TEXAS, USA - US telecom-giant AT&T, and leading handset manufacturer Nokia, have announced the availability of the social messaging device Nokia Surge, starting from July 19th this year.

Targeted at the upwardly mobile customer on a budget, the Surge is attractively priced at US$79.99 (after a US$50 mail-in rebate) on a two-year AT&T contract. The Surge offers high-end software features such as a complete email solution, downloadable applications, and full HTML browser with Flash support.

The Surge was previously covered at our portal as the Mako, following up on leaked AT&T publication material, first reported by Engadget. Most of the specifications previously covered has been consistent with the now-confirmed release from AT&T and Nokia, except for the naming: from Mako to Surge.

Live image of the Nokia Surge (Source: Boy Genius Report)

The Nokia Surge is of the same form factor as the Nokia E75 with the device sporting a full-QWERTY sliding keyboard,  and a 2.4" display with QVGA resolution (240x320 pixels), but the design is slightly different from that of the Nokia E75, which also comes with a full-QWERTY sliding keyboard and a 2.4" display. The device lacks the numeric keypad of the E75, and hence, it has to be slid open for the most basic operations. At 96x54x15mm, the Surge is quite compact for a full keyboard-bearing slider smartphone.

Other specifications include a 2 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom, quadband GSM connectivity, dualband HSDPA, A-GPS, 128MB of internal memory, a microSD memory card slot for external memory, Bluetooth, and it will be based on the S60 v3.2 platform.

AT&T is offering value-added features to derive the full benefits of the Surge's hardware, with its AT&T Navigator (offering turn-by-turn directions and live traffic updates), AT&T Mobile Music (providing over-the-air music download service from Napster Mobile, eMusic Mobile, and XM Radio), AT&T Video Share (first service in the US to provide live video sharing over wireless devices during  a voice call), JuiceCaster (offering instantaneous sharing of videos and pictures from wireless device to the web's most popular sites, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr).

While the Surge is very competitively priced at US$79.99 on a two-year contract, which includes a wireless voice plan of US$39.99 per month, or higher, and data plan of US$30-a-month or more; market success will largely depend on the customer acceptability of AT&T services of Navigator, Mobile Music, Video Share, and Juice Caster.