I been away for a while on an assignment and haven't had time to make a post for several weeks but I'm back now with a GREAT entry level messaging centric phone from Nokia to review. WOM World (thanks guys) sent me this great little phone yesterday. I was quite surprised as this is the first time they sent me a phone that had not yet been released.
The E63 is the cheaper "little brother" of the E71, which WOM World sent me over the summer. I was so impressed with the E71 that I bought it. While the E63 is not a phone I'd buy (it does not have an internal GPS or HSDPA), it is a great entry level messaging centric phone. The E63 is made out of plastic but it doesn't feel cheap at all. In fact , it feels really good when you hold it. In addition, as good as the keyboard is on the E71, the E63's is better. There are 2 additional keys on the bottom row of the QWERTY keyboard. While this necessitated a small space bar, it allows the CTRL and CHR keys to each have their own key. This is a very good improvement over the E71, as both of these keys are heavily used. The small space bar has not proved to be a problem at all and includes the interesting feature of a flash light (torch for out friends across the pond) feature that allows you to turn on the camera LEDs by pressing the space bar from the active standby screen.
Aside from the lack of a GPS, HSDPA, a 2MP camera, and being a few mm thicker, the E63 has the same features and functions as the E71. There is a MODES native application that allows you to have a business or personal centric active standby screen, there is a native encryption application and SIP stack for Internet Telephony. Finally, the E63 has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a feature which I suspect the target demographic will greatly appreciate. I suspect that the CPU in the E63 is the same as the CPU in the E71 because the E63 seems to be just as fast and if you've seem my E71 review you'll know that that's very fast.
I just bought a mobile phone for my business partner's daughter (a college student). She wanted an AT&T Tilt, a WiMo 6.1 device. While it went a little against the grain to buy a WiMo device, the $200 price (w/ contract) was the right price for her. I had considered talking her into an E71 (she wanted a phone with a QWERTY keyboard for messaging), but at over $400, it was outside her price range. I expect the price of the E63 to settle out in the $250 to $300 range (after an initial release at a higher price) and at that price it would have been the perfect phone for her, and I suspect many of her peers as well.
Nokia has another winner here and I'm glad to see an entry level device in the E series family. If I were in college or just starting out in the real world, this is exactly the phone I'd want. I suspect that we'll see a lot of interest in the E63 from exactly this demographic, which I suspect is the reason that Nokia developed this phone. By getting young people interested in Nokia, many will become life long customers. A very smart move on Nokia's part.
Posts
