We’ve seen Nokia’s Mango-running Sea Ray smartphone in action, initially on N9 hardware before appearing on something more customized towards Windows Phone 7. Now that August is here, we’re closer than ever to seeing the release of Mango handsets, what with the official announcement of the Fujitsu-Toshiba IS12T. When is Nokia going to step up to the plate and formally launch the Sea Ray? Invitations to a joint Microsoft/Nokia event suggest that the date could we could be finding out by August 17.

As part of this party, which will help kick-off the gamescom trade show in Cologne, Germany, Nokia will be raffling off three unnamed Nokia WP7 smartphones. That seems like an unusual venue to launch the device, so an announcement may be coming just prior to August 17. We don’t expect the handset to be immediately available (the invitation even notes that the smartphones-as-raffle-prizes will be provided to winners “as soon as available”), but it’s likely that sometime around this event, more details will come out to fill us in on Nokia’s launch plans.

Source: The Unwired

Via: WPCentral