Nokia had been selling their N95 multimedia phone through Nokia stores and other outlets here in the U.S. for some time, but the phone unfortunately lacked 3G support for U.S. networks, a feature its European brethren enjoyed. Today, Nokia has announced that its flagship model will get support for AT&T's HSDPA network, along with a host of other minor upgrades. The N95 will be able to achieve theoretical speeds up to 3.6Mbps, which makes it one of the faster HSDPA phones available in the U.S., along with the Motorola RAZR V3xx. Real world speed will be much slower, of course.
In addition to the networking upgrade, the N95 will also see a RAM bump to 124MB, which should smooth out some of the hiccups in the multimedia player. Also, assisted GPS (A-GPS) will now ship on the device.
The Nokia N95 is one of our favorite multimedia phones, if not our absolute favorite. One of our few criticisms of the device was a lack of 3G networking in the U.S. We're happy to see this fixed, but we'd still like to see that front-facing camera open up some video conferencing options for U.S. users. And, of course now we'll expect all of Nokia's N-Series phones to get support for the U.S. HSDPA bands.
The updated N95 will start shipping to Nokia flagship stores and other retailers in September. It will cost $700, a $50 break from the previous edition.
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