We reported yesterday that Nokia was rumored to have already started making steps towards coming to the market with its own netbook, and that it had contracted Foxconn for the manufacturing process, and now we learn that there is more to come from the Finnish mobile phone maker during the ongoing year or sometime during the next one.

Although the company showed little interest lately in the lifespan of its Internet tablet line, Nokia is rumored to be working on yet another IT project, which could be released sometime before Christmas, and which should come with a 4.2-inch touchscreen display, while also including a slide-out keyboard.

Another new device that Nokia is rumored to be working on is called “project Nautilus,” and it is expected to come to the market in mid to late 2010, and include a very slim touchscreen, as well as a sensor-driven slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The reports have it that the keyboard slides out when triggered by a sensor, after which the keys automatically rise for easier typing.

Eldar Murtazin from Mobile-review also has some rather interesting tidbits of info about the phone maker, stating that the company is working hard on the development of its own Linux software platform, which will be based on Maemo, though it will have a large amount of rewritten code and will be more advanced. We should be able to see the OS running on future mobile devices/computers/communicators that should be released on the market later this year.

In addition to the new OS, it seems that Nokia also plans to have a new line of Linux-based devices that should replace the existing N-Series. The Nokia S60/Symbian handsets will no longer be high-end ones, but will go to the mid-tier/mass market segment instead. Both the new devices and the Linux platform are expected to be unveiled at the end of the summer or the beginning of the fall in Germany.