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There's a slew of communicators – compact smartphones with keyboards - due over the next few months. One of these BlackBerry/Treo alternatives, the Nokia E61, just met with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval; a little over a week after two other handsets in the Finnish phone giant's business-orientated ESeries - the E60 and E70 - achieved the same distinction. All wireless devices must gain FCC okay before release in the U.S.

Nokia's E61 is a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900) smartphone with support for UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System ) 3G, averaging 300 to 400 kbps data transfers over a compatible cellular network. It offers Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared and USB 2.0 connectivity.

The Symbian OS, S60 interface E61 looks quite a bit like a BlackBerry or Treo and is no doubt designed to draw customers away from those two market leaders. The device has a four-way joystick and QWERTY thumb-keyboard combined with a wide 320 x 240- pixel resolution, 16 million color screen plus 75 MB of RAM and a miniSD slot. It weighs 5.1 ounces (144 grams) and measures 4.6 x 2.7 x 0.55 inches (117 x 69.7 x 14 millimeters).

Full attachment handling (documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF viewer and ZIP manager) and an editing function (document, spreadsheet and presentation) are included.

Nokia says all ESeries phones support advanced voice features, such as Internet (Voice over IP) phone calls, Push to talk, and other SIP-based rich call solutions. In addition, companies deploying an Avaya or Cisco IP PBX can connect ESeries smartphones directly to their corporate phone networks, enabling functions like four-digit dialing and assisted call answering.

The ESeries supports several mobile messaging platforms as well, including GoodLink from Good Technology, Seven Mobile Mail & Always-On Mail, Visto Mobile and Nokia's own new Nokia Business Center. They’ll even work with BlackBerry Connect, a service that allows devices other than BlackBerrys to leverage RIM's e-mail and data access solutions.

It is still not known what carrier(s) will deliver the E61 to the American market or for how much. Although we do expect it to be soon.