Nokia announces Nokia 6260 slide feature phone, writes S40 history

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The spanking new Nokia 6260 slide easily steals the spotlight with Wi-Fi, GPS, 320 x 480 pixels display, and a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. We bet that reading those specs the words "dumb phone" or "S40" would never cross you mind. But the new Nokia 6260 slide is exactly that - a feature phone running the latest S40 6th edition user interface. Say hello to the next S40 super phone.
The unassumingly named Nokia 6260 slide has the same conservative design borrowed from the current 6xxx lineup (Nokia 6600 slide and Nokia 6210 Navigator). Obviously, the lack of original design ideas is not plaguing only Sony Ericsson recently.
Still we can't really brace our excitement as the 6260 slide is the best thing that has happened to the Nokia S40 family for quite some time now.

Nokia 6260 slide in black
The Nokia 6260 slide sports a 2.4-inch 16M color display with the one-off resolution of 320 x 480 pixels (HVGA). It has quad-band GSM support plus HSDPA 10.2 Mbps. As we already mentioned, there is also Wi-Fi and a built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support.
The integrated 5 megapixel autofocus camera is accompanied by a dual LED flash. Sadly, it will only be capable of recording VGA video at 15 fps as most recent midrange S40 handsets.
There is 200MB of internal memory and a microSD slot with support for up to 8GB cards. The 360-degree D-pad is another first for the S40 lineup - it's a nice enhancement, which sounds as a cool addition to the digital map scouring or the mobile web browsing.
Speaking of web browsing, the Nokia 6260 will be the first feature phone to sport the awesome Nokia WebKit Open Source Browser, previously available only on the Symbian S60 smartphones. It's one of the best mobile browsers currently boasting a virtual mouse pointer interface, incremental page rendering, visual history browsing and page mini-map. Flash Lite 3 support is also added to the S40 platform, which should make watching flash videos a breeze - another first for a feature phone.
Stereo Bluetooth 2.1, a microUSB port that's used for charging, and a 2.5mm A/V jack with TV-out functionality are all aboard the 6260 slide.

Nokia 6260 slide in beige
The only contemporary feature that seems missing on the Nokia 6260 slide is the accelerometer sensor that is making its way throughout handsets of various makes and walks of life. We wonder when Nokia will add that to their feature phones. But let's not digress, the new 6260 still looks like a helluva performer.
The Nokia 6260 will be available in beige or black in the beginning of 2009 at an estimated price of 299 euro before taxes and subsidies. That sounds a bit much as it will have a hard time competing with similarly equipped Nokia smartphones. Still, only time will tell.