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A few pictures recently leaked of Nokia's upcoming unannounced N73 smartphone, the follow up to the popular European-only N70; details of which surfaced at the end of last month. The somewhat blurry images from NewMobile reveal a candy-bar style handset with a large screen.

The N73 - like its predecessor the N70 - is a member of the multimedia-centric NSeries. It is supposed to run on the Symbian operating system, v9.1, and the S60 (formally Series 60) interface.

Additional features of the N73 should include a 3.2-megapixel Carl Zeis camera (up from the 'run-of-the-mill' 2 megapixel camera lens in the N70) with 3x optical zoom and auto focus. The GSM phone should also offer Bluetooth 2.0, stereo speakers, a memory card slot, a 3G UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) radio (averaging 300 to 400 kbps) for data services like video telephony, and a 240 x 320 pixel (QVGA) resolution display. Because it uses the S60 interface, the display won't be a touch screen.

No word on where or when the N73 may ship.

A couple of weeks ago, Nokia revealed unspecified software issues delayed the release of six highly-anticipated smartphones, including three NSeries models - the N91, N71 and N80 - and three all business ESeries handsets - the E60, E61 (see top image) and E71 phones.

Of the delayed NSeries smartphones, the N91 music phone - one of a new breed of 4 GB handset (originally set for a holiday 2005 release)- should finally make its appearance, along with the other two later this month.