Nokia Releases Gold Edition N97 [Luxury Phone Features Real 18-carat Gold, "Luxury" Apps Preinstalled, Still Received Poorly]

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It’s been a while since we’ve seen a gawdy, over-the-top, needlessly expensive gadget here at TFTS and here’s a new one to keep us entertained. Nokia is releasing a “Gold Edition” of their popular Nokia N97 smartphone.As you can imagine, it’ll feature a body of 18-carat gold. And like the other gold-plated and -themed gadgets that we’ve seen in this ‘market’, it will have gold themed wallapers running on the mobile OS.

In addition to the usual N97 software, the Gold Edition N97 will feature an application dubbed “ELLE 360Fashion news” that lets “fashion lovers [...] follow the latest trends and news from the catwalk.” It sounds like an RSS feed from French fashion magazine Elle to me, but nobody ever accused me of being fashion-savy.

Why Nokia is pushing this as a ‘premiere’ app is beyond me, you probably can get it for free on the Ovi App Store. Not to overtly shill for our friends at Sony Ericsson, but at least the high-class Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness phone came with a 24-hour concierge service for its high-brow owners.

In case you haven’t heard, the Nokia N97 has been pretty poorly received by just about everybody and even Nokia admitted that the phone needed some work. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that this Gold Edition will help the N97 fly off the shelves, but it probably isn’t meant too. It’s not every day that we see the manufacturer like Nokia doing these special gold editions – usually it’s done by a third party, like Stuart Hughes, who’ve produced such wonders like the Gold iPhone and Gold PS3.

Nokia plans to release the Nokia N97 mini Gold Edition in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The release date hasn’t been revealed, but it will sell for zł2499 ($847) in Poland.