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Just at a time when Research in Motion (RIM), the mobile e-mail market leader, is introducing a most un-BlackBerry-like BlackBerry in the Pearl, Nokia has come out with a new product that bears a striking resemblance to traditional BlackBerries.

The Nokia E62 is a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM/GPRS smartphone, built from the ground up as an e-mail device and running the Symbian operating system. The E62 is available from Cingular in the U.S. and Rogers Wireless in Canada. I tested the product on the Rogers network in Canada.

It's an attractive device with an excellent screen and user interface for e-mail and Web browsing. But while elegantly slim, it has the boxy look and feel of an e-mail device rather than a phone. It's not just the hardware that is BlackBerry-like. The E62 comes with BlackBerry Connect, software that lets the device function as a client on a BlackBerry network alongside and with the same features as RIM units - though only where the carrier offers the service.

Cingular does offer BlackBerry Connect service on this device, Rogers does not. Cingular also offers several other mobile e-mail options, including Good Mobile Messaging, Cingular Xpress Mail, Mail for Exchange (direct push corporate email from Microsoft Exchange) and the Nokia push solution via Intellisync Mobile Suite. (Nokia acquired Intellisync last year). Rogers offers push-style e-mail with its Visto-powered MyMail service. Using one of these services, you can set up the E62 to send and receive mail from existing POP3, IMAP and corporate accounts.

Cingular is offering the E62 for as little as $99 with a mail-in rebate. That's with a two-year voice contract. E-mail service pricing starts at $5 a month and goes up to $45, for BlackBerry Connect Unlimited. The phone on its own costs $350 from Cingular. Rogers' prices range from $350 to $450 CDN depending on the term of the contract (one to three years). Combined voice and e-mail service packages range from $45 to $90 CDN a month.

The E62 in some ways out-BlackBerries the BlackBerry. It's physically more appealing than many traditional BlackBerries, measuring only 4.61 x 2.76 x .63 inches and weighing 5 ounces. The 2.8-inch LCD (320 x 240 pixels, 16 million colors) is also better than many BlackBerry screens. And the carefully thought out user interface works very well.

The E62's full QWERTY keyboard rivals traditional BlackBerries for ease of use - and surpasses the Pearl's cramped SureType keyboard. There are dedicated keys for often-used special characters such as the most common punctuation marks, parentheses and the / and @ used in e-mail and Web addresses. That's a pet peeve I have with many mobile e-mail devices - typing those characters, which you need to do constantly, requires far too much effort. Other frequently-used special characters are available using the Shift key, and still others by pressing and holding the Character key and selecting from an onscreen display.

There are also clearly marked Backspace, Enter and Space keys. The numeric keypad is embedded in the center of the keyboard and set off in a contrasting color. In most applications, you have to press the function key to type numbers, but in numerical applications - such as when dialing a phone number - you enter numbers directly. While the keys are small, I found it easy enough to get the hang of typing BlackBerry-style, using thumbs, while holding the unit cradled on the finger tips of both hands.

Above the keyboard is a miniature joystick for navigating menus, forms and Web pages. You push down on it to select a link or option. It generally works well, but I occasionally found that if I pushed down on an angle, I ended up selecting the wrong item or selecting not only the link I wanted but also the highlighted link on the page to which the first link took me. A button to the left of the joystick launches the main menu or, if that menu is already displayed, a smaller select menu. The button to the right launches the e-mail application or, if you hold it a couple of seconds, the new message form.

Two soft keys - labeled differently on the screen depending on context - flank the joystick and menu and e-mail keys. Below them are the phone answer and hang up keys. On the left edge of the device, you'll find volume up and down keys and a button that launches the E62's voice memo application and starts a recording - or if held, allows you to do voice dialing. Overall, it's a superior interface.

As an e-mail device, the E62 gives the BlackBerry a run for its money - which was clearly Nokia's objective. As noted you can set it up to send and receive e-mail from POP, IMAP and corporate accounts using a variety of different e-mail clients and services.

You can receive and view attachments in most popular formats including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel (Microsoft Office 97, 2000, XP and 2003). It comes with Zip Manager and Adobe Reader software. The unit features an e-mail LED indicator and you can also set it up to vibrate or sound a tone to alert you of new email.

I was only able to test the Visto-based Rogers MyMail service, which allowed me to set up and receive mail from my POP account. Setting up MyMail is simple enough, though it involves a few more steps than setting up a BlackBerry device in similar circumstances.

There was a problem due to recent software upgrades on the Visto backend that prevented messages being delivered to the E62 "reliably or at all," according to a Rogers technical support representative. This appears to be strictly a Rogers/Visto issue, not a hardware issue. It should not effect Cingular users at all, and will likely be resolved for Rogers users by the time you read this.

As a phone, the E62 worked fine on the Rogers network. Connection quality was good. It's not the best sounding mobile phone I've ever used - voices were a bit too thin and tinny. And of course some users will have a problem with its un-phone-like shape. You do feel a little like Maxwell Smart holding a shoe to your ear to talk, although to anyone accustomed to a pre-7100 series BlackBerry, it will seem quite natural.

I'm always surprised when voice dialing works. It works well enough on the E62. You press and hold the voice button and, after the tone, say the name of a contact in your phone book. I have a large phone book, over 3,500 entries, but it found entries with a delay of only a couple of seconds. Sometimes it picks wrong, but if you go to the record and listen to the voice tag (by choosing Options/Play Voice Tag), then mimic the way the text-to-speech engine says the name it should work.

The E62 also has a bunch of other useful and otherwise "advanced" voice features - call waiting, call hold, call divert, call timer, speed dials (eight), automatic and manual network selection, conference calling (up to 6 participants), plus an integrated speakerphone that is quite loud and clear.

I like the advanced caller ID features. If the caller is in your phone book, the E62 will pop up a photo of the person when they call - if you stored a picture of them in their record. I'm not sure of the utility of this, but it's cool. More usefully, the E62 will mix ringing with a text-to-speech announcement of the caller's name if you set the profile accordingly.

While the E62 is by no means a multimedia powerhouse, it does include an MP3 player (MP3 and AAC files only), and it has plenty of storage, with up to 80MB onboard and a slot for an optional miniSD memory card of up to 2GB.

But as with the BlackBerry Pearl, you have to wonder how serious Nokia is about people using this feature. The unit I received did not include a stereo headset, only a monaural telephone headset. And you can't plug a standard stereo headset into the jack because it's too small - it's the micro size used only for mobile phone headsets. Listening to the sample music on the supplied headset reminded me of listening to a cheap transistor radio from the 1950s. (Which of course I've only ever seen in the radio museum.)

Standard Nokia/Symbian organizer - phone book, calendar, to-dos - and desktop synchronization tools round out the roster of included applications.

Bottom line: The E62 is an excellent choice if you're looking for an e-mail device that can double as a phone (as opposed to a phone that can double as an e-mail device) and already know and like the Nokia/Symbian software interface and applications.

Is it a BlackBerry killer? Hardly.