A little over a month ago, Nokia started taking pre-orders for the North American editions of its N79 and N85 smartphones. The former shipped in the U.S. this week, a week after the latter started shipping in this country.

Since the Symbian/S60-run N79 is unlocked, you can use it with any GSM carrier. At $440, it is a little less pricy than the $550 N85.

This edition of the quad-band GSM smartphone sports the necessary 3G bands (850/1900/2100 MHz) to speedily send and receive data with service from most North American GSM carriers. Notably missing for U.S. consumers is lack of support for T-Mobile's unique brand of 3G. AT&T customers have nothing to worry about, however. The same is true of the N85.

The N79 features a traditional compact candy-bar design with its display above its navigation pad and numeric keypad. It measures only 4.3 x 1.9 x 0.6 inches.

Like the N85, the N79 integrates at least 10 pre-loaded N-Gage games and supports Nokia's Ovi group of online services.

There's a 1200 mAH battery, FM transmitter, a 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, and a microSD slot. The bundled microSDHC memory card drops down to 4GB from the 8GB type shipped with the N85 , however.

The smartphone supports Xpress-on SmartCovers to enable users to customize how their N79 looks. Put one of these covers on and the theme of the user interface changes to match it automatically. The N79 ships with a pair of SmartCovers for the front and five for the back.

You can learn more about the N79 here and here for full specs.