After a postponed rollout last December, Nokia's E7 phone will make its debut this week, as the company tries to recover ground lost to Apple and Google in the smartphone market.

The Nokia E7 begins shipping to customers around the world today. The smartphone is similar to its N8 model but has a full slideout keyboard. It is geared towards business users and anyone else for whom keyboard input is a must.

Though the device is nearly as thin as the Nokia N8, it snaps open to reveal a full, QWERTY, four-row keyboard with 42 keys. The phone has a four inches AMOLED touch display (640 x 360 pixels) enhanced with ClearBlack Display technology to give more vibrant colours and eliminate reflections.

The Nokia E7 also comes with an 8-megapixel full-focus camera with dual-LED flash. The camera can also shoot HD Video. There?s also an HDMI adapter and 16GB of on-board flash memory. If that isn?t enough, or you need to share files, you can use the USB-On-The-Go feature to attach USB memory sticks.

The phone provides secure access to email, calendar, contacts and tasks through Microsoft Exchange server. You also get Microsoft Communicator Mobile, for secure corporate instant messaging. For smaller businesses and individuals, naturally it supports other POP/IMAP services like Gmail, Hotmail and thousands of other domain names.

For the technically inclined, the device measures 123.7 x 62.4 x 13.6mm and weighs 176g. The battery is rated for up to five hours talk-time over WCDMA (more over GSM) and 430 hours standby. It offers pentaband communications for international travellers, 3G data rates up to 10.2 Mbps over HSDPA and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi. The device is available in the same colours as the Nokia N8: dark grey, silver-white, blue, green and orange.

The new Symbian device also offers access to Ovi Store for apps and free drive and walk navigation across 80 countries with Ovi Maps.

The price will vary, depending on local taxes and operator subsidies, but will be around €495. The full specifications are available here.