Small, light and packed with features! (Siemens C35i)

Member Name: Patterson

Product:	Siemens C35i
Date:	06/05/01 (160 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small., Light., Many featutres.

Disadvantages: No voice dialing., You can still dial emergency services with keypad lock on (this may be a good thing)., Backlight makes battery power go down faster.

I brought the Siemens C35i as a replacement for a Philips C14 Savvy Vogue (the Philips was a replacement for a Nokia 3210, which never worked properly). I wanted a phone with WAP (the internet on a mobile phone, which is actually nothing like the internet you get on a computer, it's mainly text-based and has few pictures and graphics).

The C35i weighs just 116 grams, it is ment to have a talktime of up to 300 minutes, and standby time of 180 hours, but be warned, when you have the backlight on, the battery goes down quickly. You are ment to be able to send fax and data off the telephone, but I have not tried it out yet.

I decieded to get the C35i on the Virgin Mobile 'virtual' network, as it's service provider One2One has the best coverage in my area, and I think that the C35i is a more attractive cover than that on other networks. Some people may not like the C35i on the Virgin and Orange networks as it has the networks logo.

The buttons (which are rubber) are not too big, and not too small the antenna is flat which I think is better than the standard antenna you would get on most mobile telephones.

When you start the phone up, a text message appears on the screen ('Siemens C35i') this can be changed. In case you were wondering, the i in C35i stands for internet (I think that there is a non-internet version that is not avalible in the United Kingdom). When you turn the phone off, for an unknown reason, there is a graphic of a lighthouse, again this can be changed to two other things; a Siemens Information and Communications logo, and a Dog.

The display is different to many other phones which I have used, the signal strengh and battery power symbols are very differnt compared to other phones, and I think that it is better. The date and a clcok is shown in small text below the network name, which you can change the size of. One of my friends thinks the display looks 'cluttered' but I think
that he is just used to looking at another phone's display.

There are two 'softkeys' which you mainly use to find your way around the phone's features, I think that these are very useful, you can set at least one of them to do what you want for instance to take you straight to the games, which are Wayout, (a maze) Reversi, (something that I have not got a clue how to use) Quattopoli, (which is like the connect four game) and Minesweeper, a game similar to that found on computers runnning microsoft operating systems. The games are OK, but I do prefer snake on Nokia phones, but anyway you don't buy a phone for games! You buy it to make calls! (Well, that's what I think anyway).

The internet is simple and easy to use, although it took me a while to get to sites other than my network's. You can store favorite sites so that you have quick access to them (good if it costs about 15 pence per minute to go on the internet, you don't have to spend ages looking for the page that you want to go on).

In the office and fun section, there is an appointments feature where you can program appointments and set an alarm to remind you of them. A caluculator, a currency converter (where you have to set the exchange rates though) the games, and a Chronometer, where you can use a stopwatch and set your phone to countdown. In many menus, there are 'usage hints' where it gives you hints on how to use the phone.

In the messages section, you can send fax, data e-mail telex and X400 (I am not sure what the last two are). You can also set vadility periods (which are how long the message will be availible on the other person's phone for). You can also access cell broadcasts which are things like football news (I think), but I am not too sure.

In the records section, you can access;
Calls missed,
Calls received,
Calls dialled
and Alarms missed.

In the profiles section, you can set t
he volume settings, they are;
Normal,
Quiet Enviroment,
Noisy Enviroment
and you can set your own, for instance I set 'silent'.

In the audio section you can set ringtones which are OK, but will not appeal to everyone, apparently, they are composed by top Disc Jockeys. You can also change the message tones to all of the twenty ring tones and the key tone to a click or a bleep. You can compose your own ringtones (but I don't think that you can have them sent to the phone, and I am not sure if you can have sharp and flat notes).

You can find out call times, and charges in the time/charge section, and set call diverts in the divert section (you may not be able to do this on pay-as-you go though).

In the setup section, you can setup things like the screen contrast backlight on/off and the text size.

The Siemens C35i has a good signal strength, excellent display, it's easy to use, light and small (not too small), but for a telephone of this price, I think that it should have voice activated dialling. I am not too keen on the keypad lock as you can still accidently dial the emergency services.
All-in-all I think that the Siemens C35i is an excellent mobile telephone, and would reccomend it to anyone, especially a social user.

*UPDATE*
I forgot to mention that you can store one-hundered numbers in the phone's phone-book, not just in the network's SIM card. (A SIM card is a computer chip that stores Phone Book entries and network information). There is also a VIP (Very Important Person) phonebook for important entries.

A useful feature the phone has is Battery Care, it is ment to re-generate the telephones battery to improve standby and talk-time.

If I think that I should have mentioned anything else, I will try to update this opinion again.

Summary: