Right, Nokia seems to be doing a boatload of firmware updates this week. The N97, E71, E66, E51 and what not. Tried my luck yesterday, and sure enough, the Nokia E63 had an updated v200.21.012 posted. Duly upgraded, here is what I’ve observed, yet.

Looks like quite a bit of Ovi integration is happening, with Ovi Contacts being added to the already present FIles on Ovi. Ovi contacts is now integrated within the contacts application, and there are a few new widgets for Facebook, MySpace and Youtube. There seem to be a few updates to the themes, with ‘Black Personal’, “Black Business’, ‘White Personal’ and ‘White Business’ being added.

Keep in mind that the E63 does not support user data preservation, so please backup your phone before updating.

I traded in my Nokia N82 and E50 combo for a Nokia E63, as I mentioned earlier. Been using the device for about a month now, and the experience has been good, though there are a few minor gripes, which I’ll address in this post.

I’d originally set my eyes on the Nokia E71 Black, which was due to be launched last week on February. However, when I compared this with the Nokia E63, the feature set offered by the E71 did not look too appealing. Consider this, for about Rs. 5000 more, what I got on the E71 was: -

1. A steel body, which looked sleeker than the plastic body of the E63.
2. A slightly thinner phone, just slightly.
3. A 3.2MP camera with AF, as opposed to a plain vanilla 2MP, which was never really a point of consideration.
4. A GPS receiver, the navigation for which I would have to pay for, anyway.

I simply could not convince myself that I needed the above, since I prefer usable features more than looks, and hence, the decision to go with the Nokia E63.

This phone in most ways, and as mentioned by about a million mobile phone blogs before me, is the younger sibling of the E71. The ONE standout feature that has appealed to me most is the 1500mAH battery like the E71, that gives insanely long battery life. I’m online on Mobile Internet, with my phone on GPRS almost throughout the day, but the phone still manages to squeeze about a couple of days of battery life. If I’m listening to music via stereo bluetooth, I can expect the battery to last me around a day and a half, which is good by any standards.

The 3.5mm audio jack in my opinion is where Nokia faulted on the E71, and where the E63 wins. Since the E71 comes equipped with a  2.5mm jack, you’ll need to spend a little bit more to get the audio adapter that would let you connect a normal pair of headphones. The 3.5mm jack was an important consideration for me, since  I hook up the phone to the aux-in on my car, as a hands-free, so the E71 would not have helped me there. As with the E71, the landscaped 320X240 screen provides a pretty good browsing experience.

On the software side there is little to write against. Two home screens let you have  two different perspectives, one at work and one at leisure, that independently let you define themes, enabled applications, and standby icons.

As with any Nokia Symbian phone, the software installation possibilities are virtually unlimited. I currently have Mail for Exchange for getting my work emails, IMAP for Gmail, Google Maps, Nokia Maps, Fring, Twibble, Facebook and a couple of other applications which I’ve installed.

The only issues with this phone are that the software freezes sometimes, and the phone restarts, though that has happened only once in the past month, and should be fixed in the next firmware update. Another issue is that the music skips if an email notification is received when a song is playing. This again, should be fixed. The other major gripe, which unfortunately cannot be fixed, is the somewhat silly protective cap provided for the 3.5mm jack. There is simply NO way one cannot lose that cap. If I really have to be snobbish, I could say there is no dedicated volume control key on the device, but I really don’t find that a major let down.

Apart from this, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the E63. If you’re on a tight budget, need a QWERTY phone, and really are not interested in a camera, look no further than this.

WOM World has been kind enough to let me test the new and upcoming Nokia E75 for a couple of weeks, so I’ll be reviewing the E63 in much more detail, with pictures and all,  juxtaposing it against the E75 and to a lesser extent against the N82, in the following week. Stay tuned.

A discussion we were having on Technomaly, fuelled this.

With reference to last week’s post, I got a good deal on the N82 + E50 combo, which I duly traded in for a Nokia E63. Insane battery life, enough business features for my purposes. (This is no way reflects a fluttering state of mind and an insatiable thirst for new gadgets).

Besides, I figured that having the N82 was a BIG stumbling block in me getting a Digital Camera with Optical zoom. Now that I got rid of the N82, I bought myself a Olympus FE20 8MP point and shoot, which should suffice for the kind of photography I do.

Convergence is there, and I’ve happily enjoyed it until now but the limitations seem to be too much for me to sacrifice. The downside was the lack of an optical zoom on the N82.

I’ll do an E63 review later, when I find the time, I guess.