I whistled out last week and ordered the N95-3 for myself from TigerDirect. This is the North American edition of the N95, optimized for North American 3G networks. And I have to say, I love it. It sings, it dances, and boy oh boy is it fast. I hooked it up to my PC as a modem, and got 1.5 Mb/s down, and 400 kb/s up. A huge improvement over EDGE and GPRS. I'm really looking forward to taking photos and videos and uploading them to the web over this super fast connection.
While I was at it, I ordered the 02700X7 carry case. One of the things that's always concerned about the N95 is the lack of a holster. The N95-3 has done away with the lens cover that the original N95 has, which makes it even more of a concern for me. I should have looked more closely at this because … well, watch the video.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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Nice video Alec. I don’t have the new N-95 and given what we pay for mobile services already, it isn’t likely I’ll see one any time soon. But good call on a deplorable design for that case. I always struggled with how to carry my N95 (early version) and just wound up with it in my pocket most of the time. That means it spilled out of a shirt pocekt onto the ground more than once though.
1.5 Gb/s down, and 400 Mb/s up
you sure about those numbers? not Mbs down and Kbs up?
Right you are Carl!
Very cool. Which data plan are you using or getting away with ?
I’ve noticed that Rogers has some surprisingly reasonable 1,2,3 GB plans for their HSPA cards but I wasn’t able to figure out if I slipped one those SIMs into a handset (tethered or otherwise) if they’d let that slide or find a way to crush me with 5 cents a kilobyte…
And PC cards are pretty useless if I ever get that macbook air.
I think an N95 as a combo 3G smart phone and portable, mobile broadband modem is just about the perfect wireless solution.
Tom – I saw the same 1, 2, 3 GB plans you did, and phoned Rogers customer service. I explained that I had a sophisticated phone with a 5 megapixel camera, and wanted a suitable dataplan to go on it. The rep suggested a 1 GB plan for $65. I asked if this was the same as the HSPA card plan, and she said no. She wouldn’t sell me the 2 or 3GB plan. Still, it beats the tar out of the old $100 for 200M plan I had on my Blackberry.
I think the N95 could probably be a very credible phone / mobile broadband mode with the 1G plan, but I wouldn’t do things like run Qik and stream video from it. Even a few minutes of video shot at 5 mpix is 50 megs of data.