Nokia Ships C7 Smartphone

Nokia has started shipping its second Symbian^3 -based smartphone, the "design-conscious social networker" C7, the company said Monday.

The Nokia C7 has a sleek, full-touch design of stainless steel and glass. It comes with a 3.5-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display designed to receive Facebook and Twitter updates directly on the home screen and for one-touch access to email accounts. It comes on the heels of the launch of the N8 by the world's largest handset maker, which began shipping the device at the end of September, although some customers won't receive it until sometime this month.

"The Nokia C7 is our second smartphone based on the new version of Symbian to hit the market," said Jo Harlow, head of smartphones at Nokia, in a statement. "Designed specifically with the style-conscious consumer in mind, the Nokia C7 also brings excellent social networking abilities, making it perfect for people who want to check-in and stay up to date."

The C7's dimensions are 117.3 x 56.8 x 10.5 mm. It also comes with 8 GB of storage, 256 MB of RAM, 1 GB ROM, a microSD card with expansion up to 32GB, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, a standard battery, and talk time up to 9 hours 30 minutes. Other features include an 8-MP camera and high-definition video, fixed focus, dual-LED flash, geo-tagging, and face detection.

In related news, shares of Nokia stock rose by as much as 2.7% in Helsinki trading on Monday after Goldman Sachs Group raised the Finnish company's 12-month price target from 7.8 euros to 8.6 euros because of an enhanced mobile handset portfolio and greater demand for its Symbian^3-based smartphones, they said.

"We expect strong smartphone demand, healthy sell-in of Nokia's new Symbian 3 products, and an improved basic portfolio," the analysts wrote in a report, Bloomberg reported. That will "boost the company's near-term earnings," they said.

The company did not specify which markets will receive the C7, although the website lists preorder availability information in European countries only. It did say the device will retail for around $468, compared with the N8's retail price of around $517, both before subsidies and taxes.

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