Isn't she a beaut (the phone)? Of course, we're probably just a little biased, but nevertheless we think there are some pretty compelling reasons that the Nokia N80 should be the next phone you consider. We previously said that the the bee's knees for Symbian upgraders was the Nokia E70, and that might still well be true - but we think the N80 will be the option - for everyone else: including those who are coming from a proprietary phone OS. Read on for our reasoning...
Phil Askey of dpreview.com said last thursday " I honestly can't count the number of times I've seen a manufacturer 'accidentally' place embargoed material on a webserver. It happens before almost every major announcement, this year it has happened with such predictability that you begin to question whether it's just deliberate, designed simply to create hype. (They also have a lovely detailed preview of the Nikon D200.)
Nokia has just done that. However, in their case, it really can't be accidental - since no tickery other than visiting the official N-series site (www.nokia.com/nseries/ ) is required. There's a link to a Nokia N80 product page. The address "www.nokia.com/n80 also works.
Just in case it is an "accident", we have pictures and all derivable details after the jump.
The first time we really heard about the N80 was at Nokia Connections 2005.
That presentation included a lovely picture of what appeared to be a stainless steel Symbian S60 slider:
That, of course, was what inspired Alexandr3 from the mobile-review forums to create the -fake- N80 which adorned multiple gadget sites this week. (e.g. Engadget) So, the macromedia presentation was not really the first leak - just the first to (probably) confirm it's name.
What else can we expect from the phone? Well, apart from Symbian OS 9.1 (which will be in the already announced N91) we can probably expect a high resolution 320*240 display, quadband, and a 2MP camera. These are not without antecedents in already announced Nokia's; both the Nokia 6270 and 6280 sliders have gorgeous screens with that resolution, and the 6270 is also quadband. (Look at mobique.com for screenshots)
One other prediction we'd like to make is that the N80 will be released and shipped simultaneously. This has been accomplished before, most recently with the Nokia 6670, and seems likely given that the phone design appears to have been generally decided upon since June, and that there are no competing smartphone sliders. Perhaps Nokia wanted to give us some relief from constant waiting ...
On 30th August, Macromedia organized what appears to be a press event for Macromedia Studio 8 in Taipei. You can look at a gallery of pictures of the event here, by lis186 on flickr.( google cache of the announcement of the event; text in traditional chinese)
During this event a particular slide was shown:
There are a couple of surprises apparent.
1. Nokia will soon be announcing the two new N-Series phones; a N80 slider, and an N71 clamshell. This might be what Michael at mobileburn meant when he said: expect some big news from one of the major handset manufacturers to hit us.
This in itself is not surprising. Nokia has recently released several (non-symbian) slider phones, and because the very first symbian S60 phone (Nokia 7650) was a slider. Nokia has also recently moved strongly into the clamshell market.
2. The release date of the N91 seems to have been delayed. It is pictured in Q1 2006, while previous information forecasted a end 2005 release. Of course, the slide is titled Flash Lite Roadmap; and hence it may simply mean that Flash Lite will only be available for that device then, not that the phone will only be available then. This is given credence because the N70 uses Symbian OS 8.1a while the N91 uses Symbian OS 9.1. We can but hope...
(we'll talk about the other surprises in the next article)
[via Marco Casario]
