14 DAY TRIAL // Nokia announced that it was working on a full touchscreen device as early as October of last year, but no further comments on it were made at the time. Later on, however, a teaser video surfaced on the net, showing the supposed Nokia XpressMusic 5800.
August this year brought new info on the full touchscreen handset when Devinder Kishore, Nokia India's marketing director, said at a press conference in New Delhi that, “We have been working on the Series 60 platform for touch screen user interface and a mobile device is expected to be launched by the year-end."
The latest Batman movie, "The Dark Knight", featured Nokia's full touchscreen phone, codenamed the “Tube.” This would be Nokia's second full touchscreen device, the first one having been launched in 2003, but which was later discontinued.
Back to the ongoing rumors now, our colleagues from Mobile Entertainment stated in a recent article that their sources, although tight-lipped on specifics, told them that Nokia might unveil its touchscreen phone at a UK event, scheduled to take place on October 2. Next week's event is expected to be really important, since it will celebrate Nokia's Comes With Music project and will mark the release of a number of new handsets.
Apparently, the UI will have many features also found on the iPhone, like the re-orientating screen that goes from portrait to landscape, depending on how the phone is held by the user. Anyway, one can’t help but wonder why Nokia has prolonged the waiting that much, especially since several devices that feature a full touchscreen have already been released, like the Blackberry Storm. Furthermore, a strong competitor also came once with yesterday's release of the G1 phone. Will there still be a market for Nokia's full touchscreen? That entirely depends, one might say, on its reliability and price.