Nokia E63

Sales package:

• Handset
• Battery (BP-4L)
• Charger (AC-5)
• Wired stereo-headset (WH-102)
• User Guide

Design, Size, Controls

The E63’s styling as well as size and weight point at the fact that Nokia have been really struggling to lend it a distinguishable E71-esque feel. It measures up at 113x59x13 mm (against the Nokia E71’s 114x57x10 mm) and weighs 126 grams (which is only one measly gram lighter than the E71). However as far as the tactile experience goes, it doesn’t feel as good as the E71 in the hand largely because of its thicker profile, plus there is a small glitch with the keypad, but more on this later.

Display

The E63 utilizes a 2.36-inch QVGA display (320x240 pixels, 48x36mm), capable of up to 16 million colors. It manages to output a pretty decent picture quality-wise that remains readable in various environments (it doesn’t fade away in the sun at that, all thanks to the mirror underlayer).

Battery

The handset utilizes a 1500 mAh Li-Pol battery (BP-4L), as opposed to the Nokia N82’s 1050 mAh cell. The E63 is rated for 10.5 hours of talk time (GSM) and 20 days of standby. Music time – up to 18 hours.

Memory

The device comes equipped with 111 Mb of RAM, after first launch you will get around 74 Mb of free memory at your disposal, which is enough for running a dozen applications and browsing “heavy” web-pages – the word “slow-down” is definitely not in the E63’s vocabulary.

The user almost has 110 Mb of storage available, where any data can be stored.

The E63 deals with microSD memory cards (hot-swappable), the phone comes packaged with a 2Gb unit. There are no restrictions as far as memory card’s size is concerned – our handset easily identified a 8Gb card.

Performance

Thanks to its beefed up memory and a faster CPU (ARM11 running at 369 Mhz, against the E61i’s ARM9 and its 220 Mhz), the E63’s performance has almost doubled compared to the E61i.

USB, Bluetooth

USB. Using the USB settings you can choose one of the following modes:

• Data Transfer (Mass Storage USB) - memory cards is available, no drivers required, as your OS identifies the handset automatically.
• PC Suite – used for device management via Nokia PC Suite, enables all features of the phone, data backup etc.
• Image Print – no explanation required.

The E63’s data transfer speeds top out at 2 Mb/s.

Bluetooth. The phone comes with Bluetooth v2.0, with support for EDR. The following profiles are supported:

• A2DP
• AVCRP
• BIP-ImagePush
• DUN-GW
• FT-Server
• HandsFree-AG (1.0)
• Headset-AG
• OBEX
• OPP-Client
• OPP-Server
• SIM Access-Server

The top speed you can get with the E63’s Bluetooth connection is around 100 Kb/s. We also tested its A2DP profile in pair with the Sony Ericsson DS970 headset, which worked just fine – we managed our play list, skipped within tracks and adjusted volume seamlessly, however we couldn’t make current track’s title show up on the headset’s display.

Wi-Fi. This handset comes armed with Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 g) support. All security standards are supported, including WEP , WPA , WPA 2, with other advanced settings available. Unlike the NSeries, the E63 doesn’t support Universal PnP (UPnP). Although, it boasts the WiFi Wizard, which can search and tap into available networks in the background mode.

Camera

The E63 comes armed with a no-frills 2 Mpix camera module with a LED flash, yet without autofocus, that can take passable images when shooting in decent light conditions.

Price 200 Euro.