Nokia has started shipping its N95 mobile phone in Europe and Asia, the first in an expected series of devices from the Finnish company with built-in GPS capabilities.

The N95 is rich in features and carries a price tag to match: At 550 euros (US$732) before operator rebates, it is one of the priciest additions to Nokia’s Nseries range. Nokia calls it a "multimedia computer." No plans were announced to sell it in the Americas.

The mobile phone is a slider-type device with a 5-megapixel camera for shooting photos and 30-frames-per-second video. It has a 2.6-inch TFT display with 240-by-320-pixel screen resolution, and comes with an MP3 music player and a MicroSD memory card slot.

The phone works on high-speed downlink packet access networks, as well as wireless LANs, EDGE and WCDMA networks, and it’s based on Nokia’s S60 software and the Symbian OS.

One of the main selling points is its built-in GPS, which allows users to find out where they are, get directions, and search for nearby hotels and other services. It comes with about 150 maps for cities worldwide, and city guides and audio tours are sold separately.

Nokia becomes one of the first major handset makers to include GPS, but it’s unclear how well it will perform, at least in this first iteration, said Chris Jones, a principal analyst with Canalys.com in Reading, England.

Looking at the phone’s design, the GPS components appear to be buried deep in the device, according to Jones, which means the N95 may take longer than is ideal to pinpoint a user’s location.

"When you walk out of a tube station you want to have a [location] fix in a few seconds rather than minutes," he said. "From what we understand it won’t be in the seconds because the GPS is inside the handset."

Nokia didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

The route-finding function won’t be of the "turn left, turn right" variety found in car navigation systems, either, Jones said. Rather, the directions will be in text format or a line drawn onto a map.

Users will be able to buy more sophisticated directional software separately from Nokia, he said. Nokia acquired the technology when it bought Gate5 last year.

Still, "the Nokia Maps application will be nice to have in your phone; you’ll have maps and a GPS in your pocket wherever you are," he added.

The phone was announced six months ago, so there may be some pent-up demand, but given its price it is unlikely to be a high-volume seller for Nokia, Jones said.