Nokia's N95 finally US bound with HSDPA

Seriously, did you ever think this day would come? Well it's official, the N95 is heading Stateside. That's right, Nokia's "multimedia computer" is finally touting HSDPA on the US-friendly 850MHz and 1900MHz bands. No more trekking to Europe or your "local" Nokia store for a data-excluded, N95 experience. Otherwise, it's still the same GPS lovin' WiFi monster we've ogled for months. Yeah, we could hardly believe it either until we went hands-on over at Engadget Mobile.

[Xavier Gill @ Aug 29th 2007 7:05AM]

Happy N95 America!

[Saby @ Aug 29th 2007 7:10AM]

hmm...so can I exchange my current n95 us model with this one when it comes ??
And also hoping tmobile offers 3G in US

[Dale @ Aug 29th 2007 8:12AM]

Why would they let you do that? If you import a car from Europe and they release a NA version of it a few months later, do you think you can just swop that over?

[Alex @ Aug 29th 2007 10:09AM]

I agree. Many of us bought the N95 from Nokia.com or the Nokia shop with a US product code under the impression that Nokia wouldn't come out with a US version in only 3 months! I love the updated product but I am disappointed in Nokia's communication skills. A simple "Hey, wait on that purchase, we will be coming out with a better US version in 3 months would have been nice"

[Henri @ Aug 29th 2007 7:48AM]

hmh had this here for ages but interestingly I dont give a crap about it all I wanted was an iPhone :D N95 here costs 932 $ which is a bit over the price of a PS3 here.

[LS @ Aug 29th 2007 7:18AM]

hasn't this been posted already??

[Pete Best @ Aug 29th 2007 7:21AM]

Don't think HSDPA will be working on GSM frequencies ;)

[6-3-2 @ Aug 29th 2007 7:25AM]

It's still the size of a baby.

[Craig @ Aug 29th 2007 7:30AM]

will this work with Sprint?

[Joachim Bengtsson @ Aug 29th 2007 7:45AM]

I have the N95's little brother, the 6110 Communicator, and I must say, it's by far the worst phone I've ever used. Not by features (absolutely not!) and not by power and quality of the hardware (absolutely not!), but by the absolutely horrendous UI. It's so stupid, so utterly overly complex, it's not even funny. I've had it two weeks, used it thoroughly, and I'm selling it as fast as I can and going back to my two and a half year old SonyEricsson S700i, which takes better pictures, has a better UI, and a completely useless web browser. But it can make calls!

The 6110:
- has an icon in "Calendar" with a date on it. You might mistake this big red number for the current date. It's not. It's a static icon.
- has oodles of lists. In most of these lists (call log, music, files, ...) 1/4 of the horizontal estate is occupied by a 16x16 icon and a whole lot of whitespace. The title of the file or entry is then written in large bold letters. I've never seen a case where the whole title of the file or entry actually fit on screen (especially not in the music browser). Instead you get, "The Chemical Brot...", "The Chemical Brot...", "The Chemical Brot...", -- you get the point. If you hover over the entry for five seconds, /sometimes/ it scrolls to show the rest of the name.

Okay, I'll stop boring you, but needless to say, it's so troublesome to use you just get mad.

[Josef F @ Aug 29th 2007 8:41AM]

Maybe the phone is just disgusted in your crappy taste in music.

[Fernando @ Aug 29th 2007 9:08AM]

About the calendar icon, Mac OS X iCal users don't seem to mind ;)

[Mike @ Aug 29th 2007 9:13AM]

one has to wonder how long it took you to look up half the words you type in there. "utterly overly complex" really? who the hell talks like that?

[Joachim Bengtsson @ Aug 29th 2007 9:28AM]

Fernando: I'm talking about *while you're in the app*. iCal's icon always shows the current date as long as the app is open. Nokia Calendar shows the calendar icon throughout the Calendar icon, but it shows an invalid date at all times.

Mike: I'm sorry my strange language offends you. How about actually being on topic instead of personal attacks?


Oh, more about the GPS in the Nokia phones: Sometimes it takes over half an hour for the GPS to find any satellites. Which makes it completely useless.

[Joachim Bengtsson @ Aug 29th 2007 9:29AM]

*throughout the Calendar app, of course...

[Lee @ Aug 29th 2007 8:12AM]

Good luck! This has been without doubt the worst phone I've had the misfortune to own.

Forget about ever trying to use the GPS for anything useful, and lets hope they've finally sorted out the failing camera. My 4th N95 is still no better than the first I had.

[Daley @ Aug 29th 2007 8:46AM]

I have to agree with you! I've had the N95 now for 4 months on O2 in the UK.

It's got the features, but as a phone it sucks!

I would also say to any Americans looking to buy this phone - buy an in car charger or a second battery - your gonna seriously going to need them!

[Shanhee @ Aug 29th 2007 8:56AM]

Then why did you buy three more after the first one?

[Lee @ Aug 29th 2007 9:48AM]

i dindn't buy more these were all swapped out under warranty..

Issues range from GPS just not working ( even in central London ) . Seriously zero pick up.
Camera's not working
Camera taking blues as purple
Battery life
Wifi connection issues.

the list goes on !

[ggggg @ Aug 30th 2007 11:21AM]

>> Issues range from GPS just not working ( even in central London ) .


hahahahahaha.... sorry... you lost all credibility.. look up how gps works. it'll work better in a rural field than any city.

[Lee @ Aug 30th 2007 11:38AM]

when my TomTom in London picks up 7 Satellites in under 30 seconds and this POS can't find anything in 10 minutes then I'm telling you it doesn't work. Regardless of what you think you know about GPS holding this thing in my hand it simply doesn't work. London is flooded with signal, the Nokia doesn't cut it.

[Bad Beaver @ Aug 29th 2007 8:25AM]

So now Americans can spend tons of money on this abomination molded from cheap plastic? Well, it's your money...

[Jon @ Aug 29th 2007 8:35AM]

As opposed to the abomination that was the iPhone?

[Bad Beaver @ Aug 29th 2007 8:43AM]

No, the N95 is bad all by itself, you do not even have to compare it to something else. Seriously, go play with one. It's shoddy.

[3koy @ Aug 29th 2007 9:00AM]

n95 is packed with everything that it too good to be...good. it takes 11 seconds for f mp camera to fire again. its slow and hangs a lot.

[Scott @ Aug 29th 2007 9:29AM]

What's funny is I predict the general availability of the N95 will actually make the iPhone look MORE appealing instead of less. The awful UI, horrendous battery life, 4-year-old PDA styling, and probably enormous price (higher than the iPhone) will mean we'll have a whole new handset to bash now. It will no doubt win on feature list, because we all know that having a typed list of possible features is more important than actually making calls, browsing, and listening to music without charging the battery 4 times.

What we need is a N95-featured phone with Apple design (interface/hardware) and battery life.

[Don Carcharo @ Aug 29th 2007 10:02AM]

"we'll have a whole new handset to bash now"

Except people won't bash it, in fact they'll probably praise it as an alternative. I say this because although I don't own an iPhone, in my experience 90% of the iPhone bashers hate Apple and Apple customers not the phone. If the iPhone were a Nokia product or anyone else that doesn't bother to advertise their wares, the anti-mainstream people would love it. Based on what I've seen, it's a solid product and the UI is leaps and bounds over my shoddy Windows Mobile 2003 phone.

[enemes @ Aug 29th 2007 10:42AM]

well one thing that it will have over iPhone is a better phone part as it;s hard to do worst than iPhone in this regard. IPhone is a terrible phone. It sounds like shit on both ends. I can hear if someone calls me on a iPhone. Yes, it has lots of glitz, but it's a f***g phone and it costs $500, so it should do the phone thing at least somewhat well. I don't understand why nobody has an issue with this.

[Josh @ Aug 29th 2007 9:26AM]

Ahh... I remember seeing this thing for the first time... ahh the memories... soooo many years.

Seriously though, I'd have bought one long ago had they been available. At this point though, as Nokia happy as I am... I gotta get the iPhone. Too slow!!

[filminstructure @ Aug 29th 2007 9:57AM]

Phone still sucks !!! Buyer Beware !!!

[chris @ Aug 29th 2007 10:36AM]

If you go to nokia usa website to order one you still get the old battery with new specs but not the newer battery. (Battery: Nokia Battery (BL-5F) 950mAH)

[Top @ Aug 29th 2007 10:54AM]

So americans can now get it with 3g....how long did it take 10 months? Cant wait to get N95 8 gig in my hands!

[RG @ Aug 29th 2007 11:08AM]

Actually, I played with this thing a few days ago (with 3G Data on a GSM network) after randomly running into someone with it and it is a sweet device. If I did not already invest a couple hundred in a Pocket PC, I would be all over this thing. I like it a lot. It is not cheaply made, nor is it as poor a device as people on here alll speculate it is. You should play with it before you knock it. That and a few other things in the pipeline. Just wait and see :)

[Kal-El @ Aug 29th 2007 12:05PM]

Anyone know the going price for one of these? I love it.

[TrueDis @ Aug 29th 2007 1:33PM]

Super-weak that this didn't get the 8GB and 2.8" screen upgrades... Damn you Nokia!

[morpheusdiblanco @ Aug 29th 2007 3:34PM]

oooh cool. now i can drain my battery even faster with HSDPA and have the crappy Nokia Series60 experience at the same time. it was bad enough that i could barely get a days worth of use from my current N95 just running on EDGE. Forget about using the GPS, then battery life drops to 4 hours.

[Magallanes @ Aug 29th 2007 3:41PM]

???? Those people did really known about this phone:
-Slow second shots?. Sure but it's because the preview image (you can disable this feature).
-Awful UI?.. ITS SYMBIAN!. nothing more and nothing else. If you're fans of symbian, then this phone is more of the same. You calendar stink?... just install a new one?, there are tons of programs for symbian. Also there are two menus, the classic and (a optional) pseudo 3d menu.
-Short battery?.. using gps, wifi and such, the battery lasted two-three days, of course you cannot expected to keep wifi all the day.


Good features:
-Good audio signal.
-Able to one hand control (touchscreen stink cause it)
-Came with charger, handsfree, case, memory(1gb), video out cable.
-GPS,wifi,3d,5megapixel camera (and one camera for videoconference).
-To buy programs or games is as simple to go to the catalog, click click and click and star playing.


Details :
-it's bulky, it's not a flat phone but it's more little that the iphone.
-GPS take some time from "cold start", from 10 seconds to 1-2 minutes. GPS DON'T WORK WITH THE KEYBOARD CLOSED! (just read the manual).
-Keys are not for playing :-(

[morpheusdiblanco @ Aug 29th 2007 7:58PM]

let me guess, you work for Nokia?

[Magallanes @ Aug 30th 2007 9:28AM]

I wish but no, i don't work for Nokia, just a nokia user (ex-sony Ericsson's user).

Also, so many complaint are from pre-firmware firmware v12.0.013.

Anyways, battery dry according the use, this is valid not just for n95 but any gadget around here, a 5 megapixel camera can last 20-30 shots x battery charge (without flash), a wifi pda can last 1 or 2 hours of use (and even less), a notebook can last 2-3 hours of use and such.

[F. Garcia @ Aug 29th 2007 6:54PM]

Chris, do you know if AT&T crippled the VoIP functionality of the U.S. bound N95?

[MikeyMike @ Aug 30th 2007 5:06AM]

There is a thing in my pocket... but the battery is dead.

We have had the N95 in South Africa for some time now. The device is utterly riddled with issues. I know three people who have it - all three hate it. Probably top of the quibble-list is the need to charge the device about twice a day when using any of the much touted features.

[Magallanes @ Aug 31st 2007 8:51AM]

You can read in the nokia forum people complaining about the battery, so my bet is that really are issues with some models (battery last 1/3) but also there are n95 working flawlessly (for example my n95). It's NOT A DEFECTIVE BATTERY, changing for a new one do nothing.

Also, there are some issues with the 3g, 3g eat battery even without use, you can read some instructions to disable it or to avoid to eat battery when it's not in use.

[rowland @ Sep 7th 2007 3:26PM]

The nokia N95 is an amazing and wonderful phone it has all the neccessary features and accesories a good phone should have any one that need perfect and complete communication should go for the nokia n95 i have them for sell too you can contact me via my email [e-mail]
thanks