Like its older brother, the E71, the E63 is an excellent messaging phone, but it has been designed for people who need to be connected without the tech trimmings. Just like its older brother, E63 has the same sleek curves, QWERTY keyboard and landscape display.
Still, the stainless steel chassis of the E71 is gone and replaced by soft touch plastics. On the back of the handset Nokia has included a 2-megapixel camera with a self-portrait mirror and an LED flash. Holding down the space key on the keyboard switches the flash on so you can use it as a torch. Under the battery cover Nokia has wisely included a huge 1500mAh battery pack. Nokia estimates the talk time for the E63 to be 11 hours with an astounding 18 days standby time. The E63 doesn’t have a volume rocker on the side of the handset, instead the nav-key changes the speaker volume during calls.
Unlike the E71, the Nokia E63 sports a 3.5mm headphone socket under a rubber plug on the top of the phone. Strangely, this protective plug isn’t attached to the phone so you’ll have to stow it in a pocket while you use headphones.
Its AU$509 price tag should suggest not to expect all the standard smartphone hardware. The E63 is firstly a very capable messenger, it sports 3G connectivity and Wi-Fi, but not HSDPA. Most people should find this sufficient for basic mobile browsing and email delivery, though the E63 isn’t the phone you’ll want to use for mobile broadband sharing with a PC.
So let’s see: WiFi, physical QWERTY, choice of ruby red or aquamarine blue, standard 3.5-mm audio jack, camera with video recording, and the ability to switch from an E-series business mode (corporate email, appointments, intranet) to personal mode (pictures, personal email, and browser shortcuts) with a single key press.
Nokia’s website gives the following details about this smartphone: 113 x 59 x 13-mm / 126g form factor, 320 x 240 pixel display, quad-band GSM / EDGE with 660 minute talk / 432 hours standby, microSD memory slot with 110MB internal memory, 2 megapixel camera capable of QVGA video @ 15fps, and of course, Bluetooth. It’ll also be released in WCDMA 900/2100, 850/1900, and 850/2100 configurations. Web browsing is reasonable, media playback is better, videos look fantastic on the widescreen display and play well after being transcoded in the Nokia PC Suite software during the transfer from a PC.
Therefore, the major difference between the E71 of 2007 and the E63, aside from no HSDPA, is the lack of an internal GPS receiver, and the price tag as a result. So, if you can pass all this bads, Nokia E63 is quite a good mobile phone.