HONG KONG – The second of our smartphone announcements today, the Nokia 701, offers excellent graphics performance, a refreshed UI, great battery life and the brightest screen the world has ever seen. Find out what else makes the Nokia 701 so special after the break.

Like our other new smartphones today, the Nokia 701 is powered by Symbian Belle and a 1GHz processor. It’s got a pentaband radio, with HSUPA 3G, WiFi, NFC and all the other standard features on our new smartphones like Bluetooth, GPS and FM radio. It measures 11 x 56.8 x 117.3mm and weighs 131g.

But it’s the touchscreen display that makes the Nokia 701 stand out. This is a 3.5-inch IPS LCD display with ClearBlack technology, creating a great combination of excellent brightness and contrast – it’s in fact the brightest smartphone screen to date (in terms of NITs). Of course, as with all our new smartphones,  it’s wrapped in Corning® Gorilla® Glass, so you don’t need to worry about its sturdiness either.

It’s not all about good looks, though: there’s real horsepower as well. Behind the screen is a brand new graphics co-processor, with a faster clock and four times the graphics memory of previous Symbian smartphones.

There’s an 8-megapixel full focus camera with a dual-LED flash on the back, and there’s a secondary camera at the front for video calling. Inside there’s 8GB of user memory, with provision for up to 32GB extra storage using a MicroSD card.

All this functionality doesn’t mean that you’re left with a phone that can’t see you through a working day, though. The battery is rated at up to 17 hours talktime over GSM or up to 550 hours on standby (8.8/504h over 3G).

The Nokia 701 will be available in steel dark, silver light, amethyst violet, and white variations and is expected to come to market in the third quarter of 2011. Before local taxes or operator subsidies, it will cost around EUR 290.

So now that’s two new choices today. Which is winning your affection?