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Nokia Adds Stainless-Steel Symbian Smartphone

Orlando, Fla. – Nokia followed
through on a promise to continue to support the Symbian smartphone OS, even
though it entered into

an
alliance with Microsoft

last month to adopt Windows Phone as its primary
smartphone platform.

Here at the CTIA convention, the
company unveiled a Symbian-based 3G touchscreen smartphone, the

Astound

. It will be available for
T-Mobile’s 3G HSPA network on April 6 at $79.99 with a two-year service
agreement and qualifying voice and data plan through T-Mobile stores and such
retailers as Costco, RadioShack, Sam’s Club, Target Mobile locations and
Walmart.

The Astound is positioned as
offering the features of a high-end smartphone with a premium stainless-steel
design at a modest price point, and like select phones from Nokia and other
companies, it’s equipped with GPS, embedded maps and a route-calculation
algorithm to double as a portable navigation device (PND).

It will be Nokia’s first Symbian 3.1
device in the U.S.

The Astound features a 3.5-inch
capacitive-touch AMOLED display protected by thin, damage-resistant Gorilla
Glass. It also has an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, 720p HD video
capture, and access to thousands of free and paid apps via Nokia’s

Ovi Store

. Other features include three
customizable homescreens and preloaded apps such as the Fruit Ninja game,
Slacker Radio, and playback of stored music and video.

 It’s also preloaded with Ovi Maps for the
U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean to deliver voice-guided, turn-by-turn
navigation.  Maps of more than 80
countries in different languages are available at no additional cost.

The navigation application
features more than 8,000 3D landmarks, free premium points-of-interest content
from Lonely Planet guides and Tripadvisor, 
Wi-Fi positioning, real-time traffic updates, maps of public transit
lines, and the ability to share trip experiences via Facebook, Twitter and
local social networks.

From the online Ovi stores, the
phones downloads apps and games, such as Angry Birds, OpenTable, Shazam and
Galaxy on Fire. Downloaded apps can be billed directly to a consumer’s monthly
T-Mobile bill or credit card.

 T-Mobile “continues to make owning a
smartphone easy and affordable,” said Andrew Morrison, product management VP
for T-Mobile. “Offering the features of a high-end smartphone at a great price,
the Nokia Astound is sure to appeal to a broad array of consumers.”

Nokia sales VP Mark Slater called
the Astound an “alternative” smartphone “unlike anything in its price point.”

 Last year, Nokia began selling its first two phones
to T-Mobile with embedded maps and PND functions following 2009 availability of
its first unlocked U.S phone with maps and PND functions.

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