced at 149 Euros, we believe the Nokia 5230 is an unbeatable offer for many new customers who aspire a device that stars in music, mingles with social networks from Facebook to MySpace, navigates you to where it happens, when it happens, and comes in array of dazzling colors”

Other features include assisted-GPS with Ovi Maps, Nokia’s new Contacts bar on the homescreen, a 2 megapixel camera and Bluetooth 2.0.

Nokia N97 Announced !!

Here it is guys ...The swashbuckling i-phone kicking touchscreen+qwerty n-series phone that we all have been dreaming of for so long ..has finally been announced !!

 

 

The N97 packs a 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel (that's a 16:9 aspect ratio) resistive touchscreen display with tactile feedback and QWERTY keyboard into this sliding communicator with an "always open" window to favorite internet or social networking sites. Nokia calls it the "world's most advanced mobile computer." To back up the claim they've dropped in HSDPA, WiFi, and Bluetooth radios, A-GPS, a 3.5-mm headjack, 32GB of onboard memory with microSD expansion (for up to 48GB total capacity), and a battery capable of up to 1.5 days of continuous audio playback or 4.5-hours video. 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss glass and "DVD quality" video capture at 30fps, too. The specs are certainly impressive, let's see if the S60 5th Edition OS can support it. The N97 will launch with a retail price set at around €550 ($693) excluding subsidies and taxes, phone to ship in H1 2009.

 Watch the Demo video here :



And the Hands on Video here :


 
 Here's some more info :

The home screen of the Nokia N97 mobile computer features the people, content and media that matter the most. Friends, social networks and news are available by simply touching the home screen. The 16:9 widescreen display can be fully personalized with frequently updated widgets of favorite web services and social networking sites. The Nokia N97 is also perfectly suited for browsing the web, streaming Flash videos or playing games. Both the physical QWERTY and virtual touch input ensure efficiency in blogging, chatting, posting, sending texts or emailing.

The Nokia N97 supports up to 48 GB of storage, including 32 GB of on-board memory, expandable with a 16 GB microSD card for music, media and more. This is complemented by excellent music capabilities, full support for the Nokia Music Store and continuous playback time of up to 1.5 days. The Nokia N97 also has a 5-Megapixel camera with high-quality Carl Zeiss optics, 16:9 and DVD quality video capture, and support for services like Share on Ovi for immediate sharing over HSDPA and WLAN.
This is also the first symbian device to feature screenplay technology that allows users to run multiple applications on a single screen with varied levels of transperency , and easily switching between them.  

This seems like the ultimate dream device to ever come out of nokias design lab. I for one cant wait for this to land on Indian shores. The apple iphone / sony xperia / Htc touch diamond / Android G1 are surely gonna feel the heat !!