
Updated twice. Nokia is opening their flagship store in New York City today, at 5 East 57th Street, and they're doing it with two new phones: the eagerly awaited E70 and N93. The E70, which I have on my desk right now, is a chameleon smart phone that looks like an ordinary candy-bar phone, but flips open to reveal a full, split QWERTY keyboard in the style of Nokia's old 6820 phone. The E70 has tri-band GSM and Wi-Fi, and connects to Blackberry, Intellisync or POP3/IMAP email servers -- but, alas, not Good Mobile Messaging. It also has an awesome Web browser, a MiniSD (not Micro!) memory card slot and runs Symbian Series 60 smartphone applications. Check out the two photos to see how the E70 works its magic.
The N93, meanwhile, is a camcorder with a phone attached - a big, chunky phone that takes 30 frame-per-second MPEG4 videos and records them onto a MiniSD card. It also has a 3.2 megapixel camera.
Both phones will work with Cingular or T-Mobile.
Here's the catch: these phones will not be officially available online or through any carrier. You can only buy them at the Chicago and New York Nokia stores, or through gray-market retailers. So hop on a plane, phone fans.
Updated: Nokia tells me the E70 was the very first phone sold in their New York store when it opened. The E70 will run you $449; the N93 is $699.
Updated again: I made the mistake of thinking the E70 didn't have the 850 Mhz band because my E70 doesn't. But it turns out Nokia sent me a European E70. The version sold at the US stores does, in fact, support both US frequency bands.