Wireless

Correction 5 p.m. PDT: The Nokia N97 is not yet being sold in Europe, and AT&T sells the E71x with a two-year contract. The E71 is an unlocked version of the phone. The article has been changed to reflect this.

Clarification 5 p.m. PDT: See below for more information about data plans that can be used with the N97 through AT&T.

For a company that has said it wants to be a player in the U.S. market, it doesn't look like Nokia is trying very hard.

On Tuesday the mobile phone giant said its flagship smartphone, the N97, which was announced in December, has gone on sale in the U.S. at the whopping price tag of $699. This price isn't that shocking considering the phone will also be offered in Europe for a comparable price. But in the U.S. where consumers are accustomed to paying $200 for a smartphone, it seems a bit ridiculous.

(Credit: CNET)

The reason the price of the N97 is still so high is that Nokia is not selling it through any particular carrier. Instead it will be sold to U.S. customers in Nokia flagship stores in New York and Chicago as well as online.

Nokia has made other phones for the U.S. market and has also sold them without carrier backing. The N95, the previous generation N-series Nokia phone sold in the U.S., retails for about $369 to $468, according to Nokia. In April of 2007, when the phone was first introduced, it sold for about $750 to $800. But a phone priced at $700 in the U.S. market is likely to be too high for U.S. consumers, especially when most devices sell here for $200.

Nokia also couldn't have picked a worse time to debut the N97 in the U.S. market, which happens to be just days after two of the most anticipated smartphones of the year have been launched. On Monday, Apple announced its latest phone, the iPhone 3G S, which will go on sale next week. And on Saturday, Palm started selling the much-hyped Pre.

Each of these devices can be bought for far less than the Nokia N97. The 16GB iPhone 3G S will sell for $199. And the 32GB model, which has the same amount of built-in memory as the N97, will cost $299 when the phones go on sale next week. Apple has also cut the price of its 8GB iPhone 3G, introduced last year, to only $99. The Pre, which also has a slide-out QWERTY keypad and a touch screen like the N97, is $199 with a $100 mail-in rebate.

It looks like the deal to embed Skype clients on Nokia phones is meeting some resistance among wireless operators and could dampen the scope of the planned integration.

The Web site Mobiletoday.co.uk reported earlier this week that sources at O2 and Orange say the companies are "furious" that Nokia plans to pre-load the new high-end N97 smartphone with Skype, which allows users to make free calls over the Internet using a data connection.

The carriers may refuse to carry phones with the Skype feature embedded. Instead, they may insist on selling only Nokia phones without the Skype feature, the Web site said.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile appears to be supporting the offer. And 3, another U.K. operator, is already offering a phone with an embedded Skype client.

Earlier this month, Skype announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona that it had struck a deal to embed its software onto Nokia devices, starting with the N97, which goes on sale on June. The Skype feature is expected to start shipping on the device in the third quarter of 2009.

The plan is for Skype services to be integrated into the N97 address book, enabling users to see when Skype contacts are online. It will also let people use Skype's instant-messaging client. And of course, N97 users will also be able to make free and low-cost phone calls over the Internet whether they are on a 3G cellular network or a Wi-Fi network.

But now it looks like wireless operators, such as O2 and Orange, are not happy about Nokia adding a service that potentially siphons off voice traffic and weakens the carriers' relationships with the customers.

Nokia wouldn't confirm nor would it deny that that the operators have complained about the Skype feature. But a spokesman for the company admitted that the Skype feature won't likely be available on all N97 phones.

"At Mobile World Congress we announced that Skype would be available on a limited number of N-series devices, beginning with the N97," the spokesman said. "But there is a possibility it won't be on every N97."

NEW YORK--Nokia's new N97 smartphone is cool, but it's still no iPhone.

Nokia N97

(Credit: Mark Licea/CNET)

I got a chance to look at Nokia's latest smartphone, the N97, on Thursday at the company's annual Capital Markets Day here. While Nokia's marketing team wouldn't actually let me play with the phone, since it won't officially go on the market until 2009, I got a demonstration of some of the phone's features and functionality from Jukka Heiska, director of product management for the N97. A video of the phone demonstration will be posted Friday on CNET News as well as on CNET TV.

In some ways it's unfortunate that every touch-screen phone that comes out these days is compared to Apple's iPhone. But given the popularity of the iPhone, especially here in the U.S., it's difficult not to do the comparisons.

My first impression of the new N97 is that even though it has impressive specifications, like a total of 48 gigabytes of potential storage and a 5-megapixel camera and video recorder, the phone seems more like an evolution of Nokia's N-95 or N-96 smartphones rather than a ground-breaking new touch-screen device that could potentially be the next iPhone killer.

For one, the touch-screen wasn't terribly sophisticated. Icons could be dragged and dropped using a finger, but unlike the iPhone, which allows you to pinch text to magnify it or reduce it, or even the new BlackBerry Storm that allows you to double click on text or images to make them bigger, the N97 didn't offer these features.

Nokia N97

(Credit: Mark Licea/CNET)

Design-wise the phone looked more like Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1. It has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a tilted screen. In this way, it's an improvement over the N95 or the N96, which offer tons of features and functionality, but lack full QWERTY keyboards.

That said, there are a few key features that the N97 offers that the iPhone doesn't. For example, the Nokia Web browser on the N97 supports Flash and Flash video, something that Apple's Safari browser doesn't support. And of course, heavy texters and e-mail enthusiasts, will like the full QWERTY keypad. I've had several iPhone owners tell me that they still carry around a BlackBerry for sending e-mails on the go, because they don't like the iPhone's virtual keyboard for typing longer messages.

The phone, which Nokia's marketing team calls a "mobile computer" also offers a whopping 32GB of storage on the device with the option of adding up to another 16GB of storage through a microSD card. And then there is the 5-megapixel camera, which also records DVD-quality video.

Nokia's N97 runs the Symbian operating system, which will be released as an open-source project next year now that Symbian is part of Nokia.

(Credit: Nokia)

Nokia spent most of Tuesday buzzing about its N97 phone, but it also quietly completed an important step in its plan to evolve as a mobile computing company.

Symbian announced that Nokia has formally completed the acquisition of the world's biggest smartphone operating system company. The companies announced their plans earlier this year to have Nokia buy out the remaining partners in Symbian with the ultimate goal of releasing the Symbian operating system under an open-source license.

Devices such as the N97 run Symbian OS, which is by far and away the most widely used smartphone operating system in the world thanks to market-share leader Nokia's historically close ties with the developer. Starting next year, Nokia intends to form the Symbian Foundation with companies like AT&T, Texas Instruments, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and others with the intent of creating a royalty-free open-source operating system. Sound familiar?

After entertaining the world press in Barcelona during the early part of this week, Symbian and Nokia executives will be in San Francisco later this week to discuss their plans for mobile computing and open source, and we'll have reports from the Symbian Partner Event on Thursday.

Nokia has released new versions of its mapping and navigation service along with a new messaging service in an effort to build out its mobile services.

(Credit: Nokia)

The upgraded Nokia Maps offers new features, such as high-resolution aerial images and 3D landmarks. The new software also allows users to share their location using GPS. Nokia has also tied the latest version of Nokia Maps more closely with its PC-based service Ovi. And the new Nokia Maps allows users to plan their journey ahead of time on their PCs and sync the information with their mobile phones for when they're on the road. Currently, the pre-planning function is only available for Windows-based devices.

Some of the other new features available include: the ability to purchase turn-by-turn car navigation guidance; instant access to real-time information about traffic in certain countries; access to Wcities, an event guide that gives real-time information for events and movies in some 450 destinations; and the ability to see multiple entrances to the same underground subway stations in certain cities.

Nokia also announced it is upgrading its Nokia Messaging client so that it integrates e-mail and instant messaging from Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail, Google Talk, AOL Mail, and thousands of international ISPs. The service is also integrated with Ovi and gives users 1 gigabyte worth of storage. It also provides a single sign-in on their cell phones. The beta version will be available this month in 12 languages.

All these service announcements come at the same time that Nokia has launched its latest device, the N97. This new phone, which is part of the company's high-end N series of multimedia computers, comes with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen.

The smartphone, which is set to launch next spring, comes with a bunch of bells and whistles in addition to supporting the new mapping and messaging services. For example, it provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls "social location," which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users' social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.

Nokia N97

(Credit: Nokia)

Twenty-four hours after teasing us with news of a major product announcement, Nokia officially took the wraps off its mystery smartphone on Tuesday at the Nokia World 2008 conference in Barcelona, Spain. And despite some close guesses, no one got it quite right, so without further ado, let us introduce you to the Nokia N97.

Part of the company's high-end N series of multimedia computers, the N97 trumps all previous models with a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard and a tilting 3.5-inch touch screen (anyone else reminded of the AT&T Tilt or Sony Ericsson Xperia X1?). Yes, there's the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, but the N97 includes phone capabilities and is designed for the "needs of Internet-savvy consumers."

For example, the smartphone provides easy access to a number of social-networking sites, and the Web browser supports streaming Flash videos. The N97 also introduces something Nokia calls "social location," which uses the capabilities of the integrated A-GPS sensors and electronic compass to automatically update users' social networks, or let them share their location via photos or videos with friends.

The Home screen can be personalized with widgets of favorite Web and social-networking sites. Finally, the N97 is fully compatible with Nokia's Ovi Internet services, which include the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and the N-Gage gaming platform--though these services have yet to fully launch in the United States.

The Symbian-based smartphone also features a music and video player, a 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, and a whopping 32GB of onboard memory that can be expanded with a 16GB microSD card.

The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone is HSDPA-capable handset, but it currently supports only the 900/1900/2100MHz bands (AT&T's 3G network runs on 850/1900MHz, while T-Mobile runs on 1700/2100MHz). There is integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, however.