Nokia N810 Internet Tablet Gets WiMax

Nokia has announced a new version of its N810 Internet Tablet, this one sporting high-speed WiMax wireless connectivity.

Finland’s Nokia has taken the wraps off its Nokia N810 Internet Tablet WiMax Edition, the company’s first device to integrate high-speed, wide-area WiMax connectivity. Although WiMax isn’t widely available in the United States, mobile operator Sprint is building out its Xohm network, with high-speed service already deployed in Chicago and the Washington D.C./Baltimore area. Nokia plans to make the WiMax-enabled edition of its N810 available in the United States in June, potentially getting a jump on a WiMax-enabled market as Sprint builds out its network.

"Much in the way that the evolution of the fixed Internet from dial-up to broadband enabled a host of new Internet services and changed people’s expectations of what an Internet experience should be, the transition to a broadband Internet experience set free from the constraints of a fixed network will spark the next wave of new mobile Internet services, and will forever change the perception of what the Internet can be," said Nokia’s VP of convergence products, Ari Virtanen, in a statement.

The Linux-based Nokia N810 Internet Tablet features a 4.13-inch touch screen, Bluetooth connectivity, and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and offers a Mozilla browser, VoIP and IM clients (including Skype, Gizmo5, and Google Talk). The device comes with 2 MB of internal memory and a microSD slot for adding more storage, and can tap into the Internet via Wi-Fi and conventional cellular data networks if WiMax isn’t available. The N810 also supports email, RSS feeds, and a wide variety of applications from a broad development community—including a Rhapsody client.

Nokia hasn’t announced pricing for the N810 Internet Tablet WiMax Edition, but the non-WiMax version of the N810 typically retails for about $475.