OK, hide those badly shot ’spy’ pictures already. The Nokia N96 is real and until the iPhone is truly available everywhere will serve as the next Jesus-phone for the masses. With 16GB of internal memory, it’s the portable multimedia machine to beat.

A PR rep for Nokia confirmed the announcement that wasn’t just made at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona. Selected Asia Pacific journalists and bloggers attended a special briefing in Sydney, unveiling the four new Nokia phone models that comprise the N96, N78, 6220 classic and 6120 Navigator.

Is the N96 just a very cleverly positioned device marketing-wise? Looking at the ridiculous amount of effort made at ‘outing’ it on the Web, the N96 is a big deal – specs-wise.

Besides a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss optics-using camera, it has a 2.8-inch QVGA display, 16GB of internal memory, 128MB of RAM and 256MB system memory. The OS? The still reliable S60, Third Edition. It will also offer 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

Of course, Nokia’s CEO is all enthused about the new ‘multimedia computers’ as the Finnish company insists on calling its N-series phones:

“As we continue to free the Internet from the limitations of the desktop, we are taking mobility into a completely new realm of possibility,” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Chief Executive Officer of Nokia. Translated – “We’re going to make it impossible for you to go anywhere without the Internet”. Perhaps Nokia should start marketing the N96 as the BlackBerry alternative – surf and retrieve your emails anywhere without worrying RIM’s servers are down.

Since it will initially be offered for the GSM and 3G networks in Europe and Asia first, the N96 probably won’t be arriving in the U.S till the third quarter. Question is, if the next iPhone iteration’s out before then, will anyone really care?

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Entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 1:08 pm under Cell phones.

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
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