Siemens Stains (Siemens C25)

Member Name: Diaz

Product:	Siemens C25
Date:	21/06/01 (831 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small, light

Disadvantages: plasticcy, not intuitive

My Savvy died on me beep beep it went and waved goodbye with it’s little pixilated hand, it’s enough to bring a tear to my eye…. Actually the charger was broken and the nice lady at the mobile phone shop is fixing for me right now, woe betide them if they don’t get it right, I’ll be writing a stiff review and then they’ll be sorry, Consumer Power!!! (Actually since they took the phone and since I wrote this first paragraph I got a phone call, it seems there is a problem with the repair, I can already feel my bile rising…..)

So to prove just how nice the lady was she gave me a Siemens C25 to love in the place of my Savvy, I wasn’t actually too impressed to be honest, it looked boxy and a bit plastic, not as nice as my blue Savvy. But it was very light and to be honest its not actually a bad phone. So here is what it does

· It has dual band operation which apparently means the phone can operate in foriegn countries using the back up frequency, the operating frequencies are 900 MHz and 1800 MHz.

· Dimensions: (L x W x H) 117 x 47 x 27 mm

· Weight: 135 g including battery

· Standby time is claimed to give up to 160 hours, in reality I’d say this is much shorter

· Again the same story, it claims a talk time of up to 300 min, this is in fact much shorter. I’d say though that I am using a shop model so the battery could be a bit dodgy the battery is a standard Battery: 700 mAh / NiMH

· Display comprises a three line illuminated display; a menu bar (rocker switch) allows you to navigate the menu. With time this becomes a pretty simple task but it is nowhere near as intuitive as the Savvy, still the Savvy was aimed at a teen market so it had to be simple.

· The Phone Book holds up to 250 entries (dependent on SIM-card) + 8 VIP entries in unit, the VIP numbers allow you to speed dial. In practice they get in the way of using the addres
s book

<br>· The C25 boasts 20 ringer tones with one self-composable ringer tone, the different tones can be assigned to the VIP numbers. Handy for when you want to ignore the office but are just too lazy to pick up the phone.

· Texting with up to 160 characters, pretty straightforward, the keypad has quite a nice feel to it but you do need to sharpen the end of fingers to make them fit the keys. I never thought I had sausages for fingers (I have artists hands dontcha know) but it can be quite tricky to use the pad.

· The key has a key lock, which is something the Savvy doesn’t have (actually my Savvy does have this it just took me six months to find it.....DOH!). This although its simple and I suspect very commonplace is dead useful. The number of times I’ve accidentally phoned somebody and wasted my card I can’t begin to count. A simple feature like this makes it very easy to avoid such accidents, it also means you don’t have to worry about a carry case unless you want to protect the phone, personally I couldn’t give a monkeys about the C25 I have because it’s going back to the shop.

So in conclusion is it a good phone?? Yes I suppose it is, it looks a bit dull and plasticcy but it is functional and relatively easy to use. It doesn’t have too many add-ons but at the end of the day if you want to play games you should be using a gameboy not your mobile. I still prefer my Savvy though.

Currently available through Carphone Warehouse on the following Tariffs:
Vodafone: Contract @ £4.99 + connection
Vodafone: Pre-Pay @ £79.99 (inc. £10 credit)
One2One: Contract @ £14.99 + connection
Orange: Pre-Pay @ 79.99 (inc. £5 credit)

As for the title of the op It came from a comment someone made, apparently if you ring Siemens headquarters in Staines they really do answer the phone with "Siemens Staines" try it on 01784 461616. It's the small t
hings in life that amuse me.......

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