Even if many companies have said their gadget is a true iPhone killer, when Nokia says that, we can really trust them. The Nokia N97 offers a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out and place the display at an angle for comfortable viewing.

Furthermore, the phone supports a 3.5-inch touchscreen with a 16:9 aspect ratio, haptic-enabled. However, even if the resolution of the screen is quite good, 640X360, the N97 does not support multitouch gesture use like pinching.

Looking through its characteristics, we can find that it weighs a bit more than the iPhone, but it's thicker than Apple's gadget. As for the N97's camera, it a 5MP one with dual LED flash. 32GB of onboard memory, microSD, card slot and a battery food for 499 hours of standby and 270 minutes of video playback are the other features of this new gadget.

Nokia unveiled its new phone at the NokiaWorld conference in Barcelona on Tuesday and it described it as “the world's most advanced personal computer.” Its estimate retail price is about 550 euros, about $629.69.

N97 will start shipping in the first half of 2009, making it likely that it will be at least five months before it arrives in stores. However, it seems that the new N97 is a direct rival to Sony Ericsson's X1 and HTC's Touch Pro, both of which use Microsoft's Windows software, and analysts estimate that more rivals will appear until the gadget is launched.

In other news, Nokia has officially quit the Japan market on Thursday, jettisoning its tiny market share there and leaving only its $5,000-plus luxury “Vertu” phones for the ultra-rich. Meanwhile, the company also said it closed its acquisition of the mobile software maker Symbian on Tuesday.