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Canada's Rogers Wireless today became the first North American mobile operator to deliver Nokia's new E62 smartphone to customers. The Canadian carrier beat out Cingular Wireless, who is expected to start delivering the BlackBerry/Q/Treo competitor in the U.S. later this month.

The E62 falls into what is known generally as communicator territory, meaning it is a compact smartphone designed for one-handed use with a QWERTY thumb-keyboard. Rogers is pricing the device at $250 (Canadian) with a three-year service contract. Data plans start at about $45.

Reportedly, when Cingular eventually drops the E62, it may go for even less - as little as $99 with service - than Motorola's Q, which is being offered for $199 by Verizon right now.

Although the E62 supports a number of different wireless e-mail options, including Nokia Intellisync, Good's GoodLink, DataViz's RoadSync for Microsoft Exchange and RIM's BlackBerry Connect service, Roger's is only going to deliver one over-the-air push option, MyMail (powered by Visto), out-of-the-box. Cingular's XpressMail service is Visto-run as well.

Nonetheless, "As the first carrier in North America to offer the E62," said Rogers senior VP John Boynton, "Rogers business customers will be able to save time by having access to the latest in mobile innovation and e-mail connectivity."

The E62, which is targeted at consumers and business, also offers a built-in MP3 player, video player and gallery to view images, plus game applications. Something that won't appeal to the general public is the lack of a camera, however.

For the past few months, Nokia has been shipping a sister smartphone to the E62, the E61, in Europe and Asia. The only real 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 the same Symbian 9.1, S60 3rd Edition and quad-band (850/900/1800/1900) GSM/GPRS smartphone. It 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.

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

Although Nokia is both the largest mobile phone, shipping 78 million handsets last quarter alone, and smartphone company in the world, it has had trouble breaking into the North American market; where RIM's BlackBerry devices now command upwards of a 40 percent share, Palm's Treos continue to do well - in spite of recent trouble - and Windows Mobile-based devices from the likes of Motorola (with the Q) and others - mostly built by OEM HTC - are growing in popularity.

The E62 is seen by many as Finnish phone giant’s chance to finally stake its claim here.