Nokia N97: Finally, a Touch-Screen Flagship Phone

It's here. Nokia started shipments of the flagship Nokia N97 smartphone earlier this month, with the phone slated to begin selling within the next several weeks. The N97 is, quite possibly, one of the most eagerly awaited handsets released by Nokia. Let's see why.

To begin with, the N97 is a full touch-screen device that features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard underneath the screen. A clever metal hinge allows the screen to pop out, offering a better, raised viewing angle. While the concept is similar to the Xperia X1's arc slider, the actual implementation is completely different.

It's also worth noting that the screen itself is larger than the 5800 XpressMusic's 3.2 inch display. At 3.5 inches with 16 million colors supported, the N97's widescreen size is near the upper end of the spectrum.

The keyboard is a three-row QWERTY, with 33 keys and a five-way directional pad. It's small, and the odd position of the spacebar (to the right of the m key, instead of below) may be a hindrance to some typists.

Battery life is one of the N97's strongest points, with the 1500 mAh lithium-ion churning out up to 9.5 hours of talk time on GSM, and up to 6 hours on 3G.

And storage is another. Internal memory clocks in at a gigantic 32 gigabytes, and further expandable with the standard microSD slot which supports another 16 gigabytes. So you could be walking around with 48 gigabytes of storage space on your space - a number previously unheard of in a mobile phone.

One area that hasn't really gotten much of an upgrade is the camera. At 5 megapixels, it's not much better than the oldschool Nokia N95, despite huge gains in mobile device imaging technology in the past couple of years.

Of course, connectivity is still a huge factor, and the N97 has support for 3G, WLAN, and Bluetooth 2.0.

Find the lowest prices on the Nokia N97 phone.