Willing to prove its flagship device is still far away from being forgotten, Nokia has announced a new version of their famous N97: The N97 Mini Gold Edition, a real N97 Mini... covered with 18-carat gold. As you may have guessed, the only difference between the regular N97 Mini and this one is the design, as not only this one is covered by gold, it features an adapted theme to show its uniqueness at a glance. Finally, the device's earphones have also been modified and are also covered by gold, to highlight the phone's particular look.

Offering exactly the same features as the regular N97 Mini, this Gold Edition becomes a real combination of beauty and brains and could almost be sold as a Vertu phone. Users will therefore be pleased to have a real luxury phone with a 5MP Zeiss Camera, 8GB of internal memory, an internal GPS and many other features the N97 Mini offers. What makes it somehow better than a Vertu device is probably its Symbian S60 interface, its touchscreen and also its keyboard. The only question here could be about the N97 Classic that seems to have been forgotten by the Finnish manufacturer.

Scheduled to be released during the second quarter 2010, the N97 Mini Gold Edition will sell around € 625 or $ 850, depending on the country and local taxes. The phone will be available in Europe, the Middle-East, Asia and Africa. However, no information has been released regarding any availability in North America.