Nokia has announced their new N-series phones. One in particular, the N91, stores 3,000 songs. First off, this is a naming change for Nokia since most of their previous models (except for the N-gage) are designated by four digit numbers (i.e. 6620, 3650, etc). Since the features of the N91 interest me the most, I’ll focus on that phone.
The N91 has the following interesting features:
- 4GB hard drive
- WiFi
- 2M pixel camera
- USB 2.0 sync’ing
- Stereo-mini jack (for headphones)
- and it supports Microsoft’s WMV, Apple’s AAC (sans FairPlay), M4A and MP3
All in all a pretty darn sweet phone. They’ve basically stuffed an iPod mini into a Nokia phone. And WiFi support? That’s amazing, I’m curious if this means VoIP support or a future firmware upgrade which enables this. Though with some carriers (*cough* Verizon *cough*) crippling Bluetooth, I wonder if the same fate is in store for WiFi. Plus since this thing is so media/music friendly, it seems that there must be some sort of iTunes-like store in the works — though I suspect the carriers want to run these themselves and capture that additional revenue. Nokia has also announced partnerships with several top-of-the-line audio brands to make accessories for this phone (Sennheiser head phones anyone?) I think the carriers in North America need to wake-up and allow unlimited SMS messaging and a reasonable amount of data transfer in all of their plans. Having just got back from Italy, I’ve seen the difference in how they use their cell phones from SMS’ing like crazy to paying for items (mostly vending machines) using their cell phone. If the carriers would stop nickle-and-diming their customers there are whole revenue streams which would open up for them as well as third parties (premium SMS anyone?). Well, it looks like I’ve strayed from my initial topic, so I’ll end this now. Send me your thoughts on the new phones from Nokia.