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Cingular Wireless is finally offering Nokia's 9300 smartphone to the general public, after shipping it to business customers since November. It's been a long road towards general availability for the 9300: Nokia first announced the smartphone back in September 2004 and we first got a hands on look at the device the following May.

Although the 9300 isn't officially a Nokia communicator, it is built in the mold of the oldest-running smartphone series, with its QWERTY thumb-keyboard and large screen. Compared to a full-size Nokia communicator like the 9500, the 9300 is downright petite at 5.2 x 2.0 x 0.83 inches and only 5.9-ounce weight. By contrast, the 9500 weighs in at a hefty 7.83 ounces and sports dimensions of 5.8 x 2.24 x 0.9 inches.

The 9300, as anticipated, is the first device in the United States to ship with Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry Connect service, which enables third-party handsets to support RIM's mob-e-mail and data access solutions. So corporate customers may choose to leverage the 9300 with the behind-the-firewall BlackBerry Enterprise Server, while individual and small business users can access their Internet Service Provider (ISP) e-mail accounts through the BlackBerry Internet Service.

Although Symbian OS smartphones are the most popular in the world - especially in Europe - they haven't done all that well in the U.S., where Palm's Treo and those built on Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform continue to outperform handsets like the Sony Ericsson P910, Nokia N90 camera phone, Nokia 6682 and Nokia N-Gage, for example.

Several new Nokia model's, including the business-class Nokia ESeries, Sony Ericsson's upgrade to the P910 - the P990 - and upcoming BlackBerry-challenger M600, among others could change this, however.

More on the 9300
There's no 3G or W-Fi, but you get EDGE with the 9300. It has a 640 x 200-pixel screen (not touch) that supports 65,536 colors. When the 9300 is closed, a second 128 x 128 pixel display serves as the main interface. Since the 9300 — like the 9500 — runs Nokia's Series 80 interface on top of Symbian OS 7.0, both handhelds can use the same software.

As a Series 80 device, the lack of touch screen means no pen input. You get around through a nine-way navigational D-pad and an on-screen cursor. There's an array of personal information management and mobile office applications that let users edit spreadsheets, Word documents and presentations created in Microsoft Office 97 and up. Other apps include a Java-based e-mail client that supports SyncML, POP3, IMAP, and SMTP standards and a Web browser that handles XHTML, HTML 4.01 and WML 1.3.

As with most smartphones, MMS and SMS messaging is supported. You can listen to audio files as well as view pictures and video. Unlike the 9500, the 9300 doesn't integrate a digital camera. Other features include 80MB of RAM, a MultiMediaCard slot for memory expansion, and a swappable lithium ion battery that delivers 4 hours talk and 200 hours of standby time on a single charge.

Cingular sells the 9300 for $299.99 after a $50.00 mail-in rebate with a 2-year agreement. Nokia introduced a version of the 9300, the 9300i, with the addition of Wi-Fi back in November for the European market.