With the fanfare of the Nokia N97 launch still ringing in our ears, the last thing on everyones mind is an updated version of the N97. But, if recent leaked images are to be believed that’s exactly what is on the horizon. Not so much a successor, more of a scaled down version of its bigger brother, the phone affectionately known as the N97 Mini raises numerous questions. So what do we know about this unconfirmed phone?

Well in way of specs, not alot. What we can see from the spy shots that have been leaked is that the Mini N97 is… smaller than the original. Columbo would be proud. On a serious note, the decrease in dimensions has meant some changes to the slide out QWERTY keyboard, most notably the omission of the four way navigational key on the left of the N97′s keyboard. In its place we can clearly see arrow keys that sit in the top right corner of the keyboard. On the reverse of the phone the N97 mini gets a nice slab of metal for a battery cover but unfortunately lacks the sliding lens cover for the camera which (and correct me if i’m wrong) appears to be the same 5.0 Megapixel snapper as found in the full fat N97.

The screen is visibly smaller (though not by that much) resulting in a phone that isn’t as wide as it’s bigger brother but that’s about all we can guess from the leaked photos. The appearance of these photos raises more questions than it answers. Why release a phone that is only marginally smaller than its bigger brother? Will Nokia strip out features similar to how they put the 5800 on a diet to create the 5530? Will the N97 Mini still run Symbian? And obviously the biggest question of all, it this phone genuine or an extremely professional fake? Well, for the time being at least, we can’t answer any of them. Keep an eye on the Blog over the coming weeks as we hold our breath for an official announcement from Nokia.