I was playing with a Nokia N900 at a small booth in Roosevelt Field Mall when I heard a most interesting conversation. A customer was interested in the N900, but wanted to stay with AT&T. At first I was alarmed that someone in NY actually wanted to stay with AT&T, but the Nokia sales rep’s words quickly knocked that thought out of my head. He told the customer that the N900 doesn’t support AT&T 3G, but a firmware update in Q1 will correct that.
The N900’s 3G radio supports the 900/1700/2100 WCDMA frequencies. This is great if you’re a T-Mobile customer, because the company’s 3G uses the 1700/2100 MHz bands. For AT&T customers — like the one curious about the N900 — the N900’s 3G radio is pretty useless since the company uses 850/1900 MHz for 3G. Nokia’s FCC filing for the N900 (PDF link) does not mention support for AT&T’s 3G frequencies.
Perhaps the sales rep was talking about an advanced type of firmware that physically changes the mobile radio in your phone (with magic nano-elves of course). Or maybe he was trying to be all hush-hush about it since Nokia didn’t mention support of the 850/1900 MHz bands in its FCC filing (how dastardly!).
Just for the hell of it, I called Nokia telesales to ask if the N900 would be able to support AT&T 3G through future firmware updates. The telesales rep told me that it’s not possible since it’s a hardware issue and not a software issue.
What do you guys and gals think? Was the Nokia funployee at Roosevelt Field lying to the customer for a quick sale? Or was he just stupid? And yes, that is a photo of the actual booth with the reps’ faces blurred out.
