Nokia E71x racking up solid reviews

Nokia’s latest smartphone attempt for the U.S. market is having a solid weekend, being featured in an AT&T ad campaign aimed for cable television while also being sold on Amazon for a penny.

The Nokia E71x, available for AT&T, is a world smartphone with a 3.2 megapixel camera, 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, and offers a full QWERTY keyboard.  Nokia said its smartphone is the thinnest available on the market.

AT&T has the phone available for $100 after a mail-in-rebate and a two-year contract agreement.  Amazon’s deal for a penny includes waiving a $36 activation-fee — the deal ends on Monday — though the phone will be available for a single penny, but shoppers will have to pay to activation fee.

More important than the Amazon sale, however, is the idea that Nokia may have finally found the right smartphone to rack up solid sales in the U.S.  The popular European handset maker remains very popular in Europe, but has had an extremely difficult time trying to woo consumers on the other side of the pond.  Although originally discouraged, the company continued to work with consumers and tried numerous phones that also had relatively disappointing sales numbers.

Early reviews of the E71x indicate it’s a solid smartphone from Nokia — I’ve owned several Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry smartphones, but wouldn’t be opposed to switching to a Nokia smartphone if it truly is as good as reviewers indicate.