Nokia N87 will be the iPhone competitor Nokia

The Nokia N87 will be the iPhone competitor Nokia fans have been waiting for, powered by Symbian^3 with support for multi-touch gestures.

When Apple celebrates the three-year anniversary for the iPhone, Nokia plans to release the Nokia N87. Unlike the Nokia N86 that was released late last year, the Nokia N87 will combine the N8x range's multimedia capabilities with the new Symbian^3 OS supporting multi-touch gestures.

The Nokia N87 has been in the making for a long time, and though no hands-on photos have leaked out, release documents for the smartphone have appeared on YouTube in the last few months. The most recent release document was posted on YouTube back in January, revealing pretty much every single key specification of the Nokia N87.

Coupled with recent information that is now available about Nokia's future Symbian effort, it becomes clear that the Nokia N87 will be the Finnish manufacturer's first direct iPhone competitor. Exact availability is not yet known, but we think it would be a safe bet to expect the Nokia N87 to have been released worldwide by the end of Q3 2010.

Nokia N87 full Specifications music edition
The Nokia N87 will sport a 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen promised to be scratch resistant, which will take advantage of Symbian^3 multi-touch support, more specifically the pinch-to-zoom gesture. The release document for the Nokia N87 also states that the touch keypad size has been increased and the style has been changed, basically meaning that we should see a software keypad style that is actually meant to be used for fingers.

The Nokia N87 will also get a 12-megapixel camera with 720p video recording and lens protection on the back, while a hardware shutter button has been added to the side of the phone. The phone will also get UltraXenon flash with infrared night vision LEDs. Additionally, a front-faced VGA web/video call camera will be incorporated.

Another important aspect of the Nokia N87 will be an 600MHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, which along with graphics/video hardware acceleration should provide plenty power for multimedia tasks. The release document also mentions the option of choosing 16GB or 32GB Nand Flash internal memory, at the expense of a memory slot. It'll also offer 256MB RAM, which can be expanded with a virtual memory thanks to Symbian^3.

The Nokia N87 will also offer a new touch key panel at the bottom of the touchscreen, which will automatically change to call mode, camera mode or music mode. The phone will also sport new HD surround sound speakers on the left and right. There's also ambience detection and lighting that makes the phone for instance automatically ring and vibrate louder in a crowded place as opposed to in a car. At the bottom of the phone there'll be a 3.5mm audio jack and a charging port. We assume the charging port will be offering the new micro USB standard for charging, which all manufacturers have agreed to use beginning this year. At the top of the phone there'll be a Nokia N87 port, a special connectivity port which could possibly take advantage of the HDMI out support provided by Symbian^3.

Price and release date nokia n87 new full specification 8GB
All in all, it looks like the Nokia N87 will become a worthy upgrade to the Nokia N95. A couple of years late if you ask some, but we guess Nokia fans will forgive their master when the Symbian^3 smartphone hits store shelves around the world later this year. It's not yet known when and where the Nokia N87 will be available, but we guess it'll have been released around the world by the end of Q3 2010. We also expect that it'll cost between $600 and $700 before subsidies, which is in line with competing products before subsidies.