Until just very recently, the terms "smartphone" and "fashion" seemed doomed to travel very different paths, never to intersect -- not in a product consumers could actually get their hands on, at least. As carriers and customers demand that their mobile companions become ever more featureful, though, the line separating high-end dumbphones and full-out smartphones bends, then bends some more, then finally breaks, leaving a clear-cut market for ultra-stylish open platform devices in its wake. There will always be buyers ready and waiting for handsets like the RAZR 2 and the Shine, but when Joe and Jane Businessperson are looking to open Word documents by day and get noticed in the bar by night, something's gotta give.

We've all seen those kid-friendly plastic stickers that the younger set tends to slap on their handsets in order to amp their ego, but Nokia's taking the decoration idea pretty seriously. Apparently, the firm is working with Finnish artist Björn Weckström to actually offer a "customized, limited edition Nokia N76" that will only be for sale at the Helsinki Nokia Flagship store. Additionally, there will be other pieces available to jazz up your already purchased Nokia mobile, but there's no word just yet on what exactly you can expect it to look like. We'd say the best jewelry is just an entirely new handset, eh?

For a company that tends to concentrate on candybars and the occasional slider for its smartphone stable, a double shot of S60 flips in the American market is pretty much a bumper crop -- and that's exactly what Nokia's delivering, officially announcing its own availability of the N75 and the N76 today. Notice we say "its own" availability; the N75 has been livin' it up in AT&T's lineup for a few weeks now but it's been nigh impossible to get one contract-free from the carrier, so Nokia's direct sale is a welcome one for folks that just want to buy one outright. Side by side, the N76 solidly whips its stablemate in the looks department, but bear in mind one critical fact: US-usable 3G data lurks underneath the N75's hood. Pick up the N75 for $429.99 and the N76 for $499.99 starting today from Nokia (including the flagship stores in New York and Chicago) and its distributors.

The N76 represents the pinnacle of style as far as the S60 camp goes, and though MobileBurn's review of a production unit is tinged with a few sour points, it's done little to curb our enthusiasm. The phone's strong suits are pretty much what we expected: it's crazy thin (again, by S60 standards, not Samsung's), its S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 firmware is a solid smartphone contender with a web browser improved over its predecessor's already-fantastic version, the primary display is gorgeous and readable in direct sunlight, and the 3.5mm headphone jack is a welcome addition. On the downside, though, MobileBurn found that the jack suffered from hiss (unlike our experience with the N95), the camera wasn't great thanks to a lack of autofocus or manual focus ring, and there were some design and manufacturing issues that left the reviewer less than thrilled with the phone's physical appearance. At the end of the day, though, it's a super-thin flip smartphone -- and in that unusually narrow market segment, beggars can't be choosers.

When we say "key markets," we naturally mean that the US is left squarely out of the equation (can't you almost feel the bitterness in our voice here?). Alas, folks in parts of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East can now get their hands on the slimmest -- and arguably most attractive -- device in Nokia's multimedia-centric Nseries range, the N76. Furthermore, buyers in a handful of European countries will be given a voucher to download five "pre-selected" tracks by the band Travis from MSN's music store; according to the VP of Brand Entertainment for Sony BMG Europe, Travis' "target audience" fits well with Nokia N76 buyers (who knew?), so the promotion should work out swimmingly. Prices are set by Nokia's regional distributors, but we'd expect interested folk to pay somewhere in $500 range for the privilege of owning the slimmest Nokia flip on the block.

[Via MobileBurn]

"Nokia" and "thin" aren't terms that we generally find ourselves assembling into a single sentence, but the freshly-introduced N76 changes all that in a big way. We had a chance to run our hands over a couple N76es at CES -- one red, one black -- and the smart money says future owners are not going to be disappointed. After the initial shock of handling an Nseries device this svelte, we were really digging what Nokia put together here. Sadly, the lack of American 3G bands leaves the phone dead in our eyes, but we enjoyed our brief interlude nonetheless. Follow the link for more pictures!

Nokia has taken its Nseries line of smartphones in a decidedly more fashionable direction than it's used to going, announcing the 13.7 millimeter thick N76 clamshell this week. Specs aren't quite up to snuff with Nokia's latest and greatest, but hey, they're not bad either: QVGA display, 20MB of internal memory, and 2 megapixel cam, topped with a standard 3.5 millimeter audio jack (which may not be internal to the phone itself, but rather provided via dongle -- we need to investigate this one) and UMTS data for 2100MHz-friendly portions of the globe. As we've seen with other Nokia models, a second variant of the N76 will be made available for us broadband data-hating Americans that simply removes the UMTS support while retaining quadband GSM with EDGE. Look for the N76 to find its way into fashion-conscious hands starting later this quarter for around €390 ($510, give or take).