Rumor: Nokia N95 8GB Coming to U.S. Next Month

A couple of months ago, Nokia started the worldwide rollout of an 8GB version of its N95 uber smartphone. Unfortunately, unlike the standard edition of the N95, it isn't compatible with all the cellular-wireless bands—particularly in the UMTS/HSDPA 3G realm—that would make that handset especially useful to North American users.

According to the Internet rumor mill, this may soon change. Brighthand says, for instance, that Nokia is making accidental references to this device. The expected arrival date is February 15, 2008.
In addition to having considerably more internal memory, the N95 8GB also sports a slightly larger display, 2.8-inch at 240 x 320 pixels (QVGA), than its predecessor and better battery life.

To "celebrate" this smartphone's introduction, Nokia is pre-loading the N95 8GB with the movie 'Spider-Man 3' Europe and some Middle Eastern and African markets. As you can see from the picture taken from MobileCityOnline, the North American version may include the movie as well.

Other than the features mentioned above, the Nokia N95 8GB is otherwise the same as the current model: HSDPA 3G, a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and A-GPS.
There's also the same unique two-way slider design that reveals media controls when slid one way and a numeric keypad when moved the other way.

Built-in stereo speakers offer a 3D stereo effect, plus there's a standard 3.5 mm audio jack for headphones, a microSD slot for storage expansion, and mini USB for data transfers. Bluetooth with A2DP allows users to leverage wireless stereo headsets as well.
Source:http://www.pdastreet.com

Nokia N95 8GB for sale on Nokia USA website

Are you ready for the N95 8GB sticker shock? Nokia USA website has the phone listed $779! Don’t make a made dash to buy it until you think through your 3G needs because this model is NOT the US version. It uses the 2100MHz WCDMA band mainly for the European market.
Researchers been testing running the N95 8GB on EDGE and WiFi over the past couple weeks, and must say that I love the larger 2.8-inch screen, the 5-megapixel camera, a-GPS and the additional system memory.
If you can wait a around a little longer, Nokia might release a model just for US consumers utilizing our own 3G band.

Nokia N95 8GB NAM and N82 8GB revealed by Nokia?

Nokia may not be quite as good as Apple at keeping upcoming devices quiet, but they are very careful about leaking news. It seems that Devin from The Nokia Guide site discovered that the Nokia N95 8GB NAM (North American model with 3G support for U.S. networks) and N82 8GB may be coming soon. He was browsing the web and visited one of the Nokia pre-installed bookmarks where he discovered these two device names in the list of supported devices.
The N95-1 to be one of my most used and most beloved mobile devices and wanted the increased memory, larger capacity battery, and 3G radio (I was spoiled by this when in Amsterdam a few weeks ago). I should get my new N95-3 next week and plan to write more about it here on my blog.

I think it is good news to see that the N95 8GB may be coming to the U.S. to work on the AT&T 3G network, but will be keeping the N95-3 and my 8GB microSD card. The N95 8GB does have a bit larger display and if this device was available now I would probably have ordered it instead. I haven’t had a chance to check out the N82 yet, but the flash does really seem to make a difference in low light conditions.
Source:http://blogs.zdnet.com

Nokia Prepping N95 with 8 GB for N. America

There's a version of the Nokia N95 with 8 GB of internal storage, and there's one that offers the cellular-wireless frequencies used in N. America, but currently there isn't one that has both these features. However, apparently this will soon change.

The U.S. version of Nokia's web site for the N Series has recently begun making what are clearly accidental references to the "N95 8GB NAM," indicating that a N. American version of this smartphone will soon emerge.

Support for additional frequencies will allow U.S. users to connect to networks using the 3G standards UMTS and HSDPA.
Source:http://www.brighthand.com

Vodafone customers get Facebook upload access

Vodafone has announced its "My Communities" including Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Bebo will enable customers for the first time to upload pictures and videos to
their favorite community directly from their mobile.

Customers can now upload pictures and video to their Facebook account direct from their
Nokia N95 8GB or Sony Ericsson W910i handsets, a functionality which is at the moment unique to Vodafone customers only.

Anyone who wants to try the new service needs to click on the My Communities icon and you will be prompted to download the application.

They can then choose one of the four communities and using their current login details (which the phone then remembers for future) and can upload content straight from their handset.

Customers must be signed up for internet usage, data charges will be around 22p per pic, depending on size, and will take around 30 seconds to upload on 3G network access
Source: http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk

Nokia N95 now in pink!

Well, it had to be done – a pink Nokia N95. Yep, this same old N95 is now all dressed up in pink going on sale in Hong Kong.



I also caught wind of a more masculine reddish-orange N95 earlier in the week.
What do you think of these two new colors? I’m not too crazy about them; perhaps it’s because I’m just too boring…oh well

Mobile makers shake up music biz

Nokia and Sony Ericsson threaten cellular carriers with their new music plans.

Mobile operators are losing their grip on the mobile-music business. The latest threats: a planned free service from handset vendor Nokia and a new music-downloading service from rival Sony Ericsson that will launch next spring.

Sony Ericsson plans to offer more than one million full-track songs that users can download straight to their phones or PCs with a service called PlayNow. It's a gutsy move, because PlayNow undermines Sony Ericsson's best customers, mobile carriers like Orange and Vodafone that buy hundreds of millions of phones.

"This is a larger step than what we've taken before."

Sony Ericsson, the No. 4 handset maker, has dabbled in services since 2004, offering games, ringtones, and a few songs from sister record label Sony BMG (SNE). But as Sony Ericsson head of content development Martin Blomkvist says, "This is a larger step than what we've taken before."

Sony Ericsson and Nokia are blowing caution to the wind - and a raspberry at carriers - because they have little choice. Apple invaded their turf by bringing the popular iPhone to Europe in November, along with a business model that sucks music users away from carriers and onto Apple's iTunes service. If the handset makers want to compete against the iPhone, it would help if they had their own music services. That's especially true considering that most mobile music in Europe and the U.S. lands on phones via sideloading (transferring tunes from PCs to handsets).

"What consumers are being offered today... is boring, banal and basic."

Universal Music has already agreed to make its catalog available to Nokia for an undisclosed fee, and other record labels, frustrated with carriers' mobile-music downloading sites, are likely to follow. "The sad truth is that most of what consumers are being offered today on the mobile platform is boring, banal, and basic," Warner Music boss Edgar Bronfman said at a conference in Macau in November. He noted that fewer than 10% of mobile-phone customers use phones to buy music, and fewer than 1% use them to purchase anything other than ringtones.

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