14 DAY TRIAL // Announced at CTIA 2011, Nokia Astound is now available at T-Mobile USA for $79.99 after a $50 mail in rebate upon signing a new two-year agreement.
The Astound is a branded version of the standard Nokia C7, but features additional several updates that are available first on this device.
This includes a new browser and portrait QWERTY keyboard, as well as split screen functionality that lets users see the input area when they type.
Nokia suggested that these improvements will be available to other Symbian^3 devices shortly, but has yet to announce when and which models will get the updates.
As for the specs, the Nokia Astound is in the high-end category of Symbian smartphones. The phone is powered by a 680 MHz ARM 11 processor (with Broadcom BCM2727 GPU) and packs 8GB of mass memory.
It also supports up to a 32GB microSD memory cards, which offers users a total of 40GB of storage for music, pictures and movies.
Nokia Astound has a 3.5-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with a tough damage-resistant Gorilla glass window. The screen supports up to 16 million colors and 360 x 640 pixels resolution.
Apparently, the Astound comes with built-in NFC (Near Field Communication) support, which is turned off by default.
The Symbian^3 smartphone boasts a superior 8-megapixel camera with fixed focus, dual-LED flash, face detection and camcorder (720p@25fps).
The Astound is a complete business tool when it comes to connectivity options: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, HSDPA (10.2 Mbps) and HSUPA (2 Mbps), microUSB with on-the-go support, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, GPS with A-GPS support (Ovi Maps), as well as GPRS and EDGE class 33.
The phone measures 117.3 x 56.8 x 10.5mm and weighs 130g (battery included) and embeds a standard 1200 mAh battery that should provide up to 9 hours (5 hours for 3G) of talk time or up to 555 hours (656 hours for 3G) of standby time.
