Other than talking about the N75, Olly and I have been conversing about CTIA, which is in Orlando, FL this year on March 27-29th. I’ve got some predictions as to what we might see from Nokia out there. S60 will not have a booth, but there’ll be plenty of that crowd there, along with Symbian and Nokia both having their own booth.
Here’s my predictions and the reasoning – I think we’re going to see a handful of N-series devices from Nokia. I think that because 3GSM was 3 new E-series and 2 non-"series". Though I suppose you could point to the N95 and N76 as announced but not released, but I think we’re going to see 2 new N-series and 2 new non-"series". Here’s the skinny on those:
1. One that we already know is the 5700 XpressMusic phone. Personally I think this is going to be an S40 non-smartphone device, somewhere slightly higher ranking than the recently launched 5300.
I think we’ll finally see some of the fruits of this design/research center in California. I’m predicting that we’ll see 2 US 3G phones at CTIA, one for Cingular and one for T-mobile.
2.. One phone will be a swivel gaming phone, with the d-pad and buttons on the top, and the numpad to swivel out. Kinda like the SE S710a, only optimized for gaming.
3. One will be another slider, similar to the N80, only with US 3G and a CZ lens.
4. The last will be a candybar focused on gaming. Really similar to the N73, but with built-in GPS and 3D acceleration.
I think at least one of the S60 devices will have GPS, if not 2 of them. I think this is where we’re going to find out what Nokia T-mobile launches their 3G service with.
One thing that I think would be cool (but I’m not necessarily predicting it) is a device with UMTS 850, 1700, 1900, 2100, so that it could work on EITHER T-Mobile or Cingular’s 3G service. This is dependent on where they each have their licenses. If T-mobile got licenses where Cingular doesn’t have enough spectrum, then this could be a big hit, specifically for a launch device. I don’t know enough about the recent auction to say for sure, though.
What do you think? Think I’ve got too many devices? Think I’m dead wrong?
