Nokia 701, 700 and 600: release dates, prices, and specs for new Symbian Belle smartphones

Nokia’s refusal to give up on Symbian completely has today born fruit in the shape of three new smartphones: the IPS-toting 701, the  minuscule 700, and the extra-loud 600. Each phone will come loaded up with the latest version of Symbian, codenamed Belle, which also gets its official announcement today — it’ll be available as a free update for users of Symbian Anna handsets. Alas, there’s no specificity on when that update will drop, with Nokia Conversations describing the delivery window as some point over the “coming months.”
The trio of new smartphones is expected to arrive at a similar time, Q3 of 2011, with the Nokia 701 costing €290, the 700 asking for €270, and the 600 being the budget-friendly option at €180 (all prices before local taxes and carrier subsidies).
As to what makes each handset unique, Nokia claims the 3.5-inch ClearBlack display on the 701 is the world’s brightest, while the 700 is supposedly “the most compact touch monoblock smartphone in the market right now,” and the 600 features the company’s loudest integrated speaker to date. So each has a selling point for a particular audience (or a gimmick, if you’re feeling cynical), though we’re not overly enthusiastic about seeing the ClearBlack label applied to both the 701′s IPS display and the 700′s 3.2-inch AMOLED screen — putting the same label on two different technologies doesn’t help anyone make an informed decision.
Other specs for the 701 include an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and HD video mode, 8GB of built-in storage plus MicroSD expandability, and a 1GHz processor under the hood. A pentaband radio and NFC functionality are welcome additions, too, and they also make an appearance on the 9.7mm-thick 700. It shares the same 1GHz processor as its bigger sibling and also matches it in screen resolution (640 x 360), but has to settle for a smaller 5-megapixel image sensor that doesn’t list HD video recording among its capabilities.
The 600 brings up the rear with a basic 3.2-inch TFT display, also at nHD resolution, and a loudspeaker that can reach 106 phon when pushed to its maximum. Check out the links below for more details or jump past the break to see Nokia’s video previews.