Nokia N97 will hit the stores in 3 months

An online retailer has started accepting pre-orders for the upcoming Nokia N97. There's a specific release date now and a price tag to match the N97 rich feature set. We bet all Nokia fans will rejoice to find out that their dream device will hit the stores in less than three months.

The QWERTY-and-touch-enabled Nokia N97 is supposed to hit the shelves at the last day of March over at Play.com online retailer.

The price tag of 480 GBP (540 euro or 720 US dollars) for the dream-come-true phone sounds quite nice and is actually a tad lower than the officially announced suggested price of 550 euro before taxes or subsidies. We've never seen a Nokia phone introductory price go lower than the initial expectations, so it's either the world financial meltdown talking here or the seller is just pulling our leg.

The Nokia N97 is most definitely one of the most loaded N-series devices out there, but that's not it's all about. The N97 is the first high-end device powered by the latest touchscreen Symbian S60 OS. And if the 3.5-inch touchscreen display is not enough for you, you can always slide-and-tilt it up so the large full QWERTY keyboard gets revealed.

Tri-band HSDPA and quad-band GSM ensure world wide roaming, but the new Nokia N97 also boasts 32GB of internal memory, a 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, touch-enabled Nokia Maps with a digital compass, an accelerometer for auto screen rotation and a proximity sensor for auto screen turn-off during calls.

The 16M color 3.5-inch touchscreen TFT display has a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels that should meet all your handheld widescreen multimedia needs. Of course all the basics are covered too - with stereo Bluetooth, 3.5mm audio jack, TV-out and FM radio with RDS.

As you can imagine the loaded Nokia N97 is quite hefty - it weighs 150 g, but size-wise it's not bigger than say, the Apple iPhone 3G (except in thickness, that is). Via gsmarena.com

Nokia N79 Eco, Nokia cell phones News

In addition to shipping without a charger, the Nokia N79 Eco will come in a smaller box, which allows for further energy and waste savings. To round things off Nokia will, for each N79 Eco sold, donate £4 to the WWF (a global conservation organisation). It is likely the phone will be pre-loaded with 'power of we:' content - already available to existing users through Download!

The Nokia N79 Eco costs the same as the regular N79 in the online shop - £319. However, aside from the obvious eco-benefits, it does come in the Petrol Black colour (compared to Canvas White/Seal Gray), which should make your N79 stand out from the crowd.

The smaller box may not sound terribly significant, but when you operate on the scale of Nokia the little things really do add up. For example between February 2006 and the end of 2007, Nokia shipped 250 million phones in smaller packages resulting in 5,000 fewer truck journeys and saved 100 million Euros. In 2007, Nokia saved 15,000 tonnes of material (that's about 55,000 trees) and 100,000 m3 of water (that's around 18,000,000 toilets flushes).

Currently you can only pre-order the Nokia N79 Eco from the Nokia UK Shop, there is no indication of when it will start shipping. It is likely to be made available in other regions, perhaps through the various Nokia flagship stores.

On the pre-order page, there's also a link to a survey to gather consumer opinion about the idea of selling phones without chargers and other accessories, but we would also be interested in hearing your opinion in the comments thread.

Clearly there's scope for leaving out other accessories too. How many people really need a paper manual? Would downloading connectivity software from the Internet be a serious hurdle? How about the PC connectivity cable or headset? Personally I like the idea of the Nokia N79 Eco, but I imagine it will require a real cost saving to push most consumers into buying a 'reduced accessories' version of any phone. Reasonable prices (i.e. lower profit margins) on standalone accessories would also help - it's not as if the charger really costs £15 after all.

Of course, if you subsequently decide you do need an extra charger after all, you can further burnish your green credentials by buying Nokia's energy saving charger.
Rafe Blandford, All About Symbian

Nokia N79 Eco, Nokia Cell phones, Nokia N79 Reviews

Nokia N79 Eco cell phone is Unlocked quad-band GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and US 3G compatibility via 850/1900 UMTS/HSDPA plus GPRS/EDGE data capabilities

Nokia N79 Eco has 5-megapixel digital camera with Carl Zeiss Optics, autofocus, digital zoom and Flickr support; DVD-quality video capture (640 x 480 pixels at 30 fps)

Nokia N79 Eco has Wi-Fi networking (802.11b/g); A-GPS for navigation with Nokia Maps app; Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity for both handsfree communication and stereo music streaming

Nokia N79 Eco has MicroSD expansion (up to 8 GB); access to personal email; full PIM features; FM radio with built-in FM transmitter

Nokia N79 Eco it is Up to 5.5 hours of talk time, up to 370 hours (15.5 days) of standby time

Nokia N79 Eco in News
Following in the footsteps of the N79 Active comes another Nokia N79 variant, the N79 Eco, which is available for pre-order through Nokia's UK online shop and ships without a charger. Customers are expected to retain the charger from their previous Nokia device. The concept is part of a trial to save energy and reduce waste and is part of Nokia's power of we: strategy. Read on for stats and the full scoop

Nokia N79 Eco, Customers' feedback
This is my first Nokia, and my first unlocked phone. I've had the phone for a little over a week and these are my impressions:
It's built really well. It feels solid and the screen seems pretty scratch resistant so far. The buttons are also really nice and the number keys are god for texting. From my research it seems to be a characteristic of N series phones. The design is clean as well. It seems well thought out and there's not much missing (an external play/pause button would be nice, but it comes with an inline remote to plug your earphones into), but nothing extra that I could do with out either.

It looks great. I got a white version (even thought the product description says grey) which I actually prefer. There is also a black version of the N79 that has been released recently as well. The changeable backs are cool (I received the white, red and brown covers), but I don't know how much I will change them personally.

The features as you've read in the product description are incredible. And honestly it does all of them well. The music player is good. The camera is decent (Not the best 5 mp pics I've ever seen, but for a phone the pics are awesome, and it has an automatic flash). I wasn't expecting a whole lot from the video recorder, but the quality really surprised me, in a good way. The gps is awesome. You get a 90 trial of the turn by turn voice navigation, I'm not sure how much the subscription costs, but if it's not outrageous, I would absolutely spend money for it. The FM transmitter is a really cool feature, I travel a lot and am in a lot of rental cars and it works like a charm. At this point in time this phone seems to have about every feature out there. It's pretty amazing considering it's size.

I've never used a symbian phone before and there is a bit of a learning curve. It took me a few days of moderate use to get comfortable with it. The N79 was a bit buggy out of the box. I was also disappointed with the software support for Macs. You have to buy a plug in for iSync to work (not yet supported) and even then it recognizes it as an N95 8GB, but it does work. I hope there will be more Mac support in the near future. Nokia has recently released a firmware update and with the amount of things that were improved, it makes you think that Nokia kinda rushed this phone out the door a little. After I updated my phone the OS is much more solid and a little faster and more responsive. If you purchase this phone, updating the software should be your first order of business.

I can't think of anything else I could possibly expect a phone to do that this phone doesn't. I chose this phone over the N82 because of the looks and because it supports US 3G unlike the N82. The N82 supposedly has a better camera, but for me I'd rather have the 3G. Fly Pan Am