Cool Hunting

Yesterday was a big day for Nokia at their Open Studio event—eight new products, an indy store driven Music Recommenders service, David Bowie appearance, Gnarles Barkley concert, Om Malik panel discussion and a tricked out Mustang alongside a smoothie stand. All of this grounded by their new(ish) message that they make "multimedia computers with telephony capability" as opposed to mobile phones that do lots of other things.

Among the eight there are three worth highlighting. The N95 is a all-in-one device with high-end music, photo (5 mega pixel!) and video capabilities. It can connect to virtually any form of wireless network and has built-in GPS for all your hunting and gathering needs. And you can talk on the phone, either via your carrier or with voice over IP. For a computer that does all this it's pretty small, but for a mobile phone it's a bit chunky. One useful novelty is the 2-way sliding display—slide it up to reveal the keypad or slide it down to get the music and video controllers. Of course, the image and interface on the display rotate accordingly.

While it will be awhile before the N95 makes it to the US, the N75 is built specifically for us. Available in time for holiday, this is the first great-looking clamshell-style handset I've seen from Nokia. It's thin, full featured and has beautiful displays on the inside and out—which is necessary to show off your pictures taken with the 2-megapixel camera. The integrated music player also makes listening to tunes straight-forward using the three control buttons on the cover of the handset.

Last but certainly not least is the music-enhanced N73. Like the N70 and N91 which were also part of the music edition the device is clad in a slimming matte-black finish. It's amazing how much sexier this phone is in black over the silver and orange version currently on the market. I'm partial to a candy-bar style phone and this one is my new favorite. With a fast 3.2-megapixel camera featuring a Carl Zeiss lens and built in flash, this phone makes me comfortable leaving the house without another camera. And yes, it has a handy built in music player that works in all the right ways.