Nokia GSM Phones

As long as there have been cell phones, there has been Nokia and now there are Nokia GSM phones as well. It's no surprise, therefore, that the company offers no fewer than 44 models of Nokia GSM phones for sale in the United States. All GSM is not the same, however. You need and want to look closely for the frequency of the GSM mode, especially in Nokia models. GSM technology works the same way worldwide.

The Nokia GSM Phones Catalog: Introduction

Neither the frequency used nor the method of providing service, however, is the same. This is because when the technology arose in Europe the consensus was to provide service through SIM (subscriber identification modules) chipsets and use two specific frequencies (900 and 1800 MHz) as the standard. This spread to Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Rim.

The United States and a few South American countries are the exception to the rule. GSM in America developed about eight years later and was released in 1995. It uses a different frequency (1900 MHz) and hard codes service into the phone. Furthermore, the majority of U.S. providers do not use GSM but instead TDMA or CDMA. The caution in buying Nokia GSM phones is not that they are not GSM technology.

The concern is that they might be calibrated only to the 1900 MHz or the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz used in the United States. For example, the Nokia 7200--so newly released that it's not yet available--has a U.S. model and a Eurasian model. The phone is not a dual or a quad-band. You're best advised to shop only for tri-band and quad-band models if you want to use the phone in more than one country.