At the Nokia World event in Barcelona, Nokia today unveiled the new N97 ‘mobile computer’, as the company calls it. The feature list of the device, which combines a touchscreen and a QWERTY keybord, easily tops the iPhone’s features, with 32 Gb of inbuilt memory (expandable up to 48 Gb), 5 megapixel camera capable of recording video, Flash player, etc.

Featurewise, many knew to expect something like this. With touchscreens, Nokia is behind its competitors who have already rolled out several touchscreen and touchscreen + QWERTY devices ever since the first iPhone was originally announced in the beginning of 2007 (though people forget that Nokia did, in fact, launch its first touch screen phone, the 7700, already almost five years ago). Nokia is known for its good engineering and components, but engineering or the length of the technical feature list alone don’t equal good user experience. The iPhone, even with its own usability flaws (like the missing copy+paste), has shown that the mobile market of today is about the ease of use, the availability of services, and, of course good marketing and aesthetic design. Nokia’s Symbian OS appears stiff compared to the iPhone interface and Nokia has lost much of its coolness factor. The company that had got used to being almost the one and only is now faced by competition from not just Apple, but Google, Microsoft, and the well-performing Korean manufacturers, Samsung and LG.

So with the new N97 coming out in 2009, the key questions are: does the feature-packed device also pack smooth usability, and how well does it connect with services? Impressive hardware alone will not win back market share for Nokia.

As far as I can tell, the N97 doesn’t use capacitive touchscreen technology, like the iPhone, but has a resistive screen with tactile feedback, like the earlier announced Nokia 5800. That alone is not a major letdown, because the capacitive touchscreen tech also has its cons. It only responds to finger contact and will not work with a gloved hand. The N97 supports gestures, like the iPhone, allowing the same kind of browsing and zooming experience as on the iPhone.

At least in this video, the N97’s new Symbian S60 5th Edition OS looks smooth and the web widgets that can be moved around with the finger to personalize the user’s home screen look like fun. If this is the experience consistently through the phone menus, Nokia may be doing well OS-wise. But what about the services?

Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo boasts that Nokia is rolling out services that “coordinate the world” for the user, “make the mobile Internet experience personal,” and bring social services to the mobile in a way that hasn’t yet been seen. What’s behind Kallasvuo’s words, for one, is the new Point and Find service, which will let users point at landmarks with the phone camera to slurp down location info from the Internet. Read that again. People can point at a building with the phone, and get info about the building. Now that is pretty remarkable, isn’t it, and creates an incredible opportunity for marketers as well. Right now The Point and Find service has a website, or rather just one page with the text “coming soon,” but it is anticipated that the service will become officially available when the N97 comes to stores next spring.

The Google/T-Mobile G1 has the ability to spin Google street-view photos as the user spins. Nokia will obviously top that with Point and Find. But I’m sure it won’t be too long before Nokia’s competitors get similar services out, and that’s what’s so great about the mobile market now. Couple years ago, before the iPhone came out, things seemed a bit stagnated, with Nokia dominating almost everywhere in the world. But now things are happening. There’s also the new ‘Facebook phone‘ that 3/Hutchison Whampoa is launching in the UK that will probably become more quickly popular among real masses than the 500 – 900 euro Nokia N97.

I believe we now have much of the technology, much of the understanding, and much of the user base to be very, very close to a real breakthrough in mobile. The real always-on, always-with-you, social and location-aware Internet experience is coming together.