When it hits streets in Asia around the end of October the kit will include a special back battery cover with RAOUL signature stripes, a leather pouch and leather dangler. Unfortunately for cows, the whole package is sold in a big leather bound box, all for about $590.

Because the phone is only being released in Singapore, you might as just wait for the inevitable knockoff and save yourself hundreds of dollars. Still want one? Head to Asia and snatch up one of the 1,000 going on sale after October 29. [GSM Arena]

Premiering on the N97 Mini, the Lifecasting with Ovi feature lets you publish your GPS location and status direct to your Facebook account, all from the home screen.

As a reminder: the N97 Mini has a QWERTY keyboard and a 3.2-inch touchscreen (versus a 3.5-inch display on the only slightly larger N97). Stay tuned for confirmed U.S details. [Nokia]

Nokia's Sexy N900 Will Be €500 ($710) in October
Oh, just in case you were wondering what Nokia had to say about the N900 at Nokia World…not much we didn't already know. They confirmed the pricing and details we had heard last week. Specs include 3.5-inch resistive WVGA screen, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Linux-based Maemo 5 OS, GPS geotagging, 5-megapixel camera, and full Flash support. Looks slick! And makes the N97 Mini seem kinda myeh…

Like, I could see actually wanting this Maemo-powered slab of Finnish tablet. [BeGeek, BeGeek, Thanks Benjamin!]

Murtazin is more enthusiastic about some upcoming touch-screen Nokia phones, including models that don't have thumb keyboards yet will play in same space as the N97. We'll let you know what we hear. At this point, I think Nokia's still-in-development N900 is the one worth keeping an eye on. [Mobile-Review]

Like we said in the lead we don't know where the retailer is based, how they got the phones, or how they were able to arrange them neatly on a desk and snap their picture without anyone finding out.

The Nokia Blog isn't saying, although they did hint the retailer explained these phones were all due to be sold in their store "soon." [The Nokia Blog - Thanks, Mark]

Update: Photo removed at request of original flickr owner.

Okay, maybe you don't think that's true, the doomed part: Nokia is the number one cellphone maker in the world—they sold 468 million phones last year and still own 41.2 percent of the smartphone market. But in the context of Symbian's sliding marketshare—Symbian was on 56.9 percent of smartphones at the beginning of 2008, now it's on 49.3 percent, while the iPhone has doubled its marketshare to 10.8 percent and RIM's grown to 19.9 percent—the N97 indeed spells a certain kind of doom for Nokia, if it's the best the number one cellphone marker in the world can really do.

Hardware
Let's start with the most decent part, the hardware. The form factor is great, actually, for a QWERTY slider, because it still feels like a phone. It's a little narrower than the iPhone 3GS and the exact same thickness as the G1—not svelte, and it still fits in skinny jeans just fine. The snappy "thwack" it makes when you slide the screen upward to the reveal the keyboard is the single most satisfying thing about this phone. It's loud. But it's reassuring. It feels powerful and sturdy and smooth, like it'll last a hundred years.

The tilt angle the screen thrusts out at isn't adjustable, which is unfortunate, since it's slightly off from where I'd prefer. For instance, you have to hold the keyboard flat when you're typing to look at the screen dead-on—if you tend to tilt your phone toward you as you type (like I do), the screen is going to face your crotch and you won't be able to see anything.

The keyboard waiting underneath the screen is a mixed bag. The slightly rubbery texture of the keys is perfect, and while I found I had no problems with the layout, some people might loathe the fact the space key is shoved all the way to the right. The real problem is that the keys have an ultrashort travel distance, so there's virtually no tactile feedback when you're typing—less than the G1, which wasn't exactly rocking faces with its keyboard, either. Put another way, it doesn't pass the driving test—I couldn't bang out a text message while driving to save my life. (Good thing I didn't wreck.) Not only does the d-pad suffer from the same defect, the ring with the directional buttons is too narrow, so you'll likely push the center button a whole lot when you don't mean to. I wound up avoiding it altogether, since I've got a touchscreen after all.

What actually surprised me most about the 640x360 screen was how much it totally didn't blow me away. Let's get the fact that it was a resistive touchscreen out of the way. The N97's touch responsiveness was about as good as resistive screens get, but even at best, that's minor league stuff compared to a capactive touchscreen—the touch hardware that makes the Palm Pre, iPhone, BlackBerry Storm, G1 and myTouch 3G awesome to poke and flick. In terms of visual quality, I simply never had a "wow" moment, like the first time you peep the brilliant screen on the Palm Pre. It's acceptable bordering on good, though—watching YouTube videos on its Flash Lite-enabled browser was a solid experience, for sure.

The most disappointing aspect of the hardware is the pokey 424MHz processor that attempts to run this thing—the one spec that's notably not emblazoned on the back of the N97, because it'd be a badge of goddamn shame. It still baffles me that Nokia sent their all-singing, all-dancing, all-Qiking flagship phone out into the world with this anemic slice of silicon. Running just a couple of basic apps at once—say, Facebook or Gravity and Music—I had more hangups with this thing than a telemarketer on meth. HTC's been using 528MHz processors for what feels like an eternity, so what the hell?

As for the camera, well to start, there are two cameras. A 5-megapixel shooter on the back protected by sliding cover, and front-facing camera for video conferencing. It also shoots 640x480 video at 30 frames per second. As you can see, the still images are good, not great—despite the size they're still washed out enough that they have the definite feel of "cameraphone" all over them, even in broad daylight. The LED flash is surprisingly strong, though you're not going to light up a whole room with it, obviously. The secondary camera is pretty laughable in terms of quality, but that's okay. And then the video quality is passable for a phone, though far from startling clarity, both the clips stored locally and the ones I uploaded to Qik using the built-in app.

My favorite hardware feature is the built-in two-way FM transmitter, so you can pick up radio stations or beam your music library out to your car's FM radio, no Belkin dongle required. Performance was just about as good as a separate FM transmitter dongle, too. (Passable, but it's never going to be awesome.)

Hurray for hardware standards, though. It charges over the same microUSB port that plugs into your computer, not the little tiny peehole that's been Nokia standard for a million years. A standard 3.5 mm headphone jack is dead center on top, and it's got stereo Bluetooth. And let's not forget that 32GB of internal storage, which can be expanded by microSDHC cards for up to 48GB of total storage.

Overall, as much there is wrong internally, there's a lot to like in the hardware—it'd be total win with a faster processor and more brilliant screen, since the battery seems more than up to the task.

Software
I don't even know where to start the hate parade I want to unleash on S60 5th edition. Nokia's managed to make RIM's BlackBerry Storm OS retrofit look like a work of art. And when legacy (sorry, mature) software runs into a crappy half-assed UI, it's a steaming pile of suck on a slab of garbage toast. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to shove Android onto it. Since I have nothing nice to say, let's keep this part short.

Nokia's instinct to widgetize the homescreen, giving you access to messaging, maps, the browser, Facebook or whatever else you want is a good one, and one of the few non-terrible things about the user interface. But even its visual feel is dated and worn, like someone dragged 2003 into the present tied to the back of a battered and rusted pickup truck. Yuck visual elements abound—in landscape mode, there's a fairly persistent right-side dock of buttons, that steal screen real estate for no discernible reason at times. And inconsistency seems to be the rule. Some stuff you double tap to activate, other stuff you single tap. There's a list in the manual detailing which is which—I forget. There's no flick scrolling, except for when there is, like in the Ovi Store.

The phone's built-in apps are solid, mostly, with the exception of the default email program (download Nokia Messaging 1.1 from Nokia to get an actually competent program).

The WebKit browser mostly kept pace with the iPhone's over Wi-Fi. The interface isn't as easy to use, like to zoom, but hey, it does Flash Lite, so suck on that everybody. The browser's back button serves up thumbnails of previously visited websites you can zip through, a desperately needed touch of form and function on this phone.

Nokia Maps, if you want more than the basics—namely pedestrian or voice-guided navigation—you get a three-month trial before you have to pay up for a subscription. That said, it's feature rich, with a compass, multiple map modes like 3D, traffic info and points of interest, though not as easy to use to pick and use as Google Maps on other platforms. (I handed it and an iPhone off to a friend in my car while navigating deep into the wastelands of Alabama, and Google Maps proved much easier for them to deal with, despite their intense dislike for all things Apple.)

It's pre-crammed with a buttload of mostly excellent third party apps as well: Qik, RealPlayer, YouTube, JoikuSpot Premium, Accuweather, Facebook (a really impressive though appropriately S60 version) and Spore, to name just a handful. Qik in particular is fantastic—I set up an account and was livestreaming video within a minute of popping open the app.

That's fortunate, because the Ovi Store manages to have the worst mobile app store interface I've seen yet. Just try to use that header/scrollbar thing on top to move between categories. And it's "stuff," not apps, since Nokia hawks a melange of goods at Ovi, from wallpapers to ringtones to apps, often jumbling them all on a single page. Speaking of Ovi, the desktop suite, also named Ovi, didn't fall far from the Ovi tree—it's a natural disaster that's not a single app for managing your phone, but a handful of distinct apps that intersect in the actual "suite" launcher application. Imagine iTunes, then its remarkably confusing total opposite, ontologically speaking. (And I'm not even getting into the Ovi online services, which are distinct from Nokia's other offerings, so I wound up creating two wholly different accounts in the process of getting my N97 totally setup.)

What a mixed bag.

Conclusion
Nokia has to know where it stands. At least, assuming somebody actually used the N97 before it went out the door.

Symbian S60 5th Edition only makes sense if it's a stopgap keeping Nokia in the game (barely) until they put out an actual next-generation OS, just like the underwhelming Windows Mobile 6.5 will do for Microsoft. I'm really hoping for a complete rebuild of Symbian. I am not expecting Nokia to turn to an entirely different OS from a certain Goo-ey company despite recent (and retarded) rumors. Nokia is married to Symbian for the long haul—after all, they paid nearly half a billion dollars for it.

That's the only way I can fathom them releasing something this unusable into a world populated by the iPhone, Palm Pre, Android and BlackBerry. If this really is the best Nokia can do, the giant is doomed to die a slow death, propped up for a while by the cheap handsets that it sells by the tens of millions.

Built-in Qik app and setup rocks
Widgets on homescreen are solid

32GB of storage expandable to 48 freakin' GB

Two-way FM transmitter for playing music over car radio is awesome

Keyboard feels nice, but weird layout might bug some people

High-res touchscreen, though it doesn't make the most of it

Pokey processor

Ovi Store is worst mobile app store on the planet

Symbian S60 5th edition user experience is garbage

However, that said there is as of yet no nanotechnology update process available to us that will physically fix that keyboard. You know, the one with the space bar placed precariously toward the far right extreme of the typing area?

Seriously, if this were in my hands and I was firing off a text in the heat of the moment after six pints or so at the local Irish pub I frequent, my message on the other side would probably look like a viral marketing campaign for that cheesy V remake coming to TV this fall. [Nokia via BGR]

N97Geeks ran their unit through a harsh regime of durability tests, starting with a key'n'coin scratch test, followed by a cereal dunking and water submersion tests. As you can see in the video of the latter test above, the N97 doesn't take too well to water, sort of like any other smartphone.

To its credit, at no point did the N97 seem particularly fragile, I guess. From the looks of it, these guys are looking to finish off their already-crippled $700 phone by testing other edgy theories (Will it break when you smash it? Will it melt when you melt it?, and they're taking suggestions. Have at it. [N97Geeks—Thanks, Paul!]

A moderator on the Vodafone forums said the carrier would not be getting the touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard wielding N97, but would instead be launching the "N97 Mini" later this year, due to its "competitive pricing". No additional info was revealed about the handset and the comment has since been edited, along with users replies. [VodafoneForums via UnwiredView]

It's the first Nokia N-series to sport a touchscreen, and you pre-ordered earlier this month, it will arrive around June 15 with the the S60 5th Edition OS on board.

European support pages for the phone are already up and running, in case you dig that sort of thing [BGR]

Walt says, "Software is a crucial element in hand held computers. How are you going to deal with this?"
Olli spoke for awhile, about Symbian 60 being open, and that they're buliding on this. In my opinion, he had no answer. Because Symbian 60 has been out of date for about 2 years now. He keeps saying its open and mature, but I interpret this as "past its prime" and "not all that special".

The N97 comes up as a subject. As their flagship, its going to go for $699 without a contract. No US carriers have picked it up.

This is the best device Nokia has ever made as far as their model for connecting people, they say.

We've seen this all before. The hardware is pretty nice, and the active home screen is great. The memory is expandable and it has 32GB of memory to start with. It even has an FM transmitter for outputting music. And text-to-speech for reading emails to you, and dictation for transcribing voice to text. And the browser plays Flash video. There's a lot here. But it's still using S60 and it's looking a bit clunky and its $700 in the US. I guess it's a matter of priorities.

[All Things D]

On first touch, Nokia seems to have a nice package in the N97. Physically, the unit is light, although it is chunky next to other phones of its class, similar to the Android HTC G1, however, which someone had next to me. The surface finish is ok, although the white matte back felt a bit cheap to me.

The full keyboard is good, with each key having the right size and space for fast two-thumbs operation—at least with my chorizo fingers. There's no multi-touch support, just single touch. The quality of the display was good in this unit, which is headed for release this summer, according to the press conference this morning.

Overall, my first impression has been quite good, but it still feels like a follower, and not a trendsetter. There's nothing in this cellphone that you can find elsewhere. On top of that, "elsewhere" has two rather exciting software supermarkets, one of them massive. It's hard to see Nokia competing against Apple and Google in that front, because their N97 fails to better those two except for the better camera, in all regards.

More hands on details from our earlier look at the phone.

"In the longer perspective, Linux will become a serious alternative for our high-end phones," Ukko Lappalainen, vice president at Nokia's markets unit, told Reuters.

"I don't see anything in Android which would make it better than Linux maemo," Lappalainen said."

These statements aren't necessarily a surprise, because with any mention of Linux, Nokians tend to shout Maemo like a reflex action.

One thing that came to mind when playing with the new N97 is that it is pretty close to the Internet Tablet Phone I wanted—the desktop widgets heralded as a grounbreaking way for users to customize their phones are incredibly similar to what Maemo has had since the beginning, and the hardware is very similar to the current top-end tablet, the N810. The only difference is Symbian, of course—Nokia's prize horse that they won't be giving up on any time soon.

So it makes sense they would dis Android. Nokia (or, at least, certain teams within Nokia) has been huge proponents of open source software long before Android was a twinkle in Larry and Sergey's eye. But where's the Maemophone? [Reuters]

You actually have to look at Nokia's numbers, though, to understand why. The global smartphone leader by a huge margin, its marketshare shrank from 63.3 percent to just 43.6 percent. So, not only did it lose 20 percent of its grip, its marketshare fell below 50 percent for the first time in several years, according to Needham's chart. And, more to the point, its drop is roughly proportional with the iPhone's rise in the last quarter. In fact, the iPhone is the only reason smartphone growth did not slow overall. FWIW, RIM and Windows Mobile's marketshare stayed roughly constant, dipping slightly.

Even though it's not like the iPhone is stealing Nokia's users directly—many of the iPhone's are first-time "smartphone" owners in the US—it does make it painfully clear how unwise it is for Nokia to essentially forego certain segments of the market. Hey, guess who their flagship N97 precisely doesn't target? [Cult of Mac, AI]

The new Maps 3.0 Beta adds 3D topography and landmarks for 216 cities, high-res satellite photos, improved pedestrian directions and better turn-by-turn support. You can also plan a route online via Nokia's desktop Ovi service and then sync it immediately back to your phone. Anyone using S60 FP2 can download the new Maps beta today—Nokia's acquisition of Navteq is definitely showing its benefits here.

The new Messaging upgrade ties in all of your email and IM accounts, providing push services for some accounts and more syncing via Ovi if you have a 1GB Ovi Mail account. Messaging with Ovi sync will launch later this month.

So if you're using a Nokia S60 piece, go grab these updates. [Nokia Maps 3.0 Beta, Nokia Messaging]

But it's not quite a full dive into touch-there's still a horizontal QWERTY keyboard hidden below the 3.5" 640x360 resistive touchscreen and accesable via a smooth 30° flip mechanism. The N97 will run an even further touch-enhanced Symbian OS, S60 v5, which features the 5800's quick contacts bar and adds an assortment of customizable desktop widgets that can pipe in your Facebook info, RSS feeds and the like, much like those found on Nokia's internet tablet OS. The widgets will be open to third party developers and available via the traditional "Downloads" Symbian app "for now" says Nokia-so not quite the App Store equivalent fans would hope for, but customization via software add-ons is definitely the route being pursued here.

But alas, the downsides. Characteristically for Nokia, the N97 is aimed at Europe and Asia first. So big ballers in Moscow and Macau can expect to be toting an N97 sometime in the "first half of 2009," with a U.S. release (with the appropriate 3G bands) to follow "soon after." In Europe it'll run a hefty €550 ($695) unsubsidized.

The model we briefly handled tonight in NYC was, of course, the Euro version, with no U.S. 3G (and, sadly, no Wi-Fi network availabile). Its handlers were keeping it close to the vest, and with no connectivity there wasn't much testing to be done, but we can say that the hardware is indeed pretty-befitting a $700 Nokia piece. The desktop Symbian widgets look nice, but the drawbacks of a resistive touchscreen (there, as always, to ensure character recognition via a stylus for Nokia's Asian market) were immediately noticeable when dragging widgets around the desktop. A resistive touchscreen relies on pressing two layers of screen together with a fingernail or stylus to register a signal, so it is not as responsive as a capacitive screen which is driven by the natural electricity in your fingers (more on the difference here).

Rounding out the gaudy specs are 32GB of on-board memory (with 16GB more available via microSD), A-GPS with Nokia's refreshed Maps 3.0 app and a compass, accelerometer for landscape/portrait screen switching, 5MP camera with Zeiss lens and LED flash, 3.5mm headphone jack, and N-Gage support.

Full press release follows:

Desktop. Laptop. Pocket: The era of the personal Internet dawns with the Nokia N97

Tilting touch display, QWERTY keyboard and personalized home screen - a true mobile computer.

Barcelona, Spain – Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N97, the world's most advanced mobile computer, which will transform the way people connect to the Internet and to each other. Designed for the needs of Internet- savvy consumers, the Nokia N97 combines a large 3.5" touch display with a full QWERTY keyboard, providing an ‘always open' window to favorite social networking sites and Internet destinations. Nokia's flagship Nseries device introduces leading technology – including multiple sensors, memory, processing power and connection speeds – for people to create a personal Internet and share their ‘social location.'

"From the desktop to the laptop and now to your pocket, the Nokia N97 is the most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence," said Jonas Geust, Vice President, heading Nokia Nseries. "Together with the Ovi services announced today, the Nokia N97 mobile computer adjusts to the world around us, helping stay connected to the people and things that matter most. With the Nokia N97, Nseries leads the charge in helping to transform the Internet into your Internet".

The Nokia N97 introduces the concept of ‘social location'. 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.

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.

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.