Nokia touchscreen iPhone-a-like resurfaces

With the 3G iPhone launch finally out of the way, we thought Nokia would start trumpeting its own touchscreen darling. It hasn't yet, but that doesn't mean a Nokia touchscreen phone isn't already out there -- in fact, there's pictures to 'prove' it.

A few months ago, a blogger got hold of a supposed Nokia touchscreen phone, but the pictures were dark and not very clear. Now more pictures have surfaced on a now-defunct Flickr stream, this time with a Vodafone logo on board.

So, if we take the pics at face value, what can we make of the touchscreen phone -- dubbed by talkaboutnseries.com as the Nokia 5800 Tube? The first thing that hits you, aside from the large screen, is the stylus. Styli are fiddly, uncomfortable to use and basically negate the point of having a touchscreen in the first place. If it's not good enough for fingers, just use buttons. The Vodafone logo implies that it's a real product, and one not far from production.

Another image of the Tube shows a 3.2-megapixel camera with a dual LED flash. Hopefully the Tube will have HSDPA and Wi-Fi, but we'll just have to wait and see. We have no idea when this phone is going to be officially announced, but we assume it will come out later this year. -Andrew Lim