Nokia just released an interesting smartphone line. The Lumia 800 and Lumina 710 were announced today, and both phones demonstrate Nokia’s attempt at getting back into the smartphone game with the Windows Phone 7 OS.

Focusing on the flagship Lumina 800 handset, Nokia is making some very interesting choices to distinguish itself from the likes of Apple and the iPhone. It’s nice to see some attractive handsets out there that may end up offering the iPhone some competition…

The Lumina 800 sports a 1.4GHz Snapdragon Qualcomm processor, gorgeous 3.7-inch AMOLED display, 8-megapixel camera, 16 GB of storage, and the Windows Phone 7 ‘Mango’ OS. The Lumina 710 is a cheaper version with toned-down specs, like 8 GB of storage and a 5-megapixel camera.

Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive serve as replacements for Microsoft’s default Bing services in the Windows Phone OS, and they seem to work pretty well. Multiple sites have been praising the Lumina today, and it looks like Nokia definitely has something compelling.

Nokia’s handsets have always been known for their superb build quality, and the Symbian OS has been the major negative for customers as of late. Now that Nokia is adopting the more relevant Windows Phone OS, the handset maker may stand a chance.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft still doesn’t have half of the app developer support that Apple wields with the App Store, so handsets like the Lumina series will be fighting an uphill battle until there are more apps available on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

As is usually the case with Nokia, potential US customers are left in the cold for the time being. The Lumina 800 and 710 will be available in many European countries and Asia in the coming months, but the company is currently unclear as to when the Lumina will be available in the US.

Images and video via This is my next