The N97 is officially available at Nokia Flagship stores in the USA. Great news, but you’ll have to pay retail – $700 bucks to be exact. Or, you could do the next best thing and preorder it from Amazon for $603.99. But you’ll have to wait until June 30th, when the phone starts shipping.

And then…you might be tempted to buy an N97 from eBay.

First, a quick quiz: what’s real and what’s fake?

The picture you see below is of a fake Nokia N97.

There are a couple of signs that can give away a fake N97.

* A screen that’s not quite as widescreen as it should be.
* Printed logo instead of etched.
* No light sensor. The real thing has one to the right of the videoconferencing camera.
* No silver power button.
* No 3.5mm jack recess.
Keyboard key colors – the letters should be grayish and the function keys should be blue.

Obvious Stuff

Always read the complete auction description. A lot of fake N97 auctions display the bands as “Triband 900/1800/1900” when the phone is quite obviously quad-band (850/900/1800/1900). Also, stay as far away as humanly possible from auctions that display “Chinese model” or refer to anything “Chinese” in the description. There are no Chinese N97 models. They are fake. And avoid any N97 auctions that say the phone features TransFlash memory, of all things.