My N95 arrived today and I am very impressed. It is perhaps the best S60 phone I have experienced. The interface and built-in themes have a much more refined feel than previous devices, and the speed of the OS is noticeably improved over older devices.

As mentioned in yesterday post, I wanted to share why I pay extra to get unlocked phones from Europe and other markets.

The main reason is freedom. As they say freedom has a price, and in the mobile phone market the freedom you get is to enjoy the full experience the manufacturer intended.

Take the Nokia E61/62 for example. If you paid extra and got an unlocked E61, in addition to a great phone with email, you enjoyed VoIP and Wifi access.

The U.S market got the E62, Cingular had the E61 on a starvation diet. No VoIP or WIFI.

The motivations are obvious, complete control and lock-in of their customers to their data and voice service.

Based on experience, when Cingular or TMobile get the U.S. N95 (perhaps called the N96), it will most likely be missing features, such as WIFI and VoIP.

I would love to be optimistic, and suggest that with Apple’s iPhone having WIFI, Cingular would not demand a neutered version of the N95. But, then again, they may want to drives sales of the iPhone and not have too much competition.

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