What’s up with Nokia Nseries and Orange UK?

[update: Orange now DO stock the N95. And I now have one!]

While having a quick look around for more info on the Nokia N95, which I want to get my hands on, I came across a long forum thread here, which has been going since long before the recent news of the N95 came out – but it mainly focuses on when this gread handset will be available from Orange. More on that in a moment.
I am an Orange UK user and have been since they launched back in 1994 – my answerphone message is still the same one I recorded back in the day with the old ‘black brick’ – heh. I miss the old 0973 dialcode though. I also worked for an ad agency on a load of B2B multimedia presentations they did back then – touting their services and per second billing to business users.

So, I looked on the Orange UK website to see what was published there about the Nokia N95 – ‘Coming Soon’ it says.

Back to the thread of this forum, here’s a post which got an alarm bell ringing when they called Orange Upgrades:

Just phoned Orange upgrades:

Me: “Do you have any information on if you will be getting the Nokia N95?”
CSR: “We will not being doing anymore N-Series phones”
Me: “What – never again?”
CSR: “No”
Me: “Why?”
CSR: “There are too many problems with them, so we won’t invest any more money into them”
Me: “What happens if they make a really good one, and you miss out”
CSR: “That won’t happen.”

And then more recently, this one:

I popped into my local orange shop yesterday to check up on this phone, and knowing that it was in their catalogue had a quick glance at it, before asking one of their employees if they had any dates yet, he seemed unsure, but his boss over heard what was said and proceeded to tell me that although it was in the catalogue she had just heard that day that orange would not be selling it despite it being in the catalogue due to nokia refusing to let orange upload their music player onto the N95. She said that it was unlikely that either side would back down and until one of them did it won’t be available on orange – it all seems rather petty tbh. Looks like I’ll be changing to O2 then…

According to another poster, the Orange Music Player is “.. Orange’s attempt at a MP3 player, costs £3 for 3 tracks. Each track has an embedded license so you can’t send them to another phone!”

It looks like Orange have had a problem with the RAM and apps on the previous Nseries phones. I certainly hope that Orange DO get the Nokia N95, or I’ll have to ‘go underground’ and ‘sim-free’ which can cost a FORTUNE!

Damn you Orange, you used to play so well. Say it ain’t so.

If the firmware looks likely to be tampered with by Orange, then I might have go for the sim-free route. Hmmmmmmm….

Another poster shares an email from Orange from last week:

Dear Bradley

Thank you for your email.
I can confirm that Orange have no current plans to
introduce the Nokia N95 to their range of phones.

All phones available on the Orange network can be
viewed on the Orange website at www.orange.co.uk

I hope this assists you.
Kind regards
Steph
Orange Customer Services

SO. What’s the score? The website says ‘soon’ – yet customer services are sending out mixed signals to all the people on that thread asking them.

Orange used to have possibly the best customer service EVER when they launched. It was one of their huge strengths in the early days. Now it seems like it’s a different story all together.