For better or worse, dual sliders are quickly becoming one of Nokia's
trademark form factors -- but one thing we'd never really expected out of Espoo was a dual slider equipped with EV-DO Rev. A. Sure enough, FCC documentation has revealed a diminutive black dumbphone that packs CDMA800 / 1900 with 3G and slides two ways: one to reveal a numeric keypad, the other to offer up music controls. Historically, Nokia has "co-ODM'd" its CDMA devices with an unnamed Asian partner, and we suspect this device is no different -- but we've got to give them credit for crafting a genuinely Nokia-esque device here. The draft user's manual doesn't reveal a retail name or model number, but we do see references to UIMs (the CDMA equivalent of SIMs) and British spellings of "organiser," which leads us to believe North America might not be on the VIP list for this one. Would be a shame, wouldn't it?
[Via
Phone Scoop]
Update: Commenter Kunal points out that this looks an awful lot like the China-bound
8208, which makes us wonder -- why the FCC approval? Did that bad boy pique the interest of Verizon or Sprint?
posted Apr 20th 2009 1:24PM
If it is coming to the US, I'd say Sprint is a more likely candidate than Verizon. Verizon already has the 7205 and it may wait to see how well that does before making another baby with Nokia. Sprint, on the other hand, needs all the help that it can get. With dual sliders proving popular even here in the US, Sprint may be hoping to use that as a way to differentiate itself from the other big carriers (particularly Verizon).
I hope it comes to verizon
Sprint does not sell Nokia phones, nor would Nokia sell a higher end phone on there netwrok. Verizon is the only CDMA network that Nokia will sell high end phones to. This is comming to Verizon this summerish (may-june).
Umm...
1. Sprint has sold SIX Nokia models... Go here and choose "Show older Nokia devices".
http://support.sprint.com/devices.html?isd=1&navtypeid=2&pagetypeid=35&prevPageIndex=5#NokiaArchivedDevicesContainer
2. The 6165i (in it's time) was considered high end, being the only Nokia offered with Bluetooth and a 1+ megapixel camera.
None of which were high end devices. SO you're kinda proving his statement. Not saying I'm happy about this because I would purchase it.