Today I had the pleasure of watching a small presentation by Vodafone and Nokia in London.

Both Vodafone and Nokia confirmed the 26th June as the expected UK release date. The marketing campaigns are all geared towards that date too, so sorry folks, an early release is highly unlikely, at least for the UK.

The handset on demo was an early hardware prototype but running the latest firmware, which we were told still isn't the final production release.

What this means for the US, I really don't know. Rumors are still running wild amongst the blogs for a June 2nd release but as far as I'm concerned, there's no solid evidence, yet. It will be an interesting development, should Nokia choose to launch the N97 almost a month earlier in the US than the UK.