iTunes phone in Canada - will we be able to ROKR?

The iTunes support for mobile phones begins today, with Apple's partenership with Motorola's ROKR E1 and the US cell company Cingular.

The big question is of course...can we use it in Canada? Well, the Motorola ROKR is a GSM phone that also supports international networks. Being a GSM phone, it means it also uses SIM cards to activate the phone -- meaning you could use the card from any network provider. Cingular may be distributing the phones as locked, but it probably won't be more than a couple of weeks before a firmware upgrade will unlock it, making it capable of being used on any GSM network. Here in Canada, that's only the Rogers/Fido network.

Update: Mark Evans says the ROKR will be available through Rogers by mid-September, although he doesn't name a source.

Elsewhere, Michael Gartenburg covers the iPod Nano -- for us Mac folks, the Windows announcement might get lost in the shuffle: "With the integration with Outlook with iTunes 5.0 and the small size, I can even see folks using this as a personal information manager."