Nokia N8 Photo Leaked Amid Rumour Of Delays

The launch of Nokia’s new flagship handset, the N8, which could be the device that the Finnish mobile giant uses to finally take on the ubitiqious Apple iPhone, has been delayed until the summer, according to a number of media reports.

Nokia’s Answer To The iPhone?

Earlier this week Nokia launched three social networking focused devices, the C3, C6 and E5. The E5 and C3 come with keyboards and are aimed at consumers who live online. However, industry watchers were somewhat disappointed that these new Nokia handsets did not include an out and out iPhone challenger, and did not include the new version of the Symbian OS.

Nokia has not announced a new flagship Symbian handset for over a year now. The N97 did not overly excite the market and the N800 and N900 handsets came with Nokia’s Maemo (Linux-based) operating system.

The manufacturer had teased the market at the start of this week with a mysterious invitation that sparked rumours that it was about to launch the much-rumoured Nokia N8. According to tech website, 3G.co.uk, the launch of the Nokia N8, originally slated for May, has now been put back to July, with no reasons given for the delay.

This could have something to do with the new Apple iPhone, which is thought to arrive in June. Back in February this year, Daniel Amir, with Lazard Capital Markets, wrote in a research note that Apple is developing two new iPhones, and the updated handsets are expected to arrive sometime in June. Apple already released a preview of its next-generation iPhone OS 4 earlier this month, which finally gives the iPhone the ability to multi-task.

Nokia N8 Specs

The new Nokia N8 handset is thought to have a 3.5-inch touchscreen and will come with a 12-megapixel camera equipped with a Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash.

The device is also thought to offer users the ability to play back HD video on their television via a HDMI connection and also features an external SIM card slot that provides additional storage capacity for the 32GB of onboard memory. It is also thought to be powered by a 1GHz snapdragon processor.

Leaked images of the device show a handset with a full touchscreen, although it is uncertain at this time whether it also contains a slide out keyboard, although this seems unlikely. It certainly has much more angular edges compared to the smooth curves associated with the likes of the Apple iPhone and Google’s Nexus One.

Yet there are two points that makes this device potentially very interesting.

Firstly, it is supposed to be the first Nokia handset that comes with the now fully open source Symbian operating system, Symbian ^3. The second point is that it could be Nokia’s long-awaited challenge to the Apple iPhone. Time will tell whether the rumours pan out.