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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved what appears to be the long-rumored Americanized version of Nokia's N95 Multimedia Smartphone for release in the U.S.; confirming the existence of said smartphone once and for all, while providing some pictures of the eagerly-anticipated device in the process. All devices using U.S. airwaves must receive a thumbs up from the FCC before shipping here.

Apart from an iPhone-like boost in capacity to 8GB of what we assume to be flash and not micro-drive storage, the internal specifications of the new edition of the N95 are supposed to be quite similar to the original model. All About Symbian points out some physical and software differences, however.

These include a change in color of the casing to black; the lack of a camera cover to allow for a bigger and higher-capacity battery (a 1200 mAH instead of a 950 mAH type); plus soft keys and directional controls that appear to have shrunk, suggesting either a bigger display, a smaller device, or a slight design alteration.

The manual talks about the Nokia Music Store, Windows Media Player as the means to sync music and video with PC, a new multimedia menu on the smartphone itself, and N-Gage gaming. The mobile phone giant re-invented N-Gage as a gaming platform last year, to be available in a wide variety of smartphones, after the original (oddly taco-shaped) N-Gage gaming-smartphone models failed to set the world on fire.


Pics from FCC Web site br>Pics from FCC Web site

Speaking of N-Gage, Nokia today announced that entertainment developer I-play would launch games for the N-Gage platform. The I-Play titles are casual, or, as Nokia calls them, one-thumb games. They're due to start shipping next year; beginning with “World Rally Championship” and “Super Mah Jong."

It isn't clear whether the music store the manual refers to is the same as Nokia's current Music Recommenders site. As the name implies, this site offers users recommendations about new music in wide variety of genres—from independent record stores around the world—and, of course, allows them to buy those tracks and albums.

It appears this version of the N95 won't support the North American-friendly HSDPA 850/1900 3G bands, but will instead still only handle the European-style 2100MHz HSDPA band, which doesn’t to U.S. users much good. Earlier rumors said an Americanized version of the N95 would support U.S. 3G, so perhaps there's yet another version of the N95 in the works.

Update: The FCC has just approved a version of the N95 with the two U.S.-compatible 3G bands listed above, but not a third, 1700MHz, which is due for T-Mobile’s upcoming third-generation data network. Unlike the other N95 model mentioned in this article, this version is silver.


N95 with U.S.-compatible 3G technology

All else being equal, the new edition of the N95 should integrate a GPS chip and a 5-megapixel camera just like the current version. It'll also feature the same unique 2-way slider design that reveals media controls when moved one way and a keypad when moved the other.

When the N95 is in media mode, the 2.6-inch 240 x 320 pixel (QVGA) and 16 million color display is automatically placed into landscape mode. Built-in stereo speakers offer a 3D stereo effect, plus there's a standard 3.5 mm audio jack for headphones, a microSD slot for storage expansion, and mini USB for data transfers. Bluetooth with A2DP allows users to leverage wireless stereo headsets as well.

Users can record and playback VGA video at 30 fps with digital image stabilization. There's also TV out and support for MP3, AAC, M4A, and WMA audio files.

Tele Atlas provides the digital map data and dynamic location content for the handset, which includes free basic mapping and routing functionalities to initiate local searches for more than 100 countries and over 15 million points of interest.

There's also Wi-Fi, 160 MB of memory, and support for high speed HSDPA networks with the GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UTMS N95.

The N95 weighs a mere 4.2 ounces (120 grams) and measures 4.0 x 2.0 x 0.7 inches (99 x 53 x 19 millimeters).

As with all Nokia Nseries smartphone models, the N95 is built on the Symbian OS and S60 interface.

Currently, Nokia sells the unlocked European version of the N95 in the U.S. for $750. There's still no word on how much the Americanized edition go for or which wireless carrier might pick it up.