The Nokia N97 is the much anticipated genesis to the hugely popular Nokia N95 (over 15,000,000 units sold and still counting!).

The mega-screened smartphone comes with a real QWERTY keyboard.  And as one might expect from the leading global mobile phone manufacturer, they've done things a little differently.

 

The N97 sports not just the usual 16-million colour touchscreen - it's pushed up the ante to 16.7 million colours.

 

Nokia, having come late to the touchscreen party, really need to make a difference with the N97 and if the marketing budget is anything to go by (£300 million media buying and planning budget, £22m for the UK market) the future phone ownership for many of us necessarily depends on this device.

 

Furthermore, with the lowest headline price for the device at £369.99 on prepay (Real Deal Week 28) it's less prohibitive than the iPhone 3G S.

 

Nokia waited a couple of weeks, post-new iPhone launch, to seed the first marketing messages on the high street. In the UK, there was a major splash in Phones4U and Vodafone stores, nationwide, but little else in Orange, Carphone Warehouse and T-Mobile stores, all of whom are activating the device. Even in operator 3 stores, where the prepay price for the device is at its lowest, the communications are subdued.

 

Back to the enticing feature set, it comes with a no quibble 32 GB internal memory - something that you have to trade up for in the iPhone 3G S - as well as all the iPhone-y accelerometer-type stuff smartphonies (we just made that up!) have come to expect.