Nokia N95 launch with GPS is CEO's night desire

A FRIEND sent me a link to Nokia's webcast of their latest greatest "tiny computer" called N95. It calls it a "mobile multimedia computer". A bloke called Anssi Vanjoki Executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia in Nokia was all excited about this launch.

Mr Anssi introduced a phone N95, a slider phone with Wlan, HSDPA 3.5 G, Bluetooth, USB and Wifi. He said: "blah blah blah blah - it's broadband". Nice explanation.

We also learned from Anssi and Nokia that "30 FPS that's DVD" which is probably the vaguest explanation ever. Anyway the new Nokia N95 will actually be in the shops in Q1 2007. I don't see the point of this launch if machines won't ship for more than a quarter.

The phone has built in "podcast" and RSS support and of course it has a browser and can drag stuff off the Wibbly Wobbly Web.

Anyway, the N95 will have a five Mpixel Carl Zeiss camera that can do 30 FPS video. It has a 2.6-inch TFT screen QVGA resolution or 320x240.

It also has GPS and Nokia promises free maps for the phone. I would like to see that as this is one heck of a promise in front of a large crowd. You will be able to use this phone while hunting if you ever do anything like that.

The chap describes it as a revolution just like the first laptop back in the old days. We also learned that Nokia executives don't use black limos and in flight phones as they find them expensive but they like the idea of wi-fi in the plane so then they can use the phones for free.

Nokia also talked about its music recommended service that it wants to launch and David Bowie will be the godfather of this music service. It will be launched at a later date -- first in Australia and the UK - and then for the rest of the worked.

The new Nokia N91 has an 8GB drive and supports stereo Bluetooth.

The chap also replied to our German Computerbild colleague that Nokia phones are not phones, they are multimedia computers with a telephony feature in them. Ah yes. µ