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Nokia introduced two colorful 3G slider phones on Nov. 24 that will arrive in the first quarter of 2010.
The square-edged, aluminum-framed 6700 Slide features a 2.2-inch QVGA screen above dedicated navigation buttons, all of which slides up to reveal a keypad. The navigation menu is ringed in black, and the frames come in rich shades of pink, petrol-blue, lime, purple or aluminum.
There’s a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, dual LED flash and a dedicated camera button, and uers can edit images on the phone and directly upload them to the Web. There’s also an FM radio and a music player, 29 hours of audio playback time, 12 hours of standby and four hours of talk time.
The 6700 Slide supports WCDMA 900/1900/2100 networks, as well as WCDA 850/1900/2100 and GSM 850/900/1800 and 1900. It has a Symbian interface, support for email and Ovi Chat, Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity and comes with a 2GB microSD card. It measures 3.75 by 1.81 by 0.63 inches and weighs 3.88 ounces.
The scenario is similar with the 7230: screen sliding up to reveal a keypad. But in this instance the entire phone is more rounded and color choices are limited to hot pink or graphite. The less expensive of the two, it comes with 2.4-inch TFT screen.
The camera is also reduced to 3.2 megapixels, but users get access to email, instant messaging and quick access to media-sharing sites such as Facebook, Flickr and Nokia’s Ovi Share. And should all that socializing lead to a missed message or call, the phone emits a soft glow to say so.
This Series 40 phone also has Bluetooth, FM radio and a 2GB microSD card included. It measures 3.85 by 1.88 by 0.57 inches, weighs 3.5 ounces and supports WCDMA 850/1900/2100 and 900/1900/2100 networks.
Before taxes and subsidies, the 6700 is priced at 160 Euro, or approximately $240, and the 7230 at 100 Euro, or $150 – though it’s likely that both these phones, if made available in the United States, will be offered at carrier-subsidized rates.
These newest additions are in line with predictions from Broadpoint AmTech Analyst Mark McKechnie, who wrote in a Nov. 23 research note that his firm expects Nokia – which will be hosting an analyst day in Finland on Dec. 2 – to soon outline a smartphone OS strategy that includes Symbian phones for volume orders and Maemo/Linux phones on the high end.
On Nov. 19, the high-end Nokia N900 arrived in stores. Dubbed a “mobile computer” by Nokia, this smartphone-meets-tablet runs the open-source Maemo 5 operating system and features a 3.5-inch touch screen and 600MHz processor.
McKechnie wrote in the Nov. 23 note that his firm is forecasting an industry-wide 230 million converged devices in 2010, which would be up by 30 percent from the 177 million in 2009.