AT&T and Nokia have announced the availability of the newest Nokia Surge full QWERTY Symbian S60 device for the nation’s second-largest wireless carrier. The Nokia Surge is a “socially supercharged smartphone,” taking advantage of AT&T’s 3G network. The device is a side-sliding QWERTY phone, and though its price and unusual design seem to target the growing consumer crowd looking for a simpler messaging device, the phone will use Nokia’s Symbian S60 operating system, which lands the Nokia Surge clearly in smartphone territory. The novel-looking Surge features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and is well-suited to messaging tasks.

Nokia says that the Surge was designed in its San Diego design center and it features goodies as a 2.4-inch 320 x 240 pixel display, Microsoft Exchange support, and a 2 megapixel camera. Standard AT&T applications like AT&T Navigator are also pre-loaded on the phone, as are Oz’s email and instant messaging clients.

With its Symbian smartphone prowess, the Nokia Surge will have an impressive feature set for a consumer-level device. The phone will use an advanced Web browser with Flash support to view sites in full HTML or watch YouTube videos. Additionally, AT&T will supply the phone with their popular network features, including AT&T Navigator for GPS navigation, AT&T Music for Napster music support, and AT&T Video Share for one-way video conference-like calling. Music fans will appreciate the built-in music player and FM radio, as well as the Surge’s support for stereo Bluetooth headphones.

The Nokia Surge smartphone will be available for US$79.99, after a $50 rebate, when purchased with a new two-year agreement and $30 monthly data subscription. It is available only in a black color scheme at this time.

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