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As expected, Cingular Wireless has started shipping Nokia's E62 smartphone, the Finnish phone-maker’s bid for BlackBerry/Q/Treo communicator territory in the U.S. It is ultra-thin and compact like Motorola's Q, includes a QWERTY thumb-keyboard for easy text entry, and offers a number of different mobile e-mail options: Good Mobile Messaging, Cingular Xpress Mail (SEVEN-based), BlackBerry Connect, Mail for Exchange, the Nokia push solution via Intellisync Mobile Suite, and standard clients such as POP3, IMAP and SMTP.

The E62 includes an instant messaging application and the ability to view, edit and create documents, spreadsheets and presentations. There's also a built-in MP3 player, video player and software to view images. The E62, like all keyboard-based BlackBerry models, for example, lacks a camera, however.

Nokia has been shipping a sister smartphone to the E62, the E61, in Europe and Asia for the past several months. The main difference between the two is that the E61 includes Wi-Fi and high-speed UMTS cellular-broadband technology, and the E62 does not.

Otherwise, the E62 is basically the same Symbian 9.1, S60 3rd Edition and quad-band (850/900/1800/1900) GSM/GPRS international smartphone that does support the less speedy but far more widely available EDGE network data standard.

The E62 also has a four-way joystick, 235 MHz processor, wide 2.8-inch 320 x 240-pixel resolution and 16 million color screen, 90 MB of internal memory, Bluetooth, miniSD slot for up to 2GB of extra memory and USB connectivity.

It weighs around 5 ounces and measures 4.61 x 2.76 x 0.63 inches; slightly larger than a Q, but smaller than a Treo.

The QWERTY thumb-keyboard appears to be a little different than the E61's, adding a My Own button, which is a user-configurable shortcut key, and there's both a mini USB port and 2.5 millimeter headset jack. There's also a speakerphone, voice dialing, voice commands for menu shortcuts, six-way conference calling, and a dedicated voice key for voice recording.

It features Nokia's newest Web browser, which promises superior page rendering, zooming and narrow page layouts for a PC-like viewing experience.

Nokia specs out the battery for the device for about hours talk time.

The E62 goes for as little as $149.99 with a two-year service contract and a mail-in rebate.