Is Nokia9500 going to be available in US & Canada too?

Yes, it will be. There will be two tri-band variants: EGSM 900, GSM 1800/1900 for Europe (mainly) and EGSM 850, GSM 1800/1900 for North America (mainly).

"mainly" for the European model means that it will work in North America where there is 1900MHz GSM coverage.

"mainly" for the North American model means that it will work outside North America when there is 1800MHz GSM coverage.

See http://www.nokia.com/phones/9500 for more details.

I bought my 9300 out of HK with 900,1800,1900 coverage. It mostly seems to work fine on TMO in the US

Who will service these devices? Will Nokia USA service a device that was bought before it was oficially launched in the US and has a different GSM configuration. Anyone who has bought the 9500 here in the US, how did you deal with tech support, upgrades and repairs?

Thank you.

NarcisNokia wrote:[FONT=Arial]Hi!

Does everyone know if Nokia 9500 will be available in North America? If not, is it goanna work in Canada if I will buy one from Europe?
Please let me know I am very interested to by one.
Thank you!

Narcis[/FONT]

Narcis, not sure if you're still looking for this info, but I purchased my 9500, the beginning of February 2005, from "expansys.com" in the States - I had it 2 days later. My sevrice provider in Canada is Rogers - I took the sim card out of my Motorola, plugged it into the 9500 and was good to go. That easy. Have not had any problems I couldn't resolve.

Now, as far as service goes - your pretty well on your own, but these forums are very helpful. I find in Canada we have 3 choices: 1. Settle for the garbage products the service providers carry; 2. Wait 5 years for the service providers to carry products that Asia, Europe and Africa have today; or 3. Go it alone. I got really tired of the first two.

The phone shipped with the 4.44 firmware, not the current 4.51. You'll read in the forum that this has been a big problem for some, but touch wood, I haven't experienced any, other than I can't download some email document attachments, and I can't modify the ones I can download. But, for all of the things I can do with this phone, I can live with this shortcoming.

I got a 1 gig MMC card, downloaded tunes and software, got my brother-in-law to modify a cheap Nokia stereo headset, so that I could plug in a good 3.5mm adapter head set and the world is a beautiful place.

Please don't misunderstand me - I do love my wife and children, but I reeeeealy love my phone. I travel a fair bit and I've been able to consolidate my phone, PDA, mp3 player and laptop into one device when I'm on the road - it's great.

Happy shopping!

P.S. I'm a new member to this forum (new poster), but I wanted to thank the folks that are contributors - you've been very helpful.

HI, Narcis, if this can help you,

I, like Canada 9500, have a 9500 and it works fine here in Canada (I live in Montreal and use Fido carrier. Simply insert the SIM card et voil�, you're in outer space!).

I also bought it from Expansys USA on last december 3rd and got it delivered at my door exactly 48 hours later.
Since then it works fine, I really don't miss any support, since it's an intuitive gadget. And to use the messaging and web access, everything was very smple to setup and very quick.

I was able to use wi-fi at home and in areas, and also browse the web with GPRS, send and receive e-mails, SMS, MMS, the phone quality is very high.

But always ask yourself: "is it the good phone for me?"
or "Am I the good person for this phone?".
And be aware that the best tips ever about this device wil be found here in this or in one of these forums which are filled with experiences and comments of REAL USERS.

Yeah, it crashed a couple of times, and doesn't open every app in .5 seconds, but to date, this phone is incredibly awesome! I recommend it.
Best regards,

http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/9300/0,7747,feat:1,00.html

http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/9500/0,7747,feat:1,00.html

N242 wrote:http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/9300/0,7747,feat:1,00.html

http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/9500/0,7747,feat:1,00.html

Thanks for the info N242, I sent an email to Nokia USA asking about firmware upgrades. I'll keep people posted.

Canada 9500 wrote:Narcis, not sure if you're still looking for this info, but I purchased my 9500, the beginning of February 2005, from "expansys.com" in the States - I had it 2 days later. My sevrice provider in Canada is Rogers - I took the sim card out of my Motorola, plugged it into the 9500 and was good to go. That easy. Have not had any problems I couldn't resolve.

Now, as far as service goes - your pretty well on your own, but these forums are very helpful. I find in Canada we have 3 choices: 1. Settle for the garbage products the service providers carry; 2. Wait 5 years for the service providers to carry products that Asia, Europe and Africa have today; or 3. Go it alone. I got really tired of the first two.

The phone shipped with the 4.44 firmware, not the current 4.51. You'll read in the forum that this has been a big problem for some, but touch wood, I haven't experienced any, other than I can't download some email document attachments, and I can't modify the ones I can download. But, for all of the things I can do with this phone, I can live with this shortcoming.

I got a 1 gig MMC card, downloaded tunes and software, got my brother-in-law to modify a cheap Nokia stereo headset, so that I could plug in a good 3.5mm adapter head set and the world is a beautiful place.

Please don't misunderstand me - I do love my wife and children, but I reeeeealy love my phone. I travel a fair bit and I've been able to consolidate my phone, PDA, mp3 player and laptop into one device when I'm on the road - it's great.

Happy shopping!

P.S. I'm a new member to this forum (new poster), but I wanted to thank the folks that are contributors - you've been very helpful.

I just got a new 9500 from MobileCity Online which also arrived with version 4.44. From what I've read on this forum it seems I won't be able to synch with the latest version of MS Office (using Windows XP and SP2). And as I'm in the US my chances of getting a firmware upgrade to 4.51 seem slim to none. The phone's in the box, ready to go back. Before I return it could someone confirm that my understanding is correct? Thanks a lot.

It's interesting that the Nokia US site says it's 900/1800/1900, not 850/1800/1900. I wonder if that is an oversight or if that is correct -- the 900 would mean Nokia is just releasing the world version in the US. That's good for me (I'm using the world version in the US on TMobile, and I love the phone) but that would really suck for Cingular users in the south. Anybody know what the scoop is?

MaureenMun wrote:It's interesting that the Nokia US site says it's 900/1800/1900, not 850/1800/1900. I wonder if that is an oversight or if that is correct -- the 900 would mean Nokia is just releasing the world version in the US. That's good for me (I'm using the world version in the US on TMobile, and I love the phone) but that would really suck for Cingular users in the south. Anybody know what the scoop is?

Not having 850 would really suck for Cingular (ex AT&T) users like me in California.
Where I am only getting GSM 850 😞

I still hope that this is just a mistake.

N242 wrote:Not having 850 would really suck for Cingular (ex AT&T) users like me in California.
Where I am only getting GSM 850 😞

I still hope that this is just a mistake.

I would say GSM 850 is particular important for Silicon Valley. Yes GSM 1900 is also here, but its coverage is absolutely horrible and yes this is in the very hart of the Silicon Valley. Most of the time there is only one bar on the GSM 1900 band.

There are dead spots more then a mile wide where Cingular does not have GSM 1900.

One anecdotal evidence about how bad Cingular�s GSM 1900 is, I sow inside both Palo Alto and Sunnyvale Fry�s Electronics stores. Could be two most high profile electronic stores in entire US. Obviously every cell phone provider tries to have their stand with all the latest phones there. When you come to Cingular stand it is the only one stand that has all the phones with ZERO signal on them. What a great way to sell cell phones!!!
I sow the same story in several other places like Best Buy where Cingular sales its phones. No signal! Isn�t this pathetic?

I spoke to Cingular many times about that, but they said the there is nothing that they can do about it. By buying AT&T they have also got very valuable 850 MHz band that is currently used by TDMA service. Very reliable for voice, but technologically outdated in terms of data services available with it. AT&T and now Cingular are very busy converting TDMA 850 MHz customers to GSM customers. They even called me and many of my friends many times and offered free (very cheap) GSM phones and some other attractive things just to convert from TDMA to GSM.

Cingular is very busy to promote its very good GSM 850 service here, and is not doing anything to fix any problems with its GSM 1900 service. So it is absolutely obvious that GSM 850 version of Nokia 9300/9500 is MUST for service with Cingular in California. Can you think about better place in US to sell phones like Nokia 9300/9500?