Nokia's NM850iG goes on sale tomorrow

It's in, it's gone, it's back! Nokia's slightly belated NM850iG FOMA handset on DoCoMo may have been down, but it's not out for the count. Quite the opposite, in fact -- it's officially back in the saddle over there, and is expected to begin sales starting tomorrow. Yeah, we know the phone isn't anything especially special, but we kind of had a fun time picking on them and their attempts in entry to the Japanese 3G market while we had the chance. Now that it looks like all systems are go, we wish you luck Nokia. Foreigners aren't taken to well over there, we hear.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 16th 2006 7:15PM]

Huh? Nokia have been making phones for Vodafone JP for a while and they're UMTS

http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/model_3G/v702nk2/index.html

http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/model_3G/v702nk/index.html

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 16th 2006 7:36PM]

It may interest you to know that this is NOT a mainstream consumer handset, it's an inernational handset designed for roaming outside of japan, hence it not being in an official series lineup.

The previous phone that did this was designed by NEC, but the thinking is that it's probably cheaper to just buy whatever nokias already got that works rather than build a new one.

These have been on display shelves for some time, I picked one up a few weeks ago to find it flimsy, plasticy and generally just cheap feeling. Nokia have a way to come before they'll make any success in the Japanese market.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 17th 2006 12:33PM]

Looks realy nice!