China-only Nokia 3208c has touchscreen, knows the language

Nokia announced its second China-specific mobile phone - the Nokia 3208c. It sports a touchscreen in order to support handwriting, like its predecessor - the Nokia 6208c but doesn't run on Symbian as you might have expected.

The Nokia 3208c runs a modified S40 5th edition interface and aside from the touchscreen, it's your typical S40 mid-to-low-end phone. It measures in at 108 x 48 x 13.2 mm and 90 grams and its 2.4" 262K color, QVGA screen is reasonably big for its size.

There's handwriting recognition via a stylus, and there's speaker-independent voice dialing and commands.

Nokia 3208c in Graphite Black and Pearl White

The 3208c relies on tri-band GSM for voice calls and GPRS/EDGE Class 32 for data connectivity. A microUSB port and Bluetooth 2.0 handle local connectivity. The 2-megapixel camera is decidedly low-end despite the dedicated shutter key but the A2DP support and 3.5mm audio jack score good points for the audio department.

Actually, with FM radio with RDS and a 1GB microSD card in the box (up to 4GB cards supported), plus a headset, the Nokia 3208c is a decent performer when it comes to audio. The 11 hours of music playback however are somewhat of a disappointment, as the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic can go up to 27 hours with pretty much the same sized battery and a bigger screen.

The Nokia 3208c will be available in Graphite Black and Pearl White coming some time in the Q4 2009 - but only in China folks. No word on pricing just yet.