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At the 3GSM World Conference in Cannes, France today, Nokia announced the 9500 Communicator series, the long awaited successor to the 9200 series. The new smartphone is aimed at business users and the enterprise.

Significantly, the tri-band GSM/GPRS EDGE 9500 series, which will come in 900/1800/1900 MHz and 850/1800/1900 MHz models, is one of the first handsets to integrate 802.11b Wi-Fi. This means users will be able to leverage wireless access points to get on the Internet, a corporate intranet and enterprise, and download email.

These access points are becoming increasingly common, as you can find them in airports, book stores, cafes, and many other places. While you'll be able to perform similar functions with the GPRS EDGE data part of the device's cellular capabilities, 802.11b is much faster and it won't eat into a your carrier's data plan, which often charge by the megabyte.

In addition, the integration of Wi-Fi makes the 9500 a no brainier as a potential voice over IP (VoIP) phone. VoIP allows users to bypass standard phone lines by using the Internet as the means to make phone calls, potentially saving users and companies, in particular, a lot of money. So employees may be able to use the 9500 as their standard phone in the office and as there cell phone when out of the office.

As for other features, the 9500 is a significant upgrade over the 9200 series. The device runs the latest version, 7.0, of the Symbian operating system, the most common operating system found in smartphones. It has two color displays that support up to 65,536 colors. The main screen, found on the top half of the mini-laptop like device, has an excellent resolution of 640x200, which would allow users to display almost a whole web page. The other screen is located on the top back of the 9500 and it has resolution of 128 x 128. A standard phone keypad is situated bellow the smaller display.

Nokia has developed a number of interfaces that run on top of the Symbian OS to use on its and licensee phones. These interfaces, the most well known of which is Series 60, are designed to make the devices more user-friendly. The 9500's main display, like with past communicators, uses the Series 80 interface, while its smaller screen uses the Series 40 interface. Unfortunately, the Series 80 interface was first developed three years ago and doesn't include pen-input. A new interface, the Series 90, first introduced last fall, reportedly offers better menus and pen-input. The first Series 90 smartphone is the Nokia 7700, which hasn't been released yet.


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