At about the same time with the official unveiling of its two new smartphones (N85 and N79), Nokia has also announced the upcoming availability of the N96 Nseries flagship across North America.

The North American N96 (aka N96 NAM) will be on sale in "the fourth quarter of 2008", meaning anywhere between October and December. Nokia did not give an exact release date for the handset, but it did mention its retail price: 895 USD (about 616 Euros).

The difference between the N96 NAM and the European/Asian version of the smartphone consists in the fact that the first has support for the 850 / 1900 HSDPA frequencies, while the other one works on the 900 / 2100 frequencies.

Other than that, the handsets are perfectly the same, offering one of the widest range of features ever packed in a Symbian smartphone: 16GB of internal memory, GPS, Wi-Fi, a 2.8 inch TFT display with 16 million colors and 240 x 320 pixels, a 5 Megapixel Carl Zeiss auto focus camera, TV-out, high-end multimedia capabilities, full HTML browser and so on.

"Since the first Nokia Nseries device came to market in 2005, this range of devices has consistently represented cutting-edge technology combined with an unparalleled user experience," stated Bill Plummer, vice president of Go-to-Market for Nokia Americas. "The Nokia N96 builds upon this tradition to bring mobility to today's most valuable Internet services. With support for movies, music, games, navigation and more right out of the box, the real power of the Nokia N96 is that it provides an open application environment for users to define their own mobile lifestyle."

Most probably, the N96 will be launched in North America together with a major marketing campaign, maybe similar to the one that the N95 8GB came with.

No word yet on when the new Nseries handsets (N85 and N79) will hit the American market, but users should expect them to be available before the year's end.