Nokia announced Monday the next generation of its E Series line of smartphones.

The E75 was outed a few days before the Mobile World Congress by the retailer Expansys. The device is a stylish smartphone that can keep a mobile worker connected. The handset will be the first to ship with Nokia Messaging, a service which lets users get e-mails from Web-based providers like Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail. Thanks to deals with IBM and Microsoft, the E75 can receive corporate e-mail on the go from a majority of businesses.

The handset is powered by Symbian S60, and it has a 2.4-inch screen with a numeric keypad on the face. For messaging, there's a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out horizontally. This keyboard does add a little bulk, but the E75 is only 0.56 inches thick. The connectivity options include integrated Wi-Fi, EDGE, and HSDPA 3G that's capable of 3.6 Mbps downlink speed.

The E75 will have built-in GPS that can be combined with cellular data for assisted GPS like location-based searches. There's also multimedia capabilities, a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash, and Bluetooth version 2.0.

The Nokia E55 packs many of the same features as the E75, but it ditches the slide-out keyboard for a 20-key pad on the face. This enables Nokia to make a slim phone, and at 0.38 inches, the E55 is one of the slimmest smartphones in the world. The E55 will have the same connectivity options as the E75, and it will come with 2 GB of memory that can be expanded up to 16 GB via a MicroSD slot.

The E75 is expected to be available in March, and the E55 will be available in the second quarter. Nokia didn't give pricing details.

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