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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave Nokia the okay to release the E62 smartphone about three months back. Although the E62 closely resembles the 'BlackBerry Killer' E61, the lack of UMTS cellular-broadband and Wi-Fi wireless technology definitely puts a crimp in any plans for blazing fast downloads or Web surfing.

While the E61 is still MIA for the American market, it looks like the E62 will ship here shortly, if the blog Engadget is correct. It said Cingular's business unit should soon deliver this variation on Nokia's QWERTY thumb-keyboard communicator for an as-of-yet unnamed price.

That Symbian 9.1/S60 3.0, quad-band (850/900/1800/1900) GSM/GPRS/EDGE device also has a four-way joystick, 235 MHz processor, wide 320 x 240-pixel resolution & 16 million color screen, 160 MB of flash memory, 32 MB of RAM, Bluetooth, miniSD slot and USB connectivity. It weighs around 5.1 ounces (144 grams) and measure about 4.6 x 2.7 x 0.55 inches (117 x 69.7 x 14 millimeters).

The QWERTY thumb-keyboard appears to be slightly different than the E61's, adding a My Own button; a user-configurable shortcut key found in Series 80 smartphones like the Nokia 9500 and 9300. There's also no Pop-Port.


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Found in many higher-end Nokia phones, a Pop-Port is a non-standard interface that incorporates several functions. Rather, the E62 (see top picture from Engadget) offers both a mini USB port and 2.5 millimeter headset jack, which makes more sense for a device like this; one that appears headed more toward mass market consumption, unlike the enterprise-centric E61.

Wireless E-mail options like Microsoft Direct Push, RIM's BlackBerry Connect (just enabled on the E61), and Cingular's XpressMail are in the offing as well.

For more information, see the user manual on the FCC Web site.