As Samsung comes out with its Android-based Galaxy Spica smartphone (aka the i5700) and then announces that it's not going to be available yet to U.S. consumers, and as Dell announces its entry into the smartphone market, but in China and Brazil, not the U.S., one of the world's premiere smarthone makers, Nokia, is finally bringing one of its most revered devices, the Nokia E72, to U.S. shores.

The Nokia E72, arguably Nokia's greatest stab at the Blackberry Curve, is now being sold to U.S. customers on Amazon.com for around $469 (a welcome step down in price from its price in Euros, equating to $525 U.S.). The E72 is primarily a messaging and email phone, with a built-in desktop email client and chat, and is being targeted at the business community.

Meanwhile, as Palm rolls out its Palm Pixi, analysts and prognosticators are buzzing about the rumors coming out late last week that Nokia might purchase the faltering Palm.

Both are 3G touchscreen devices which come with a 5 megapixel digital camera, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a GPS. Both also include the latest proprietary Ovi social networking, Ovi mapping, and Comes With Music music software.

The N97 Mini is obviously just a scaled-down version of the N97 that came out recently, with a smaller casing (4.4" x 2" x 0.5") and not as much internal memory (8 GB). It runs on Symbian's 5th edition OS and has a built-in FM transmitter.

The X6 is looking to be Nokia's next flagship music smartphone. It has 32 GB of internal storage, meaning it'll hold tons of songs (much like another leading music phone we know of). The Comes With Music software allows users unlimited music downloads.

Most devices look to be running U.S. customers in the mid-$600 range when they first come out.

For one, it will bring a Microsoft Office enterprise version to Symbian smartphones. Plus new Nokia devices will ship with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile built in. Also, the new team-up plans to use Exchange ActiveSync to optimize corporate customers' data access.

But in the live teleconference call yesterday in which the partnership was announced, a Microsoft exec professed that this was by no means all there was to the arrangement.

In a much larger context, Microsoft hopes to dislodge RIM and its Blackberry from its domination of the mobile enterprise market. Plus, Microsoft is eager to benefit from Nokia's 200 million subscriber base while Nokia is eager to benefit from Microsoft's U.S. presence.

Strange, though, is that Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS and Nokia's Symbian mobile OS will still compete with one another in the platform wars.

Intel is acquiring an HSPA/3G IP license from Nokia and planning on putting a Linux-based OS into the devices, which will include not only smartphones but netbooks and nettops, and in-vehicle information and entertainment systems. This would be the big start in the mobile market that Intel has needed in order to remain relevant.

Though most smartphones these days use ARM microprocessors because Intel's apparently require so much more power, Intel's earlier forays into the mobile market included certain Blackberry and Palm devices. Nokia's real reason for the partnership, no doubt, is because of the bigger presence Intel will give it in the United States.

At least that's what many smartphone customers and industry analysts believe. Pricing the N97 at $700 is putting it in a completely different marketing category than the $99 iPhone, which makes it very difficult for the Nokia device to compete.

Even the Palm Pre, which also bodes well as an iPhone alternative, only rings in at $299--and it has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard to boot. Oh wait, so does the Nokia N97. Well still, flagship smartphone or no flagship smartphone, what is Nokia's logic in the N97's $700 price tag?

One advantage of the Nokia N97 over the iPhone, for some users at least, is that it's not tied to any particular wireless carrier, so people can use their favorite--AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile--as they wish.

HTC Magic: The second Google Android powered smartphone from HTC and the first from Vodafone, the Magic is smaller than the inaugural Google Phone, the HTC T-Mobile G1 and will first be distributed into hands overseas (U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain). Downsides? It doesn't have a physical keyboard, nor does the touchscreen keyboard operate in landscape mode.

Also unveiled from HTC, the HTC Touch Diamond2, HTC Touch Pro2, and the T-Mobile G2.

Acer M900: The business set will like this latest Windows Mobile smartphone, with its large 3.8" touchscreen, vast messaging capabilities, and--get this!--fingerprint scanner for cutting-edge security.

LG Arena: It was only a matter of time before we saw a 3D interface, and here it is, looking like the onscreen Rubiks Cube of menus.

Nokia E55: With its own take-off of the BlackBerry Sure-Type keypad.

A common thread for a lot of the devices unveiled this year is the built-in 5-megapixel camera--though the ones in the new Nokia N86 and Samsung Omnia HD sport 8 megapixels, and the Sony Ericsson Idou, with its enhanced touchscreen, has 12.1 and a sliding lens cover. So there!

Today, Nokia introduced the new Nokia 5630 XpressMusic, a smartphone specifically targetted towards music lovers. Powered by the Symbian S60 OS, this flashy candybar 3G smartphone supports Nokia's Come With Music service that grants users access to millions of major label songs. It has an FM Tuner with internet radio. And it sports a snazzy "Say and Play" feature that lets you speak the new of an artist or track to hear it played.

To top it off, unlike most non-N Series handsets, the XpressMusic also comes with N-Gage, a Nokia service that grants users access to all the mobile video games available for Nokia devices.

First the BlackBerry: The Washington Post was stunned to find that more than 15 million MySpace messages had been sent over the BlackBerry mobile app, and more than 2 million moods and statuses had been updated.

Next Nokia: As of December, most Nokia S60 series handsets, including the S60 3rd Edition and the N96 Bruce Lee Special Edition, will be able to access their corporate email accounts through a new mobile app called Lotus Notes Traveler, catering to a market base IBM reports at 140 million plus licensed users.

Who will have more success cross-marketing their products in "the other guy's court"? Only time will tell.

“Comes With Music” provides compatible Nokia smartphone purchasers (starting with the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic “Comes with Music Phone” a full year of unlimited access to the entire music catalog of Nokia’s Music Store (honestly, I didn’t even know they had one).

In cooperation with Sony BMG, Universal Music Group (UMG), and Warner Music, Nokia is granting its customers access to more than 2 million tracks. And most excitingly, customers will apparently be able to continue to possess and listen to all the music they download using the service even after their one year subscription period expires.

A novel concept and a worthy attempt to compete with the near monopolistic iTunes Music Store (and more specifically iTunes Mobile), the new effort debuts in the UK sometime after its official announcement and launching scheduled in London, England on October 2.

Avoiding specifics as to whether the releationship would remain in the realm of applications or venture into OS territory, chief Symbian-ite Nigel Clifford points out that Google and Symian have already been working closely together for a while now, mainly on search and mapping applications for Nokia smartphones.

It would be quite difficult for the two to merge their operating systems, so the likes of RIM and Apple don’t have too much to be nervous about, but the mutual back-scratching of the two giants in their respective industries leaves a lot for fellow partners Motorola, LG, Samsung, and others a lot to be excited about. Only time will tell however, what such a collaborative venture will produce.