Coming Soon: Nokia's E71

Nokia made numerous exciting announcements at this year's GSMA World Mobile Congress, however, the E71 smartphone was notably absent.

We gave Nokia's E61 an editor's choice award when we reviewed it at the end of 2006, noting that, at the time, it offered a high-quality smartphone experience in a BlackBerry-esque body. Well, the game has changed quite a bit since 2006 and we're eager to see if the E71 has what it takes to keep up with the Joneses.

From the limited details we have so far, the E71 sounds like it has everything you'd expect -- which is to say -- it has everything. HSDPA (3.6Mbps) Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Micro SD support, a QWERTY keyboard and a 3.2-megapixel camera. Onboard GPS also assures Nokia is keeping its promise of having GPS in every new device.

We were lucky enough to see a "secret" side-by-side photo of the E71 with its older, bigger brother at this year's 2008 Nokia Showcase, and we were glad to see the newer model is considerably smaller. In fact, if early reports are true, the E71 is only 57mm wide and a svelte 10mm thick. This should make lovers of BlackBerry's Pearl series think twice before their next PDA purchase.

No word yet on pricing but we look forward to seeing the E71 in the CNET labs towards the end of Q2.

Update: The picture of the E71 is a photoshop mock-up of the E71 created by a Mobile Review user, which is very similar to the actual handset we saw in a photo at the Nokia showcase event.