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Throughout the past month Nokia's ESeries smartphones all met with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval for release in the U.S.—from which carrier(s) is still a mystery, however. There's the three already announced models - the E60, E61 and E70 - plus the previously unknown E62 (a version of the E61 communicator for the mass market).

While a lot is known about these business-oriented Symbian/S60 handsets - and the multiple push e-mail options they support - they're estimated time of availability (Q1 2006) is about to run out, as there is only a couple of weeks left in the quarter.

Even if Nokia somehow manages to ship them on time, the ESeries most likely won't make it into the hands of all the people and enterprises that want them in volume for another several weeks.

Nokia Enterprise Solutions division spokeswoman Maria Kellokumpu told Reuters today the ESeries smartphones are still on track, however. "We are on schedule and we will begin the shipments this quarter and the first ESeries deliveries will happen this quarter," Kellokumpu said.

"The orders will be delivered as they come," And that there's been a lot of interest in the smartphones,” she added

Since we first posted this story, it has come to light that "still on track" for later this month refers to European availability only. American and Asian markets will have to wait a bit longer.

Gizmondo quotes a Nokia representative as saying, “It will be a couple months before we have any U.S. market specific information (pricing, availability, carrier details, etc).”

GSM subscribers (T-Mobile, Cingular Wireless) may be able to purchase an imported unlocked ESeries smartphone - likely an expensive proposition – in the meantime, or exercise some restraint and simply wait those extra months for the devices to finally land here.

All ESeries models - except the still somewhat mysterious E62, perhaps - support several mob-e-mail options, including BlackBerry Connect—a service that allows devices other than BlackBerry handhelds to leverage RIM's push e-mail and data access solutions—GoodLink from Good Technology, Seven Mobile Mail & Always-On Mail, Visto Mobile and Nokia's own new Nokia Business Center.

Perhaps the most eagerly-anticipated member is the E61 communicator (see top image), a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900) smartphone with support for UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System ) 3G, which achieves average data transfer speeds of 300 to 400 kbps. It offers Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared and USB 2.0 connectivity as well.

The E61 looks quite a bit like a BlackBerry or Treo and is no doubt designed to draw customers away from those two market leaders. The device has a four-way joystick and QWERTY thumb-keyboard combined with a wide 320 x 240 pixel resolution, 16 million color screen plus 75 MB of RAM and a miniSD slot.

It weighs 5.1 ounces (144 grams) and measures 4.6 x 2.7 x 0.55 inches (117 x 69.7 x 14 millimeters). Click on the links below for more on all Nokia ESeries smartphones.