Lumia 610 going on sale today with Orange France.
TechCrunch has sniffed this one out, noticing that Nokia unveiled the phone accidentally on YouTube, before confirming with sources that the launch is taking place at 1pm UK time.
The 610 is the first WinPho device to embed an NFC chip, but not the first Nokia device to do so.
Nokia has been a pretty vocal supporter of the contactless tech in the past via a small number of Symbian phones such as the C7-00, C7 Astound, 600, 603, 700, and 701.
In the past it's revealed plans for an NFC-enabled version of Angry Birds and a smart poster service that seeks to evangelise the use of NFC in advertising.
With the 610, the firm seems keen to maintain a focus on the utility of NFC rather than the payments function, revealing that the tech can be used to sync music with speakers and do Foursquare check-ins.
That said the phone has been certified for the two main contactless payments systems – MasterCard PayPass and Visa payWave.
It's unsurprising that Orange would be among the first backers of Nokia's new adventure. The operators has already sold 500,000 NFC-enabled Samsung, Acer and BlackBerry devices in France, and has been a big supporter of fact finding projects like CityZi in Nice.
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