The E62's gray metal casing is not as snazzy as the Q or the newer BlackBerries, but it has a nice solid feel, unlike, for instance, the plastic-clad BlackBerry 8700g.

I found that the E62 operates well as a phone. It features voice dialing, voice commands for menu shortcuts, a speaker phone and six-way conference calling.

The device has full Bluetooth 2.0 support, meaning you can not only use wireless headphones but also transfer files wirelessly to a desktop or laptop PC. The full Bluetooth support means you also can use it as a modem for compatible PDAs and laptops.

The E62's bright, 2.8-in., 320-by-240-pixel, 16 million-color display is impressive, with sharp text and excellent readability in varying types of lighting conditions. An LED blinks just above the screen to indicate incoming messages.

A block of navigation buttons just below the screen includes: phone call and end, menu, e-mail and two soft keys, as well as a tiny joystick, which makes it easy to scroll and click through menus, documents and Web pages. In the nice touch department, if you press and hold the menu button you can toggle between running applications.