It’s safe to say the Nokia N8’s arrival is shaping up to be the big Nokia launch of 2010, but with the weeks rolling by we still seem no closer to knowing exactly when it’ll be… until today, that is. Read on for more…

Turns out our Nokia chums in Italy have made their Nokia N8 pre-order page live, and revealed those two all important details: launch date, and price.

Starting with the launch date, the Nokia Italy site pegs it as “End September”, which exactly matches Nokia chief exec Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo’s announcement of end Q3. The price, meanwhile, is listed as €469 (£390) – roughly €100 more than the pre-tax, pre-subsidies estimate quoted when the N8 was first announced in April.

Now of course, that doesn’t mean the N8 will launch in the UK at the end of September, or for that price either. But despite pre-order pages having already gone up from the likes of Play.com quoting an end-August release date, we’re more inclined to believe one of Nokia’s own sites than a third-party retailer.

Interestingly, Play’s page lists the unlocked N8’s price as £449 – a fair bit more than the Italian site suggests.

In case you’ve forgotten what all the fuss was about, the Nokia N8 features a 12-megapixel camera, stunning 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen, and is the first – and last – Nokia N-series phone to run the Symbian ^3 operating system before the switch to MeeGo.

You can get official word of the Nokia N8’s availability by signing up to the pre-order page on Nokia’s UK site.

Via Finest Fones