Skype on a cell phone

Nokia has signed a partnership with Skype to offer Internet calling for its new N800 Internet Tablet smart phone.

While the phone will be immediately available in the U.S. and some European countries, Nokia announced Monday at CES, the Skype service will not be available until June. People can stay connected until then with the N800's instant messaging feature over WLAN, in addition to regular cell phone calls.

The N800 smart phone has 128MB RAM and 256MB of flash memory with two memory cards slots that will each take SD, MicroSD, MiniSD, MMC and RS-MMC cards of up to 2GB.

(Credit: Nokia)

The silver and black phone comes loaded with a screen keyboard, a media player, an RSS feeder, Internet radio, Bluetooth, the Opera 8 Web browser, a PDF viewer and a USB port, as well as the usual calculator and file managing utilities.

The N800 offers 3.5 hours of battery time, according to Nokia, with up to 12 days of standby. The device is a likely competitor to the Cingular 8525, which also offers WLAN.

[perikifi]

Smart phone with no phone?

I think it's a bit imprecise to call a device without cellular network access a 'phone'. Yes, Nokia makes 'phones without a phone', such as this and the predecessor 770 Internet Tablet.

[compubasic]

Learn to read

"... Skype service will not be available until June. People can stay connected until then with the N800's instant messaging feature over WLAN, in addition to regular cell phone calls." <- See that last part, the phone makes PHONE CALLS!