Nokia seems to have decided to do its own launch and skip Communicasia 08 by finally announcing the E66 and E71 business handsets in London last night. Both handsets are very swanky looking, both are available in black or white with a stainless steel finish.

Common features between the two handsets include HSDPA support, quad-band GSM with EDGE, A-GPS with Nokia Maps, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, IrDA, a 3.2Megapixel camera, a front camera for video calls, a 2.5mm audio/video connector, 110MB of built in memory, a microSD card memory slot and Nokia's S60 platform.

The E66 is a slider and measures 107x49x13mm (HxWxD) when closed and weighs in at 121g. It has a 2.4-inch 320x240 display, a motion sensor that will automatically switch to landscape mode when the phone is tilted and a 1,000mAh battery which Nokia claims is good for up to 11 days standby or 7.5h call time in GSM mode, or 14 days standby and 3.5h of call time in 3G mode.

The E71 has a full QWERTY keyboard and as such is a little bit larger at 114x57x10mm (HxWxD), albeit slimmer, but somewhat heavier at 126g. It has a 2.36-inch display with the same 320x240 resolution and it comes with two customizable home screens for business and personal mode. The E71 has a higher capacity battery at 1,500mAh and Nokia claims it's good for up to 17 days of standby or 10.5h of calls in GSM mode and 20 days standby or 4h of calls in 3G mode.

Both handsets will be available sometime in Q3 this year, which starts next month, although no exact date was given. Both models are expected to cost around the €300-350 mark without network subsidies.