Camera Phones Plaza

After E71 has won its well deserved glory, Nokia has decided to launch a cheaper version of it. That is how Nokia E63 appeared. If you wanted an E71, but you thought it was a little too expensive, than read our Nokia E63 review to see that Nokia E63 has almost the same functions, so it is worth buying it.

Both the size and weight are also almost identical to those of E71. However, the materials are not the same. The metal completely disappeared, Nokia making the phone only from plastic. It is true it is a quality plastic.

Nokia E63's dimensions are very similar to those of its older brother Nokia E71. For a smartphone, these dimensions are even enviable. It is 113 mm long, 50 mm wide and only 13 mm thick. Weighing only 126 grams, it is only one gram lighter than the E71. Considering the fact that it is a small phone and has an average weight, it feels very compact and sturdy when you hold it in your hand.

On the front side, above the screen, the phone has the ambient light sensor. They did not put a camera for video calls because they saved money and space. The screen has 2.36 inches, and below the screen, there are the navigation keys and a full QWERTY keyboard. Just like Nokia E71, the keys are placed very well. It even has hot keys for direct access to contacts, calendar and email. As if we all criticized the E71's strange location of the microphone in the front, under the QWERTY keyboard, Nokia has now changed its position. At Nokia E63, the microphone is on the bottom side near the charger plug. On the right side, there usually are the volume keys, but Nokia refused to spend any money for the volume control buttons. If you want to change the volume, you will use the phone's navigation keys. On the left side, however, the slot for the microSD card (up to 8GB) and the microUSB port were left untouched. Both are being protected against dust and other impurities by plastic caps. At the top, we found the audio speaker and a 3.5 mm jack.

But enough with the front side. Now let us talk a little about Nokia E63's back side. I like the fact that Nokia has kept mostly the same line E71 had. The battery cover is no longer made from stainless steel but from a soft plastic, very gentle to touch. Because of this lid, the phone stays good in your hand. There are no chances to drop the phone. Above the battery cover, we have a 2-megapixel camera with a LED flash. The camera even has a mini mirror, which will help a lot if you want to take pictures of yourself. There is however no protection against scratches.

Like all other Nokia smartphone,s Nokia E63 has the Symbian Operating System S60. Nokia E63 is a business class phone, not only by appearance but also by usage. To be useful to business people, it has some dedicated keys that provide quick access to basic features and gives you a speed increase when you navigate through its menus. One of the keys is Home, which brings you to the standby screen with a single click, no matter the menu in which you are. Although simple, this function is very useful when you have many applications running and you want to send them quickly in the background. In the fast keys chapter can be included the direct access to email, calendar and timetable.

Nokia E63 has the same screen like E71's, with a 2.36-inch and a diagonal of 320 x 240 pixel resolution and 16 million colors. The horizontal screen positioning makes all the information easier to read. It has a great screen, which provides a good contrast and vivid colors. Readability is exceptional, as for most TFT devices from Nokia. Even in bright light, the text can be read without problems.

The E series from Nokia, in which Nokia E63 is included, was specially designed for messaging and email in particular. Nokia E63 is great at SMS, MMS and emails. It will handle without problems with any POP3 / IMAP / SMTP and it even knows how to do almost alone the settings for Microsoft Exchange and known email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.

Next in our Nokia E63 review we will take a look at the multimedia functions.

The music player is the standard player used by Nokia. It is quite mature, so it knows how to play many audio formats including MP3, AAC, eAAC + and WMA. When you copy new songs to the memory card, you must refresh the music list to include the new songs too. Nokia E63 can sort songs by artist, album, genre and composer. The player comes with five equalizer presets, but allows the user to modify the presets. Nokia E63 has Bluetooth with A2DP support, a function which allows you to listen to stereo music using wireless headphones.

The camera has only 2 megapixels, but at least has the LED flash. The biggest problem is the lack of lens protection, this means that soon the glass above the camera will scratch. The camera interface is simple to use. The device offers a few photo options. Perhaps the lack of options will not bother you; you do not want to adjust all the parameters for a 2 megapixel camera that still will not make miracles.

The Video Player is the famous Real Player. Because the screen is placed horizontally, the player works only in landscape mode.

The FM radio is good if you get bored of your own music and want to hear something new. It has the possibility to automatically scan and save channels in your area. If you have access to the Internet, the Visual Radio application can download all local stations, and then save them in phone, with name and all. The Radio is the older generation and has no RDS. The lack of RDS did not bother me at all.

Nokia E63 is doing well in the connectivity chapter. For the Internet, you have the Wi-Fi and the 3G technology. It has a good speed for downloads in hotspot areas, but for the network operator it would have been better if the phone would have supported HSDPA.

It is a pleasure to surf the Internet with Nokia E63's web browser. Because the screen is already in landscape mode, the pages fit better and do not give so much horizontal scrolling. Pages load quickly and render well. I liked the good video quality on YouTube. As you already know, the Symbian browser is very good, so I did not felt the need to install another browser, although there are alternatives (Opera Mobile would be the best example).

The Mobile Office applications are not missing either. You can open Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Nokia E63 can read PDFs too, and it has even a ZIP extractor application. It also has other applications, such as units of measurement converter, a calculator, a voice memo application, and the Notes application.

The GPS is missing. It is surprisingly because it is a function, which I consider very useful for a phone. Even if Nokia wanted to make it cheaper, I think everyone would have given a few extra dollars for GPS.

Nokia E63 is one of the most affordable smartphones, with good business functions. The connectivity is excellent, and it sits very well on the application chapter. If you can overlook the lack of GPS and the camera's poor quality and do not want to spend a fortune on a phone like that, then Nokia E63 is for you.