Finland's Nokia has begun shipping its top-flight N95 Internet- and multimedia-savvy smartphone, marking the company's latest attempt to integrate mobile phone functionality with a media player, video camera, high-resolution still photography, mapping and location services, and mobile Internet capability. And if that sounds interesting, you'd better live in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, because there's no word on when-if ever-the N95 will make it to the North American market.

The N95 features a two-way slider design, sporting a 2.6-inch 320 by 240 pixel LCD display, and an integrated video-capable 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics (photos taken by N95 can be seen here) The N95 is designed to offer high speed connectivity, handling HSDPA with support for WLAN, EDGE, and WCDMA networks. The N95 also sports an integrated GPS receiver (including support for Nokia Maps, so users can find their way around in more than 150 countries and choose among over 15 million points of interest), and includes and integrated email client, Web browser, and PIM applications. If you can't get to the Internet via high-speed mobile networks, there's always the N95's integrated 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. And if you don't like cables for syncing or hands-free talking, there's Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. The N95 sports USB 2.0 connectivity and stores media and documents to microSD cards.

As a media player, the N95 supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, and M4A with playlist support; there's a headphone output, along with an integrated FM tuner. The N95 also supports Visual Radio which lets users pull up song info, artist details, and participate in interactive contests and surveys. On the video side, the N95 sports RealPlayer, and can play back MPEG-4, H.264/AVC, H.263/GPP, and RealVideo media. Of course, the N95 runs the S60 software on the Symbian OS, so a number of applications and enhancements are available for the unit.

Pricing on the N95 will vary by market-and Nokia says it plans to expand shipments in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in the next few weeks-but the N95 should carry a price around €550 (about $730 USD) exclusive of service fees. When is it coming to the United States? Right now, nobody is saying whether the N95 will ever hop over to North America.