NOKIA E63 REVIEW

Take one look at the Nokia E63 and you'll see that it is another of Nokia's Blackberry clones. Does this budget phone have a chance of stealing some business away from Blackberry?

The Nokia E71 was a real surprise, with Nokia managing to achieve the same excellent balance of practicality and fun that has made Blackberry phones so popular. The Nokia E63 is a slightly scaled-down version of the E71, offering slightly fewer features for a much lower cost. Although at times it does feel a little cheap, with such a small price tag, you still get great value for money.

Look and Feel

The Nokia E63 looks pretty much the same as the E71, and that isn't a bad thing, as they both look great. They have enough little changes from the traditional Blackberry design to make them stand out from the crowd and overall the E63 is a good looking phone.

Once you get it in your hand though, you will find where some of the cost cutting has been made from the E71. Rather than the metal body of the E71, the E63 comes finished in plastic. It does feel a little lightweight and cheap, it does still sit nicely in the hand. It is a little thicker than the E71, but a gram lighter.

The real winner on the E63, like on the E71, is the QWERTY keyboard. Blackberry phones may have popularised this design on business phones, but the Nokia keyboards blow Blackberry's out of the water in terms of ease of use.

The E63's keyboard is is actually a slight improvement on its predecessor's, as it is a couple of millimetres wider, with slightly larger keys.

The original wasn't a pleasure to use, and this one is a even more so, with rounded keys of rubberised plastic offering good purchase and just the right degree of feedback.

Functionality

Central to the Nokia E63's functionality is that big QWERTY keyboard. When you combine such easy typing with the messaging brains which offer auto-correction, predictive typing and all manner of other aids to an already easy experience, you get a mean messaging package.

On top this, email setup is extremely easy. To set up push email account, all you'll need in most cases is your email address and password and it works with most of the major email standards, including Microsoft Exchange, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and others, though not BlackBerry Connect.

The web browser is about as good as it gets outside of sophisticated smartphone browsers. It does exactly what it needs to with a minimum of style but that makes it all the easier to use. Zooming, address bar and keyword search can all be accessed via shortcuts on the numeric keypad and there's a useful option that breaks down web pages into sections for easy navigation.

There are a couple of disappointments in the E63, which can mostly be put down to keeping costs and therefore ultimately price low. The camera is bad, even by cameraphone standards. With only 2 Megpixels, it was never going to be great, but with such little to play with, Nokia have done little to squeeze any extra quality out. In anything other than perfect lighting conditions you will get mild to severe graining, and don't even think of trying to take a video with the E63.

The other major annoyance comes with the lack of bundled extras. The first 'extra' left out of the E63 box is something that wouldn't be considered an extra with most phones and that is a USB data connector. Although it should be fairly easy to order your own, it feels a little too much on the budget side to be leaving this out.

Similarly it is a little disappointing to find that there isn't an SD card bundled with the E63.

Although these are disappointing, there are some other real highlights in the E63.

Like the E71, a nifty feature allows you to toggle between two different phone setups - the so-called Mode Switch. Each of these can be customized with its own theme and homescreen applications for maximizing usability. This way you can have a leisure and business profile and alternate them at the expense of a single click.

There is also a built-in voice recognition system. It is launched by holding the right soft key and works extremely well, being fully speaker-independent and recognizing a very high percentage of user commands.

The 2.36" screen on the Nokia E63 may not the hulking great AMOLED displays you'll find on high-end smartphones, but performance is great, with excellent contrast and vivid image. Sunlight legibility is very good, and actually is better than most other phones I have used.

Verdict

If you accept that this isn't meant to be a high end phone and is instead a budget business phone, then you will be more than happy with it. It delivers excellent value for money and is a real pleasure to use. Though it may not be as feature-packed as some other phones, it delivers everything it can to an extremely high standard. With excellent battery life and call quality, this phone works very well as a business phone and the web browsing and media will keep you busy out of work.

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