Nokia to Bring N96 Smartphone Stateside
By Nick Mokey
August 26, 2008
Nokia's flagship do-it-all smartphone will be heading to North America soon, but don't hold your breath on the price.
As anyone who has even ordered custom furniture from the legendary craftsman of the Nordic countries can tell you, getting items over to the United States can take a few months. As it turns out, that lag time isn’t far off when you’re dealing with high-end Finnish phones, either. Nokia on Tuesday announced that its flagship N96 smartphone would finally be coming to North America later this year, after just cropping up on store shelves in Europe recently.
The N96 comes decked out with a 2.8-inch screen, 16GB of internal memory, a 5.0-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi support, and even the ability to play N-Gage games. The North American version of the phone will include 3G support for both Rogers and AT&T’s networks, but sacrifices one Euro-spec feature, a built-in digital television tuner, since the DVB-H standard hasn’t been adopted in the States or Canada.
As for the price on this slick slider, the exchange rate won’t treat North Americans nicely. The phone will leap from its already spendy European price of 550 Euros to $895 USD. It will show up some time in the fourth quarter.