It's a rare thing to see an important handset manufacturer presenting a device made by another big manufacturer, but this is what happened today. Nokia literally presented the L870, Samsung's latest mid-end slider.

We first saw Samsung L870 back in mid-April, when the handset was unveiled during a Dutch mobile fair, and we knew it's a device that runs on Symbian S60. Now Nokia is actually bringing the L870 into the spotlight, via a press release that introduces "the best of S60", straight from the S60 Summit held in Barcelona, Spain.

Since the Finnish company "owns" the S60 platform, I guess that presenting a new smartphone that runs on it is a normal thing to do. Even if we talk about a device made by one of Nokia's main competitors on the mobile market. In fact, the new Samsung phone has a design quite similar to some of Nokia's sliders, so we could say it's a "Nokia made by Samsung".

"Today, the collaboration with one of the key stakeholders, Samsung, is strengthened with the launch of the business style L870. This announcement increases the total count of announced S60 devices to 79", declared Matti Vanska, Vice President, Mobile Software Sales and Marketing, Nokia.

The features of the 79th S60 handset, besides Symbian S60, include a 2.4 inch display with 256K colors and 240 x 320 pixels, Safari web browser (like Apple's iPhone), 3G connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0, a 3 Megapixel camera, Media player, FM radio, microSD card support and so on - all in a case that has only 13.5 millimeters in thickness.

L870 is not the first Samsung phone to run on Symbian S60, as the South Korean company also released i450, i550, i560 and the 5 Megapixel G810, all coming with the same S60 Operating System.

The Nokia-like Samsung L870 will hit the market starting August 2008 for a retail price that was not yet announced.