(Credit: Nokia)
Nokia Australia today launched its flagship smartphone for 2009, the Nokia N97, and demonstrated some of the Australian-developed widgets and apps to be pre-installed on the handset.
Representatives from Facebook, Austereo, ABC and News Limited were on hand at the launch to show new applications developed to bring local Australian content, including news tickers, podcasts and social networking tools. Apps from these developers are either pre-installed on the phone, or are available through Nokia's Ovi Store.
The N97 features a new widgets-focused home screen platform, giving users six positions to add updating web content and shortcuts. Partners, like News Limited, have created widgets for these home screen fragments to display updating data downloaded to the phone. The widgets also act as shortcuts to mobile websites for these services, linking from a Facebook widget, for example, to the mobile version of the site.
This handset is the latest in Nokia's N-series range of multimedia products, most notable for the N95 released in 2007. The N95 was considered one of the first smartphones to embrace the concept of technology convergence by bringing fast internet browsing, GPS and multimedia into the one device. The N97 builds on this convergence story, offering HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity options for the web, a 5-megapixel camera and 32GB of internal storage plus the option to expand this using microSD memory cards.
"In the N97 we've created our most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer," said Emile Baak, Nokia Australia's managing director.
Nokia confirmed that the N97 will be available mid-July with an RRP of AU$1129, or on contract through Optus and Vodafone.
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