Siemens C45 - Getting on a Bit, but Still Going Strong. (Siemens C45)

Member Name: derek-a

Product:	Siemens C45
Date:	07/08/05 (537 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Simple, easy-to-use if all you want is a good functional phone

Disadvantages: Old technology now.

The Siemens C45 is getting a bit long in the tooth as far as mobile phone technology is concerned, but seeing that my wife and I have had over 3 years of trouble free service out of two C45s, I thought I would do a review. In my opinion Siemens are to be congratulated on this phone.

Before I got the C45, I had one of the early pay-as-you-go vodaphones from Tesco - remember those? Anyway, one day I was getting into the car and didn't notice that I'd dropped my phone on the road and reversed over it. It still worked OK but the slot to plug the charger in was completely smashed. So a new phone it had to be and off I went to the Vodaphone shop.

Because I was not a heavy user, I would stay with pay-as-you-go and this little neat little C45 measuring 12 X 5cms caught my eye for £75 and with a little bit of bartering (I always barter) they threw in a leather case as part of the deal. I simply whipped my sim card into it so I could keep my old number. I did this because it is a very easy number to remember - something you don't come across very often with mobile phones.

Well all I can say is that this phone has been (and still is) absolutely great. A year after buying it, I dropped it into a mug of tea. I dried it out with a hair dryer and it continued to work fine. I was so impressed that I went on to ebay and got an identical second-hand model for £40 that my wife now uses. They are probably even cheaper than that now.

One thing that I do enjoy using on this phone is the SMS text messaging. I didn't have that facility on the previous Tesco phone or the "brick" I used to carry around before that. Remember analogue phones? The only complaint I have with the texting is that the keys are small and I need reading glasses to see them. But hey? Small phone, small keys - it would look a bit daft with big ones!

There are two menu buttons at the top that are actually rocker-switches. The left one if pressed on the left will take you straight into the “start new text message”, if pressed on the right will take you into “missed calls” while the right one will take you to your full menu. And for a phone of this age it is quite a comprehensive menu. Each time you press the red button with a phone picture on it, it will take you one step back through your selection with the last selection that switches the phone off. It is also used to end a call.

There is a large green button in the middle which is pressed to make a call after you have entered the recipients number. Also if you press this key as soon as the phone is switched on, it will bring up the last 10 numbers you have dialled.

Press any key when the phone is ringing to answer.

The Main Menu:
First of all there's the help function (folder) - this tells you how to use all the phone's facilities. That is good if you lose or do not have an instruction manual. Then you have the messages folder - in here is stored all your incoming messages and outgoing messages (or you can store previously composed messages). Then there's the voice mail (I've never used this), Internet surfing (a tad expensive on pay-as-you-go) so I don't use this either. Then you have records of calls received, calls sent, missed calls, calls dialled, and something else I never use, is the conference calls facility - where a group of people can be talking on line at the same time with you acting as co-ordinator.

Other things this phone has is an alarm clock, diary to keep important dates in and games. I looked at the games once, but I'm not a fan anyway. But I should imagine they would be good if you are waiting in a waiting room somewhere and there is no reading material.

On this phone you have a choice of a few ring tones. Again this is something that doesn't particularly interest me, except for the fact that I have set mine different to my wife's phone so we know which one is ringing - I have a Mozart piece of music. The phone also vibrates, so if you're somewhere noisy and you have it in a pocket, you can feel it when you have a call.

On the view screen you can also see the number of the person calling and if you have them in your "phone book", their name comes up also.

There is a divert facility, that means you can divert callers to another phone - but there again, that is something that I have not used, because I tend to switch it off when I'm at home anyway.

An optional hands-free kit can be fitted to this phone, but I was not impressed with the quality of the sound, a lot of crackling making it difficult to understand what the caller is saying. But I was in the car at the time. Now in the car, hands-free or not, the phone is switched off unless someone is with me to answer it. This is because if someone is calling me, I nearly always need to consult my diary - not easy when you're driving!

You can enter a lock code (pin number) for the phone via the menu. I did not need to use this though as it was already set up on my sim card.

To summarise… For it's age, this phone still looks like a modern piece of kit. It's very small and comfortable to use, you can get different coloured faces for it and I'm sure that there is a lot of other accessories you can get for this phone from ebay. I won a spare battery for a fiver. And yeh, there's a screen-saver. I've got mine set as the clock that tells me what time it is… The battery standby is excellent. I've actually left it turned on once for two days running and the battery was still a quarter full. The “official” standby figures are 60 – 200 hours and talk-time 100 – 300 minutes that is more than adequate. I have also purchased a car-charging cord which I am sure is still available from eBay for a pound or two.


Thanks for reading

Summary: And easy-to-use fit-in-the-pocket phone. What else would I need?

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