Nokia E72 for N. America Can Now Be Pre-ordered

The Nokia E72 QWERTY smartphone was announced this summer, and a couple of online stores have now begun taking pre-orders for the N. American version.

This version will be a quad-band GSM phone that offers the 850, 1900, and 2100 MHz HSPA bands, so it will work with AT&T and T-Mobile, but just have AT&T's 3G service.

eXpansys USA is asking $450 for the Nokia N72 NAM, while Amazon.com is charging a bit more, $470.

Both companies are offering this mobile directly to the public, not through a wireless carrier, so there is no subsidy, but no service contract is required.

eXpansys says the expected release date will be December 7.

More about the Nokia E72
Nokia E72 will continue the emphasis on communication seen in many recent smartphones from this company. It will ship with Symbian S60 Feature Pack 2 (v3.2), and an advanced version of the Nokia Messaging application which features personal and corporate email, as well as instant messaging support.

Despite being a QWERTY device -- similar to the E71 and E71x -- the E72 will feature an optical navigation pad in lieu of a traditional directional pad.

It will also have:

• A 5 MPx digital camera with flash, auto-focus, and geo-tagging ability
• A 3.5 mm headset jack
• A new voice control function which enables control of the entire device
• Built-in mobile VPN
• Hardware-accelerated data encryption with remote lock and wipe abilities
• QuickOffice v5.3 supporting Microsoft Office 2007 documents
• and more