Harry Lime
09-06-2003, 11:43 AM
Below is a review I did a while back for the S55 on an internal company forum.
Any tips people could give me on how to improve?
Any thing I missed etc.?
"OK here goes a first try at writing a handset review -
I've been thinking of what kind of format I should use, what I'm going to do is give some general comments on the handset under different headings, if you think I've left anything out let me know and if you disagree with me, tell me why I'm wrong.
Look and feel - The S55 replaces the S45 and has been launched at the same time as the budget C55. The handset is small (85g, 101 x 42 x 18 mm) and fits in the pocket easily, however its very similar previous Siemens and especially to the M50 and C55, both of which are cheaper handsets. This is a bad thing. If I paid €100 more for my handset I want people to know. Yes I know that's really shallow but I think this kind of consideration does play a part for customers.
The S55 is Siemens first colour screen phone (no those old 4 colour ones don't count) and it has 256 colours same as the T68i, of course the T68i was launched in Ireland 8 months ago so it seems Siemens are lagging behind. This is especially true compared to the 4096 of the current Nokias, not to mention the 65,536 the Panasonic GD87 boasts. The screen also seems too dark compared to other handsets I've used.
Usability - The keys are too small/close together especially the bottom row. The send/call and power/end call buttons are squished on to the edge of the phone and not easy to use at all. Siemens have also decided to stay with the D-button rather than go for a joystick like recent SonyEricssons and Nokias, this makes the phone feel cheaper than the T68i for example, more of the T68i later on. The phone has approx. 900k of memory which is an improvement some earlier phones but looks poor compared to the 3.5 - 4 megs of phones like the Nokia 7650 and upcoming 3650 and fills up really quickly. I loaded all the ringtones that came on the accompanying CD-ROM and 2 or 3 java applications and that was enough to fill the phone completely. Read the last sentence again. Yes the ringtones come on a separate CD-ROM and you have to load these on yourself, which is as user friendly as... um... a very un-user friendly thing, analogy's not my strong suit. I also think this could provoke more than one confused call to 1909.
There are also some things missing compared to phones like the T68i, you only get 2 choices for text size both of which are too big (1 or 3 lines of text), this compares badly with the 3 choices the T68i allows (4 to 7 lines of text). This is important to how a phone feels because a small number of visible menu items makes a phone feel confusing, or a least that's what I think.
Special features - The S55 comes with a detachable camera the IQP-500, which works quite well and includes a flash, something a lot of people will like. I've attached 2 very very boring pictures to illustrate the small and large picture sizes. The usability of the camera will be hampered by the small memory, at high quality you'll only get about 12 pictures.
Technical specs - The Siemens site gives the following
Network frequency Triple Band E-GSM, GSM 900 / 1800 /1900 GSM
Stand-by time 2) (with standard battery) up to 12 days
Talk time 2) (with standard battery) up to 360 min
Weight 85 g
Dimensions (L x W x H) 101 x 42 x 18 mm
You can see a full list at http://www.my-siemens.com/MySiemens...52Ftech,FF.html
I found the battery life to be 4 - 5 days with maybe 60 - 90mins of talk time.
Summary - The phone includes the functions you'd expect on a medium range phone, calendar, 7 day alarm, calculator, currency converter etc. and is easy to connect to a laptop using infra-red (a serial cable is also supplied) although all I used this for was adding ringtones etc. to the phone I didn't make a GPRS internet connection or synchronise any PIM info but these are both supported. But the feature list is almost identical to the T68i, which as I've said has been around for 8 months on the Irish market (in fact its soon to be replaced by the T610), if you really like Siemens the phone might appeal and I know some people really like the phone but for me it's too late to the market. Gone are the days of the SL45 which seemed to be ahead of the game."
Any tips people could give me on how to improve?
Any thing I missed etc.?
"OK here goes a first try at writing a handset review -
I've been thinking of what kind of format I should use, what I'm going to do is give some general comments on the handset under different headings, if you think I've left anything out let me know and if you disagree with me, tell me why I'm wrong.
Look and feel - The S55 replaces the S45 and has been launched at the same time as the budget C55. The handset is small (85g, 101 x 42 x 18 mm) and fits in the pocket easily, however its very similar previous Siemens and especially to the M50 and C55, both of which are cheaper handsets. This is a bad thing. If I paid €100 more for my handset I want people to know. Yes I know that's really shallow but I think this kind of consideration does play a part for customers.
The S55 is Siemens first colour screen phone (no those old 4 colour ones don't count) and it has 256 colours same as the T68i, of course the T68i was launched in Ireland 8 months ago so it seems Siemens are lagging behind. This is especially true compared to the 4096 of the current Nokias, not to mention the 65,536 the Panasonic GD87 boasts. The screen also seems too dark compared to other handsets I've used.
Usability - The keys are too small/close together especially the bottom row. The send/call and power/end call buttons are squished on to the edge of the phone and not easy to use at all. Siemens have also decided to stay with the D-button rather than go for a joystick like recent SonyEricssons and Nokias, this makes the phone feel cheaper than the T68i for example, more of the T68i later on. The phone has approx. 900k of memory which is an improvement some earlier phones but looks poor compared to the 3.5 - 4 megs of phones like the Nokia 7650 and upcoming 3650 and fills up really quickly. I loaded all the ringtones that came on the accompanying CD-ROM and 2 or 3 java applications and that was enough to fill the phone completely. Read the last sentence again. Yes the ringtones come on a separate CD-ROM and you have to load these on yourself, which is as user friendly as... um... a very un-user friendly thing, analogy's not my strong suit. I also think this could provoke more than one confused call to 1909.
There are also some things missing compared to phones like the T68i, you only get 2 choices for text size both of which are too big (1 or 3 lines of text), this compares badly with the 3 choices the T68i allows (4 to 7 lines of text). This is important to how a phone feels because a small number of visible menu items makes a phone feel confusing, or a least that's what I think.
Special features - The S55 comes with a detachable camera the IQP-500, which works quite well and includes a flash, something a lot of people will like. I've attached 2 very very boring pictures to illustrate the small and large picture sizes. The usability of the camera will be hampered by the small memory, at high quality you'll only get about 12 pictures.
Technical specs - The Siemens site gives the following
Network frequency Triple Band E-GSM, GSM 900 / 1800 /1900 GSM
Stand-by time 2) (with standard battery) up to 12 days
Talk time 2) (with standard battery) up to 360 min
Weight 85 g
Dimensions (L x W x H) 101 x 42 x 18 mm
You can see a full list at http://www.my-siemens.com/MySiemens...52Ftech,FF.html
I found the battery life to be 4 - 5 days with maybe 60 - 90mins of talk time.
Summary - The phone includes the functions you'd expect on a medium range phone, calendar, 7 day alarm, calculator, currency converter etc. and is easy to connect to a laptop using infra-red (a serial cable is also supplied) although all I used this for was adding ringtones etc. to the phone I didn't make a GPRS internet connection or synchronise any PIM info but these are both supported. But the feature list is almost identical to the T68i, which as I've said has been around for 8 months on the Irish market (in fact its soon to be replaced by the T610), if you really like Siemens the phone might appeal and I know some people really like the phone but for me it's too late to the market. Gone are the days of the SL45 which seemed to be ahead of the game."