Nokia N97 Details Announced: 32 GB Built In, S60 Touch + Qwerty Keypad, Huge Battery, 3.5 inch Screen - No XENON!!!

The Nokia N97 has now been officially announced after being kept top secret for so long. If you haven't seen the details of this beast which is due to start shipping around May of next year, check out the pictures, specs, and video of the new Nokia N97 below.









Specifications of the Nokia N97:

• S60 Touch 9.5 OS
• 3.5″ nHD Screen (640×360)
  
• Haptic Feedback
• Slideout QWERTY (!)
• Dimensions - 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9
• Weight 150g
• 5MP Camera with Dual Led Flash - with sliding lens cover
• 32 GB Onboard Memory with microSD slot = 48GB currently.
  
• N-Gage Touch
  
• 1500mah Battery
  
• COMPASS
  
• Customizable Home Screen with Widgets (RSS, Weather, Facebook, Ovi)
• 400 hours of standby time
• 320-400 (3G/GSM) hours of talk time
• 4.5 hours of video playback and over 37 hours of audio playback
• The Nokia N97 is expected to begin shipping in the first half of 2009 at an estimated retail price of EUR 550 before taxes or subsidies.
• AGPS
• HSDPA
• WIFI
• 3.5mm Jack
• TV-out
• No stylus built into the phone, but one will be included in the box.

What's Shocking To Me?

• Well first off Nokia did a great job keeping this TOP SECRET. No specs, photos, etc were released before the announcement a few hours ago.
• 32gb? Holy Crap! Plus a microSDHC slot. That's more than my home computer!
• Standby screen FINALLY customizable. Quote from Symbian-Guru...

  "It has support for customized widgets on the standby screen. The operator, date and profile seem to be standard, but you can add to them application shortcuts, an Ovi widget, weather, email, calendar, RSS feeds, a quick 4-contact link like the Contact Bar on the 5800 XpressMusic, a Friendster, Facebook, MySpace widgets, with any 5 of these available at the same time. You can move these around, remove the ones you don’t want, create your own widgets."

• Huge beautiful screen, high resolution.
• Huge 1500mah battery to support all this media consumption and creation.
• Real keyboard PLUS touchscreen.
• No Xenon Flash! A huge letdown.

Nokia N97 Getting Buzz Around The Web...

Initial Thoughts From The Symbian Blog
Nokia's Big Announcement From Symbian Guru (on-site @ the event)
Hands On Video Of Nokia N97
More From The Official Nokia Event Website

People are falling in love with this device, and it's only been announced just 8 hours ago. Andrew from Dial-a-Phone says,

No one expected the 5800 Tube to be the only touchscreen handset Nokia released, but we did expect to wait a while longer before their high-range effort was revealed!Take a good look at the pictures, see the OS in all its glory in the video and start counting down the days until release, which is said to be the middle of 2009, as you’re looking at the mobile phone event of the coming year.

So what does this all this mean. Nokia has finally woken up! I'm tired, it's still early on the west coast. So I'm going back to bed for a few hours.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Keep in mind this won't be shipping until around April or May of next year, hopefully by then a similar Nseries device will be announced with S60 touch and Xenon Flash, an upgrade to the N82.