Ericsson challenges Nokia with snap-happy smartphone

Nokia has set great store by integrating the camera with the mobile phone, but it won't have the market to itself for very long.

Sony/Ericsson has officially announced its Linnea smartphone, which we told you about in December. It will be available in the third quarter, weeks after the Nokia 7650 debuts. The P800 is a Symbian smartphone, and unlike the 7650, will be triband from the get-go, so you'll be able to use it in the United States.

Unlike the Pearl-based Nokia camera phone, the P800 uses a pen-based 208x320 pixel version of the Symbian Quartz UI, now dubbed "UIQ", which Symbian originally pitched head-to-head with Palm. This makes it the successor to the R380 smartphone, which is also a pen-based device.

You can see screenshots - or realistic PhotoShop mock-ups, we're not quite sure - here and generic screenshots of this UI, also called "Thin Quartz", here

It uses version 7.0 of the Symbian OS, codenamed Hurricane, and as you'd expect the phone does GPRS and HSCD, and has Bluetooth. Ericssony wouldn't reveal the price. ®

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