Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Product: Nokia E62 for Cingular
Price: $99.99 (with a 2 year contract and $100 mail in rebate)
Rating: 7.5/10
Pros: Internet functionality, keypad size, bright screen, view/edit Office docs, and Bluetooth.
Cons: Bulky size, no camera, poorly placed miniSD card, and no camera.
Overall: While most corporations will opt for Blackberrys or Palm smartphones, the Nokia E62 is a great option for smaller businesses or individuals who want a QWERTY phone with an internet browser that actually delivers.

As a new Crackberry user, I was confident I had made the right choice and figured my testing of the Nokia E62 (check out our Peep Show) would confirm my decision that Blackberries are numero uno. Well, like the time I thought that a girl in 8th grade would say yes when I asked her out, I couldn’t be more wrong. My favorite thing about this phone is the internet on it (it’s amazing how addicted to the internet we’ve become). It’s a carbon copy of the internet you’ll find on your computer, not some weird columnar adjustment I get on my Blackberry.

Features - 8/10 - While the phone doesn’t offer a camera and I didn’t like the MP3 player in terms of ease of use (that’s fine with me), I’ve never been one for a phone that tries to do other things because they tend not to do those other things well.  The main features I care about are the e-mail functionality and internet use. Also, for those IMing-obsessed people out there, it was simple to start up with your AIM, Yahoo!, as well as MSN Messenger accounts with the clients already installed on the phone.

Performance - 8/10 - The Nokia E62 does its job as a phone. Throughout my trial there were no problems in terms of getting service or a clear connection.  The e-mail setup was not spectacular as I had to refresh manually to get my email sometimes, but the internet, as previously mentioned, was as good as on your home computer. One of the keys to the internet usage on the E62 is the 5-way joystick that makes it much easier to traverse the internet compared to the click wheel so loved by Blackberry users and their carpal tunnel specialists. The rest of the operating system was also flawless, much better than Windows Mobile and arguably better than Palm OS and Blackberry’s OS (though it is rather different than those two).

Style - 7/10 - The phone looks great in your hand, but once you put it in your pocket, it’s an inconvenience. The phone feels very heavy on the leg if you’re putting it in your pocket. Other than that, you can’t complain. If you want to read your emails, you can’t have a small screen, so deal with the size of the device. The screen is very crisp with a 320 x 240 pixel active matrix display with up to 16 million colors. 

The Nokia E62 is the company’s answer to the Blackberry, Q, Treo, Dash...you get the point. The handset features a somewhat cramped Qwerty keypad, large screen, Nokia operating system, contact lists, scheduler, video player, music player, Bluetooth, speakerphone, voice recorder, PIM & Outlook synchronization with PC and email, Blackberry Connect, Mail for Exchange, Xpress Mail, AOL/Yahoo/ICQ instant messaging, EDGE, and of course a HTML browser. Whoa that was a long list. You can get it now for $149.99 after a $50 rebate on Cingular or keep your eyes peeled for our full review coming soon.

See the rest of the pics in this monster peep show…

Read [Nokia] Read [Cingular]

To go along with our written coverage of Pepcom’s Digital Expereince here is a nice peep show of some gadgets that we got to touch with our sticky BBQ figures.

Sprint Sanyo 6600 Katana - This will be Sprint’s Vision handset while the Samsung A900 is the Power Vision slim-phone. It was thin, light, and had a great screen. Thinness for the masses!

Read on for images and our feelings of the Samsung Q1, Nokia 770, E62, Bluetooth headsets, TomTom GO 910, and more.

Samsung Q1 - This was our first hands-on experience with the Q1. Though our time was limited and the devices is feature rich I could tell that given the time, this would be a product that would make my laptop obsolete. While it takes up about as much space as my laptop, it is certainly a bit more portable, offering many of the same features.

Nokia 770 Internet Tablet - This version of the 770 has new software that included Google Talk, integrated Google search, an onscreen thumb keyboard and much more. We are looking forward to spending more time with the unit in a full Gadgetell Review in the coming weeks.

Nokia’s Blackberry killer, more officially known as the E62 was on show as well. It is almost as thin and light as the Motorola Q, but runs a version of their Symbian OS. The keypad was a nice size, which is key. It will be interesting to see how these new non-RIM models fair against each other (Treo, Q, E62). We are also looking forward to a review of this handset.

Here are some Nokia Bluetooth headsets to go with your new slick phones. Specifically the micro-sized BH-800 and its slightly bigger brother.

HP’s laptops - HP took the guns to the gun show by showcasing their entire line of Pavilion notebooks. I particularly liked the nc4400 12.1” ultraportable in addition to the HP Compaq tc4400 Tablet PC.

Belkin TuneStage for iPod nano - This wireless audio player can come in really handy, especially by offering the ability to hookup your nano to those sweat speakers you just bought, and hey why not go wirelessly. We can’t vouch for the audio quality yet or it’s ability to send through multiple walls (within the 30 ft. range), but I expect good things from Belkin.

Last but certainly not least, TomTom was showing off their new GO 910 navigation system. As compared to the GO 300 that we had reviewed, this new model blew it away. The screen is brighter, larger, and the system does much more. The models are not a fair comparison considering that besides the screen this model has Bluetooth, maps of the US, Europe, and Canada, 12 GB of free space, and MP3 player...you get the point, this model is loaded.