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Nokia will seek to steal the thunder of the Android G1 and iPhone 3G next week, with the launch of its first touchscreen handset, the Tube, apparently scheduled for October 2.

The Finnish giant is holding an international press event on that date, though it has not confirmed the topic, and meanwhile is adopting its usual cool response to its newest competitor.

The Tube, numerous leaks suggest, will actually be the Nokia 5800 and will be branded XpressMedia. If true, this would represent a new extension of the successful XpressMusic brand, indicating that the handset maker wishes to associate this range of devices - less fully featured than the N9x smartphones, but heavily optimized for music - with other forms of media and content too. In turn, this would echo the broadening of the remit of Nokia's Ovi family of web services, which was initially headed up by Nokia Musicstore and Comes With Music, but is also expanding into gaming, social networking and other areas.

So the Tube will be heavily designed for video as well as audio entertainment. Features will include a 3.2-inch touchscreen (640x360 pixels), 3.2 megapixel camera, VGA video recording, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, quad-band GSM, 150Mb of internal memory, and microSD expansion. It will run Symbian and Series 60 in their latest edition, 5.0 or 'Taco'.

The initial launch is slated to happen in London, Nokia's favorite venue for its top unveilings, on October 2, with a full international event and initial roll-out later in the year.

In tying its Xpress handset strategy so closely into the evolution of its web services, Nokia is demonstrating the key mantra of its CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, which he repeated this week in response to the Android G1 launch - "a mobile device is not enough any more …the consumer wants a different type of service and experience on top of that."

While Google would certainly agree, given that it is staking its success on creating a better software experience on the handset than current offerings, Nokia claims it is well ahead of the game. With the metaphorical shrug of the shoulders that comes with the Nokia executive training manual, Kallasvuo pointed out that Symbian is in 200m devices to date and is being put into an open developer process.

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