Will New Nokia's N97 Touch Phone Be Cheap Enough for U.S? They Called it "the mystery device"

They called it Nokia's mystery device. The Nokia N97 is it?

Nokia announced a do-everything flagship smart phone, the N97, in Barcelona on Tuesday.

The N97 combines a whole bunch of top-notch features: a touch screen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi, Web-based widgets, GPS, high-speed Internet and even Flash video in the Web browser.

"This is really the start of the new N-series ... really kicking off the next wave," Jonas Geust, vice president of Nokia's devices unit told Reuters.

The N97 is a sizeable chunk of phone, measuring 4.65 inches x 2.2 inches x 0.6 inches and weighing 5.29 ounces. Nokia has used that additional real estate to house a powerful ARM11 processor, a 5-megapixel camera with 640 x 480 video recording, 32 Gbytes of on-board memory and a big, 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 touch screen. The N97 runs a new version of Nokia's Symbian Series 60 operating system, with a new home screen that incorporates Internet-based widgets.

That's not to say that the N97 doesn't include every buzzword under the sun. The phone has a resistive touch screen, which is considered more durable but less responsive than the iPhone's capacitive touch screen, plus a dual-LED flash, which is less bright than the xenon flashes on top of cameraphones like Nokia's own N82.

Geust told Reuters that touch screens and QWERTY keyboards will be key features in Nokia's new wave of products.

"What would there be these days without touch ... Touch for this category of devices is going to be important. QWERTY is also going to be important," he said.

Nokia hopes to use the N97's GPS to enhance social networking with what the company calls "social location." Using the N97's GPS sensors and compass, the phone will come with software to automatically update a user's physical location on social-networking sites, the company said in a press release.

The company also announced a new version of their GPS mapping software that includes 3D landmarks.

Nokia's new offerings will also include new email and messaging programs for their Series 60 smart phones. The new services are part of Nokia's Ovi suite, and will let Series 60 phone owners access POP3 and IMAP email, along with most of the major instant messaging systems.

The N97 will appear in Europe during the first half of 2009 for 550 euros ($693), and it will sell in the U.S. shortly afterwards, according to Nokia's Lauren Barbier. Nokia didn't have any information on the U.S. model's frequency bands or price, a key indicator as to whether the phone will be compatible with T-Mobile's new 3G network as well as the one owned by AT&T. (None of Nokia's high-end phones are compatible with Sprint, Verizon, Bell or Telus.)

But Nokia's high-end phones have been largely irrelevant in a North American market dominated by Apple, Microsoft, and RIM's Blackberry handhelds. Of the top seven U.S. carriers and top three Canadian ones, Nokia's N-series only work on AT&T's and Rogers' 3G networks. Those carriers have largely declined to subsidize Nokia's phones, leaving them hundreds of dollars more expensive than the competition.

Nokia's most recent offerings, the N85, N96, and E71, have made very little impact on the North American market, as they were not picked up by any U.S. carriers.