Nokia Targets Teen Market With New X5 Smartphone

Microsoft’s recently unveiled Kin device

The Nokia X5-01 fills a gap between the vendor’s X3 and X6 lines, according to the company. Resembling a minidisc player as much as a smartphone, the X5-01 offers dedicated music keys and improved sound quality and comes with access to Nokia’s Ovi music service.

The new smartphone, a square-shaped slider, also is designed for social networking – that other teen obsession – with a full QWERTY keyboard for writing tweets, status updates and text messages. The device supports most social networks, Nokia said, and major IM and webmail services out of the box.

The X5-01 includes a 5-megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom, video capture and an LED flash. There’s 200 MB of onboard memory that can be expanded with a 2GB Micro-SD card – included with the phone – which can be upgraded to 32GB.

Nokia unveiled the X5-01 at its Nokia Connection event in Singapore. The device will initially be available in Indonesia in the third quarter and the company hasn’t said when it will be available elsewhere.

The Nokia X6 8GB is a low-end version of the 16GB and 32GB versions of the X6 line. It’s expected to begin shipping in the third quarter.