Cingular branded N80 wins FCC approval

Our friends at the FCC have blessed the Nokia N80. And in doing so, also provided some non-blurry shots of this Cingular-branded quad-band/WCDMA/EDGE slider sporting WiFi, Bluetooth, 3 megapixel camera, and 40MB built-in memory with miniSD expansion. With the FCC out of the way, hopefully this will drop Stateside closer to the January side of that Q1 2006 announced release.

[Via Symplification, Thanks Alex]

[Paula @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

N80 can be seen as a kind of all purpose remote control device for the home users. The N80 is scheduled for retail launch in the first quarter of 2006, N80 is the first handset to allow media networking between Computers TVs, home audio systems and hendheld.

We are very excited about this phone

Paula
http://www.palworldgsm.com

[YukonDawg @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Why does T-Mobile *never* get any cool phones like this....

[Jason @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

I really hope this phone comes out on time... and sim-free {just say no to carrier cartels!}. I like my 6230 but this is hot, hot, hot.

[Gomer @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Is that a 3.5 mm jack on the top? If so, that would be fantastic. Not sure what the media player is like on this, but I'm really looking forward to this phone.

[Jim @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Typical Engadget style, if its not Windows Mobile or Treo the coverage is nothing great. This phone will probably be the first GSM 3G phone in the US AND it has 802.11g/b which I don't believe any other smartphone available in the US has. Symbian S60 OS v3, 3 Megapixel camera and up to 2GB of storage via miniSD, VHS quality video recording, slider form factor. This will be THE smartphone to beat.

[Clay @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Gomer, it looks a little to big to be a 3.5mm headphone jack. It's most likely the power button, but that would be pretty awesome if it were. It would make that phone almost perfect.

[Jason @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

it is the power button. Nokia has a pop-port 3.5mm headphone adapter > I'd link to it but Nokia's using stupid flash interfaces.

[xbit @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

I don't think it does have a 3.5mm jack, but it may come with an adaptor and definitely does come with the stereo bluetooth headset profile.

If it gets released on time then it's going to be unbeatable in the US.

[Jason @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

I cannot find any mention of Stereo bluetooth support on the N80 manual or any of Nokia's web sites. Since it has BT 1.2 instead of 2.0, is Stereo BT even possible? As far as I see the N80 does NOT have stereo blutooth.

[Thomas Ricker @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Jim, "typical Engadget style" huh...what you talkin' bout son? We've hit this phone up with 6 posts and a podcast and it hasn't even been released!

http://www.engadget.com/search/?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=n80

[Alcaron @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

These comments actually answered my question, I was wondering what OS it would use but someone said Symbian, which I am fine with. I like the idea of an MS powered smartphone, but so far that idea hasn't been turned into all that great a reality by anyone.

ONLY complaint with this phone is the blah HTC style buttons on the face. Maybe I'm just missing the point lately but alot of these awesome devices just don't seem to be taking any chances in the looks category.

That said, assuming they release it for Cingular on time I think I just might pick this up.

[xbit @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

"I cannot find any mention of Stereo bluetooth support on the N80 manual or any of Nokia's web sites. Since it has BT 1.2 instead of 2.0, is Stereo BT even possible? As far as I see the N80 does NOT have stereo blutooth."

Then N80 runs Symbian v9, which includes the stereo bluetooth headset profile as standard.
http://www.symbian.com/technology/symbos-v91-det.html#12

[Ian @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

OMG OMG OMG Yes! At least it'll be widely available, but PLEASE RELEASE THIS IN CANADA ROGERS!!!!

[minh @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

tmobile rarely gets the cool phones most likely because of how many customers they have. since cingular has 50+ million customers, there's a better chance they can sell more phones than tmobile. same goes for the reason why verizon gets the latest phones over sprint.

[Andre @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Will I be able to buy this phone unlocked and then just pop in my T Mobile sim card? Do you guys think I will run into any problems?

[SecretNutter @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

To Jason:
The A2DP Bluetooth profile doesn't require Bluetooth 2.0 for stereo support, it works fine with 1.1. What 2.0 will add to A2DP is QoS so if you have VDP running or some other high bandwidth device you might experience drop audio packets and lack of sync (if playing with video).

[clicclic @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Andre: You won't have any problems getting this phone to work on T-Mobile. Just buy it unlocked off Ebay and pop in your SIM card.

Here's the HTML details:

http://www.nseries.com/nseries/v2/media/product/tech_specs/en-US/tech_specs_n80_en_US.html?lang=en&country=US

This is *THE* hottest phone coming down the pike: 316x452 pixel screen, 3MP camera, WiFi. I wanted the N90 but this makes me wait...

[jon @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

did anyone read the FCC report? it acutally says 1900 Wcdma. not 2100. isnt that weird?

[sam @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

Will this phone play mp3's?

[Avi Greengart @ Dec 19th 2005 2:06AM]

T-Mobile USA doesn't pick up expensive converged gadgets as often as Cingular because they don't fit T-Mobile's profile customer / value proposition of "get more" - more minutes, not more expensive convergence. If you look at its lineup compared to its competitors, you'll see that T-Mobile has more entry level products and less high end stuff overall. The N80 wouldn't make much sense for T-Mobile anyway, as one of the key features is dual band WCDMA support... and T-Mobile USA doesn't have a WCDMA network.

I got a chance to play with a pre-production N80 in Barcelona, and it IS hot. A headphone adapter should be included, and the media playback interface is the usual Nseries applet, which is pretty good.

-avi