Nokia Starts Pre-Order of N8 in U.S. at $549

Nokia has started taking order for the Nokia N8 smartphone in the U.S. Nokia promises to deliver it by the end of September. The phone is priced at $549, but folks at Nokia Blog say that the prices might drop as soon as it gets released on other online stores. The phone is available only in dark grey color, which is quite a disappointment as the phone is suppose to come in five colors: dark grey, silver white, green, blue and orange.

The Nokia N8 has 12-megapixel camera (with flash) and is capable of shooting HD videos (720p). It also has a secondary video camera on the front for video calling. You can view your recordings on the phone's 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen or connect it to your home cinema system via the built-in HDMI port. Connectivity-wise, the N8 features Wi-Fi (b, g, and the speedy n standard), in addition to Bluetooth 2.1. You also get GPS and A-GPS positioning systems, with Nokia's free and complete navigation solution, Ovi Maps. The N8 comes with 16GB of on-board storage (expandable via microSD cards up to 32GB) and also features an FM receiver and transmitter.

Nokia's real gamble though, is not with the N8 hardware, but with the operating system delivered on the device. But with the N8, Nokia is putting out its first phone featuring the revamped Symbian 3 OS, which includes several new features, such as multi-touch, flick scrolling, and pinch-to-zoom. Symbian 3 adds several other features found on competing smartphone platforms, like multiple home screens and home screen widgets (similar to Android) for Facebook and Twitter, among others.

The phone is already available for preorder in few parts of Europe. We have still not heard any official news about India launch, but we are expecting it to be available this year.