Nokia started offering a U.S.-friendly edition of its über N96 smartphone earlier this week. It may soon do the same for that model's sister handsets, the N79 and N85. The cell phone giant's American division is now taking pre-orders for those smartphone.

According to Nokia USA, it'll get those smartphones first, "so you get it first." Pre-orders are date and time stamped by Nokia, and are processed in the order in which they are received.

There's still no word on exactly when Nokia will ship the N79 and N85 here, however. As with the N96, it is unlikely they'll arrive through a carrier partner. So, if you want one, be prepared to pay full price: $588.90 for the N95 and $492.70 for the N79.

The N79 and N85 are the latest models in Nokia's NSeries of consumer-oriented line of multimedia phones. As with the N96, these devices are designed to maximize use of Nokia's Ovi line of online data services (e.g. games, music, photos, navigation, social networking, etc.).

The N85 sports a dual slider design similar to the N96 and older N95 model, but is smaller than either of those handsets. It has a 2.6-inch, 320 x 240 pixel resolution OLED screen, built-in FM transmitter, 3.5 mm audio jack, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, TV-Out and a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and geotagging capabilities - the latter courtesy of the N85's GPS chip.

Additional features include a 1200 mAh battery and a microSD slot with an 8GB card bundled in the box.

As a quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G phone, the N85 is world phone that can be used both here and abroad for voice and data access.

Nokia plans to pre-load the N85 with at least 10 made-for-mobile N-Gage games, which you can take advantage of through dedicated gaming keys that light up when the device is in landscape gaming mode.

You can learn more about the N85 here and here for full specs.

As for the N79, it features a traditional compact candy-bar design with its display above its navigation pad and numeric keypad.

Like the N85, it integrates at least 10 pre-loaded N-Gage games, 1200 mAH battery, FM transmitter, a 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, and a microSD slot. The bundled memory card drops down to 4GB, however.

It supports Xpress-on SmartCovers to enable users to customize how their N79 looks. Put one of these covers on and the theme of the smartphone's user interface changes to match it automatically. The N79 will ship with a pair of SmartCovers for the front and five for the back.

As with the N85, the N79 is a quad-band world phone for voice. However, it only supports dual 3G bands, neither of which are U.S. friendly. Perhaps Nokia's got a version with North American broadband on the way?

You can learn more about the N79 here and here for full specs.