Tech Take: Nokia Debuts Square Phone

Struggling Nokia (NOK) needs lots of help but it is not clear that its latest, new device will help. The company today, announced in Singapore that it will be releasing a square smartphone, the Nokia X5-01 in the third quarter of this year.

Besides its odd looks, the slider phone functions differently than conventional devices. Instead of pushing a button to access, say, the shuffle mode on your portable music player, you instead spin your phone in a circle and the movement will activate it. Want to know how many messages you have? Shake the PDA and it somehow lets you feel how many messages you have.

The phone, which will cost about $200, will be released in the Indonesia first. Availability in other markets has not been announced. It will come in blue, black, green, purple and pink, has a 5 megapixel camera, an LED flash and 200 MB of internal storage.