The screen is pretty much identical to the E71's: with dimension of 2.4in and 320 x 240 pixels, and boasting a 16m-colour palette. Nothing wrong with it, in other words, proving itself equally adept at displaying pics and videos, with its landscape resolution lending itself well to web pages.
Messaging as good as any BlackBerry?
Around the sides are micro USB port and Micro SD memory card slot - you can augment the 110MB of on-board memory with up to 8GB but, unlike the E71, there's no card supplied - and a 3.5mm headphone jack, covered by a plastic flap.
That's all. No volume buttons - though you can adjust this by pressing the navpad top or bottom while making a call - and no dedicated button for voice notes. For those, you'll need to go through the menu unless you reassign one of the one-touch keys, which can be set to take you virtually anywhere in the phone's prodigious menu system, regardless of the icons mounted on them. Helpfully, you can assign two destinations for each key too, accessed by either short or long press. Now that's clever.
The messaging facilities are every bit as strong as those offered by a BlackBerry, and the E63 can handle virtually all of the main email standards except Blackberry Connect, which seems like a petty omission, and could have made the Nokia offering that bit stronger. Most email accounts are easy to set up if you know the address and password, and there's a host of useful messaging editors, including one for text messaging that counts down the characters from 160 as you type.
The E71's dual personality is repeated here, allowing you to set different themes for work or play – not essential perhaps, but a nice touch on what is likely to be a work-dominated handset.
The browser is practical rather than flash, with a useful system for breaking down complicated web pages into numbered sections, which takes a bit of getting used to, but certainly helps you to focus on the areas you're interested in. Shortcuts for zooming, full page display, address bar and keyword search can all be accessed using the numeric keypad, and it soon becomes intuitive once you've sussed out which keys do what. You won't find them in the manual.
The decent screen's good for browsing
The internet isn't as fast as it could be, since there's only a standard 3G connection, lacking the higher-speed HSDPA link offered by the E71. That said, there is Wi-Fi for accessing broadband. And speaking of 3G, there's no front-facing camera for video calls, either - that little dot above the screen is actually an ambient light sensor, which adjusts screen brightness according to the light-level around you to save power.
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