Nokia Brings N95 Super-Phone to US

Nokia will start selling a fully US-compatible version of the Editors' Choice N95 super-phone next month, the company announced at an event in London on Wednesday. Nokia also announced four other new phones, including a sleek black-and-red music phone almost certainly destined for T-Mobile, a new gaming service under the old N-Gage brand, and several improvements to Nokia's music phone experiences.

The biggest news for US consumers is the US N95. The European version of the N95 has been sold direct through Nokia here in the US for a few months now, and was amazing enough to get our Editors' Choice award. Its five-megapixel camera, high-res screen, Wi-Fi, multimedia, and GPS make it a true handheld computer. But the Euro N95 was missing one key element: American high-speed cellular networks. The new, $699 US version adds in support for AT&T Wireless' HSDPA network, letting people browse the Web at speeds of around 1 megabit per second. It also pumps up the battery, increases RAM, and improves GPS performance over the earlier model. The unlocked US N95 is also packed with the kind of software and flexibility that US carriers typically strip out of phones sold here, including links to Yahoo!, Amazon, and Flickr.

While the US N95 is better than the European model for American buyers, US buyers will lose something: the US N95 doesn't work on European high-speed networks, instead dropping to EDGE speeds. Apparently, Nokia will only let you run at high speed on one side of the pond. We'll have a full review of the US N95 next week.

Nokia also announced four other phones today, all of which will be available through the company's flagship stores in the US by the end of the year.

An 8GB version of the European N95 with an even larger screen will run $750—here, you're trading in the US N95's network speed for the bigger screen and more storage.

The N81, a sliding music smart phone that comes in both flash-memory-ready and 8GB-built-in models, will sell for $500 to $600.

The 5610 XpressMusic music phone has an unusual slider key to flip it into music mode; that one will run $400.

But the most interesting for US consumers, because of its likelihood of being picked up by T-Mobile, is the 5310 XpressMusic. The Nokia 5310 is a slim candybar with an aluminum body, only 0.4 inches thick and weighing 2.5 ounces. Yet it has a 2MP camera and a high-res 320-by-240, 16-million-color screen. It's a combination of style and power we rarely see here in the US. The 5310 is expected to sell for $306 unlocked, but if T-Mobile picks up this EDGE phone, they'll subsidize it and lower the price.

The 5310 will work with both Windows Media Player and the new Nokia Music PC client, a very necessary refresh of Nokia's PC software. The Music PC client will enable two-way synchronization of playlists to and from the phone.

Finally, Nokia announced the revival of the N-Gage gaming brand—but this time it isn't an embarrassing, half-moon-shaped phone, it's an online service offering games for sale and multiplayer gaming potential on several Nokia Series 60 Version 3 phones. (Of the phones we've reviewed recently at PC Mag, that includes the N95 and N73, but oddly not the N75 or N76.) The new service, coming in November, will let you download a free client, try games for free, and buy them with a credit card. EA, Capcom, and Vivendi are all developing games for the new N-Gage platform.

Nokia also announced a music store, but it's irrelevant to US consumers; the company only plans to offer the online store in Europe and Asia, according to the press release. Ditto with Ovi, Nokia's Internet services brand, which pulls together "web communities" and various services at ovi.com; we're unlikely to be able to access it on our handsets here.

Here in the US, it's still up in the air whether wireless carriers will choose to block the service, as it may compete with their own attempts to sell games over the air.

Source: PCMag