Nokia unveils new Fold and Slide phones

Nokia’s been producing phones with four digit names for a long, long time now, and it’s clearly catching up with the company. While it’s technically announced three new phones, two of them have to share the same name – the Nokia 6600.

Depending on how explicit you are with your salesperson, you’ll either end up with the Nokia 6600 Fold or the Nokia 6600 Slide. As the names suggest, the Fold is a flip-top phone, while the slide features . . . well, a slide-out dialling panel, basically.

There are some more distinct features to the phones, however – the 6600 Fold uses a 2.13” OLED display, a touch tinier than the 6600 Slide’s 2.2” display. The Fold version has a relatively poky 2 megapixel camera, while the slide variant sports a 3.2 megapixel shooter. The slide also features Nokia’s Maps application, although you’ll need to plump out extra for a Bluetooth GPS module to get this properly operational. Oh, and the press release for both phones is rich with terms like “Smooth”, “Glossy”, “Beauty” and “Elegance”, but we’ve always found that those kind of things are in the eye of the beholder.

The other new Nokia on the block is the Nokia 3600 Slide; aside from the notes on how beautiful it’s apparently going to be (not that Nokia could possibly be biased), it’s notable as it’ll feature background noise cancellation capability, along with a music player, 3.2 megapixel camera, TV-Out and the same Bluetooth-required Nokia Maps application.

All three phones will be available in the third quarter of 2008, with pricing not yet announced.