As some of you may know I was invited to the official launch party of the N97 last week (Tuesday 16^th of June) at the Getty image gallery where I think this was the prefect venue for the event. The beginning of the launch was attended by Stephen Fry who looked genuinely impressed by the device.

First of all we were addressed by Mark Loughron (Managing director Nokia UK) who thanked all those blogging about the device as it has had a large impact on the pre-order sales of the device here in the UK.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHBQNloTb1I[/youtube]

It was rather a pleasant evening and we were introduced to the virtual reality display that would have been placed in the Nokia flagship store in Regent street for a week prior to the official release of the device into the stores nationwide on the 26^th of June.

Nokia’s staff were there to talk us through the display that some of the devices main features and Nokia’s services available including the Ovi store and the fantastic Nokia maps 3.0 that I had had previously used that day to find my way to the event without any hitch at all. We were then left to play with a few of the devices and after doing so am rather impressed at its design and ingenuity and will look forward to trailing this device in full in the near future.