After a long morning at Cupertino on Tuesday, I spent much of the afternoon taping The GigaOM Show for this week. We invited Blake Krikorian, CEO and co-founder of Sling Media, to come on and talk about all things newteevee.
The conversation was lively, but what was most interesting was that Blake walked in with a Nokia N95 and started showing off the streams off his cable box. I was surprised because my N95 can barely stream audio on the herky-jerky EDGE. And here I was watching smooth video with perfect audio.
It was an early trial unit with the ability to support the U.S. flavor of 3G (HSPDA-High-Speed Downlink Packet Access), according to Blake. A few calls to well-placed sources after the taping confirmed that Nokia (NOK) has plans to release the U.S.-optimized N95 this September. That would be a good catalyst for U.S. sales for N95, because this is a device that shines on 3G networks. I took it along on a trip recently and found it quite useful.
N95 has been a monster seller for Nokia. Nokia’s chief strategist and chief technology officer, Tero Ojanperä, told me that it was one of the top sellers in the UK even with a $750 price tag.
As for the show, you’ll have to wait ’til Thursday. As per your suggestions, the show is available via iTunes in both small and large screen formats.
* Previous Sling Media Stories on GigaOM
* Previous stories on Nokia N95 and my review of N95.
Interesting to see Nokia n95 competing with iPhone. See the comparison chart of these phones here Compare iPhone vs Nokia N95
um. yeah baby! I need to get me some of that! I like my N95, but would throw it out to get US 3G on a new one…
Dang, if they fixed battery issues and 8GB or higher micoSD cards can be had at a good price, this will be my new phone.
Awesome!
(and there’s a typo: HSPDA->HSDPA at least you got the acronym expansion right)
Who cares, it still baffles me why no carrier will pickup this phone in the US.
Definitely would be popular with the anti-iPhone crowd. And it would be only the third GSM handset with GPS offered by a U.S. carrier:
http://www.thegpsinsider.com/2007/08/09/coming-to-america-nokia-n95-with-3g/
Got the full sales flyer, showing the killer new battery and redesigned backplate, as well.
http://symbianguru.typepad.com/welcome/2007/08/us-3g-nokia-n-1.html
Well my buddy thefloyd wrote a nice piece for me today – Why you should save your money and NOT buy an iPhone – which one reason of course is the 3G support (his #1 reason). The phone he is currently playing with (HTC Cavalier) seems really nice. N95 would be great here, but still a bit pricey.
http://rexduffdixon.com/?p=3003 – to read thefloyd’s breakdown/rant on the iPhone.
Rex
so can the ability to use 3G be enabled with a firmware update or do i have to buy a new n95?
I dont understand. I am in australia and my N95 uses HSDPA just fine. Does USA use diff 3G frequencies?
Matt, yes the US does use different frequencies than much of the rest of the world. Over the years GSM radios have advanced to support a very wide range of frequencies, so the same part can be used in phones regardless of market. This is not yet the case for UMTS radios.