Nokia seems to be having a field day. The Nokia E73 Mode just went official and just as expected, it's headed to T-Mobile USA. Reading through its spec sheet though, there are plenty of similarities between the E73 and E72.

A staple of the E7x phones is the portrait QWERTY keyboard and surprise, surprise... it's available on the Nokia E73 Mode too. Running the Symbian S60 3rd edition was also to be expected - the capable connectivity too.

The Nokia E73 Mode comes with quad-band GSM and 3G with HSPA (using T-Mobile's frequencies of course). Active noise cancellation ensures a better audio during voice calls and there's video call support too. It also features Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS, but the software side of the connectivity is equally important.

Nokia E73 Mode for T-Mobile. Unfortunately, the car stand isn't a standard accessory

The business-minded Nokia E73 Mode packs support for Microsoft Exchange servers and IBM Lotus Notes Traveler along with support for all popular public email services. There's also high-end stuff like VPN support and UMA (voice calling over Wi-Fi) and also hardware accelerated encryption and remote wipe functionality.

Ovi Maps with free voice-guided navigation and Lonely Planet guides are included as well. The Nokia E73 Mode packs a 5MP camera with LED flash - to photograph your travels. The retail package includes a 4GB microSD card and a carrying pouch. The car stand in the picture isn't a standard accessory though.

The E73 Mode uses the same Li-Po battery as the E72, which has enough juice to last 16 days in 2G and up to 22 days in 3G mode (13 and 6 hours of talk time respectively). The E72 manages to squeeze out some longer standbys but it's still pretty impressive.

The Nokia E73 Mode is expected to become available on June 16th. T-Mobile don't mention a price though.

Anyway, all this sounds good and all, but it's almost exactly the same as the Nokia E72. Here's a head-to-head comparison.