Nokia N8, N98 Coming To Replace N900?

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A Chinese website has posted pictures of what it claims will be Nokia’s next top-of-the-line smartphone. The alleged device is either known as the Nokia N8, or the N98, depending on which you want to believe. The Nokia N98 is a bit more believable considering Nokia usually names the N8-series as the mid-range smartphones, but I digress.

The site in question, it168, says that the N8/N98 will be Nokia’s first keyboard-less all-touchscreen phone in the high-end series of phones. All previous high-end smartphones from the Finnish mobile giant (N95, N97, N900, etc.) have all had some sort of slide-out QWERTY or T9 keypad. A bit hard to believe, but true. Nokia has produced a few all-touchscreen phones in the past, and they’ve had reportedly good sales. The N8/N98 pictured will have only one physical key for navigating the UI.

It’ll also have an HDMI-out port, which leads you to believe it’ll be capable of 1080p or at least 720p video. Images of the back of the phone reveal the digital camera with a Carl Zeiss lens and the words “12MP” which, generally leads you to believe it’ll have a 12-megapixel camera. That would be considerably bigger than most digital cameras you’ll see stuffed into a mobile phone. It also appears to have a forward-facing camera for video conferencing.

The screen reportedly measures in at 4-inches, which would appear to be quite right, if you eyeball the pictures. The screen is reported to have multi-touch support. It’ll supposedly ship with Nokia’s new Symbian^3 mobile OS. Everything in the report and pictures makes sound sense that this device is the next high-end Nokia smartphone – although the 12-megapixel sensor is a bit hard to believe. The device is expected to be announced in mid-April, with a release later in the year.

it186 claims in their article that “Nokia is back!” How do you feel about this new (alleged) phone from Nokia? How does it compare to the iPhone/Nexus One/HTC EVO 4G?