The Nokia N97 is no big secret. With prototype units already circulated in plenty of places worldwide, and feature/specification list that’s been known since late last year, the only question was when this phone would actually be launched.

If what dropped into my mailbox (see above) is anything to go by, the first week of June sounds about right, smack inside the claims by top Nokia execs that the N97 would arrive sometime in the first half of 2009. While this looks to be the launch date in the region, i’m not too sure if the same date applies to the rest of the world. Still, that’s something to look out for in the coming week or two.

The web’s all abuzz with Nokia’s announcement of their new flagship mobile device, the Nokia N97, at the 2008 chapter of Nokia World, which is currently ongoing in Barcelona.

Digging through the live feed, press release and other information available, here are some of the more standout specifications that Nokia crams into the N97:

• 32GB of on-board storage; a microSD slot enables even more. 16GB cards are already shipping, and we should be seeing 32GB cards in a matter of months.
• 16:9 touchscreen display, with 640×360 pixel resolution, 3.5″ in size; the screen on the N97 is a smidge larger than on the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic for example, but has the same resolution and aspect ratio.
• QWERTY keyboard; this combined with the onscreen virtual keyboard should make typing a cinch in just about any situation. Finally, blogging on the go will be the seamless, hassle free process that every mobile blogger dreams about.

Other features include 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, DVD-quality (really?) video capture, HSDPA, GPS and WLAN. Continue reading →