Firmware bugs with the Siemens C65 (Siemens C65)

Member Name: tomshanks

Product:	Siemens C65
Date:	27/06/05 (4043 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small and light, Excellent audio features, Good reception

Disadvantages: Battery life only average, Standard firmware full of bugs, Camera is only CIF resolution

It seems that these days mobile phones are becoming more and more complicated. Rather like computers, in fact. My first phone in 2001 was a Sagem MC920. It had a monochrome screen, no predictive text messaging, no games, no Internet and the internal memory was 100 spaces for storing phone numbers and nothing else. My most recent acquisition has Bluetooth, a built-in video camera, a large colour screen, fast mobile Internet, games which put the BBC Master my mother bought in 1987 to shame, and about three types of messaging. With these improvements, however, come their own problems.

Just as my mother’s old BBC Master was a very simple machine which never went wrong, and my current computer, a Pentium IV 2.4 GHz, is far more complicated, but has has numerous problems, so I have experienced more problems the more advanced my mobile phones have become. The time that I was most aware of this was with the Siemens C65 I acquired at the end of October last year. It was £80 brand new from the Orange shop, although I have since seen it for £30 online, which is far better value (and close to what I got for it when I sold it on Ebay at the beginning of March). Some say that Siemens spend too long in the development stage for their mobile phones, and thus when they come out they are behind the competition, but this does not appear to have been the case with their 65-series of mobile phones. I would have liked to go straight to the top of the range with the S65, with its built-in 1.3 Megapixel Camera and Bluetooth technology, but I could not afford it at the time, so it was the entry-level C65 which I managed to buy. After a couple of days, I noticed problems, similar to those I have since noticed in my current CX65.

The phone would inadvertently turn itself in the middle of typing a text message, which was most frustrating. It would also turn off sometimes after just having sent a message, but most irritatingly of all, it would freeze in the middle of a call, necessitating the removal of the battery and sometimes getting a nasty blast of white noise in my ear at the same time. This was a fairly severe bug, and it actually made me sell the phone because I could no longer cope with the patchy reliability. I was disgusted to find out that my new Siemens CX65 was only marginally more reliable. However, this time I actually bothered to install the updated version of the firmware properly, available for free download on the Siemens website with an official serial cable (which I fortunately had), and the CX65 has been fine ever since. So much for product testing! Just like Windows 98 Second Edition fixed a lot of the problems which had plagued the original version of the operating system, so the new firmware version fixed about 95% of the problems which I had experienced with the C65 and CX65. This was nice to know that a relatively simple fix could cure what is underneath not a bad phone, but it would have been better not to have to go through the experience in the first place. Firmware problems aside, then, what does the C65 have to offer?

First and foremost, the C65 is one of the cheapest of the proper phones with a built-in camera. The previous MC60 was a very poor excuse for a camera phone with a 101x80 pixel screen, displaying only 4096 colours, which would not have passed muster as the clock in my eight year old Mazda 323F, let alone display photographs with any decent degree of quality. Not so with the updated model. The C65 actually has a better display than the much more expensive Nokia 6230, at 130x130 pixels, and showing a perfectly acceptable 65,000 colours. This is by no means even comparable to the display on the CX65, which is at 176x132 and much larger, but in comparison with competition like the Nokia 6610i (128x128 pixels and only 4096 colours) and Samsung X600 (128x128 pixels again, but 65,000 colours), the Siemens wins hands down. The photographs are actually pretty poor by even cameraphone standards, using only a CIF (352x288 resolution) camera, which seems to give everything a bluish tint, and is barely acceptable on the phone’s screen, let alone on a computer monitor. Serious photographers need to look elsewhere: this phone is only suitable for taking photographs to use in the photo phonebook and such like. Fortunately, the audio quality is a lot better.

Capable of playing MIDI, AMR and WAV format files to a highly acceptable standard, this is the first Siemens phone I have come across which has loud enough volume to be heard every time one gets a phone call or text message. Unlike some of the other phones I have had, the vibration alert is also adequately powerful, and due to the excellent build quality, does not threaten to smash the phone to pieces with every call like some models I could mention. With a massive 11MB of on-board memory (more than my mother’s much more expensive Samsung E700 camera phone), there is also plenty of space for all those ringtones and any pictures one might dare to take with the built-in camera. This certainly must be a record for any phone in the C65’s price bracket, but an MP3 player or MMC card slot, as found on the new CX75 for example, are but a pipedream. Siemens have also given the C65 plenty of ways of transferring content to and from the phone.

The file system on the C65 is very easy to use indeed. Reminiscent of the old Windows 3.1 File Manager, as one reviewer put it, it is very easy indeed to create new folders, delete old ones, and transfer content between them. In fact, the entire menu system is very easy to use. Once one has got used to the fact that the red hang up key is indeed normally used like a back key, everything is very logical. The display can in fact hold a massive seven lines of text (not bad for such a small phone), and this enough for the menus to look very good indeed. The only problem is that some operators seem to have taken it upon themselves to customise the main menus to their own needs, which for those who have the Orange version of the C65, as I did, mean that whatever one does, the icons remain orange and only the outline of the individual items themselves will suggest what each one of them is. There are many different themes, such as a football one, and a female-friendly one called ‘SueAnn’. Each of these has its own wallpaper, screensaver, ringtones and on-off animation, although these can of course, be changed to individual requirements. Other basic functions are equally as pleasant to use.

Text messaging is very well implemented on the C65. Any lag which may have been present in the menus is certainly absent from writing a text message, which in this day and age is rather important given the millions of text messages which are sent in this country every day. Once the new version of the firmware is put on the phone, sending messages should be a very pleasant experience, due to the fact that the C65 holds a large amount of text at any given time, large keys and a responsive interface. The build quality of the phone also seems better than average, so it is unlikely that the two halves of the phone will start to separate as in the Sagem MYV-75 I used to own. Multi-Media Messaging is equally as easy to use, and the MMS editor on Siemens phones is particularly good and easy to understand. In terms of basic abilities as a phone, the C65 also scores very well.

The C65 is easy to use for accessing the phonebook: all that is required is a downward press on the joystick. Unfortunately, this can interfere with what must be the most useless button ever since on a phone, the one touch WAP access button, which has no other feature than to go online at any point when the phone is switched on, and can ring up some very large phone bills in the process. Unlike Sony Ericsson phones, the C65 has two completely separate lists for numbers on the phone and those on the SIM card. These can be set so that one is more easily accessed than the other, and it is very easy to copy the entire SIM phonebook to the phone and individual entries to the SIM card. It is not so easy to copy all the phone entries onto the SIM card, however, which is a breeze on most Sony Ericsson, Sharp and Nokia handsets. The phonebook also displays not just the name, but also the number of the entry highlighted, which is a useful feature, as it saves going into the individual entry in order to read a phone number out. The phone can also store up to 1000 numbers in addition to the SIM card: more than enough for anyone, I would have said.

As a device for making calls, the C65 also scores highly. Reception is excellent, and a massive improvement over earlier models. There is also a speakerphone, which seems very clear, and the volume appears to be more than adequate. The battery life, although not the best I have encountered, is far from the worst, and would certainly last an average of three days without charging, which is pretty standard these days. There are also a lot of basic organiser functions on the phone, which makes it a step up from any previous Siemens C-series phone. The alarm clock can be configured to go off on different days of the week, and the phone also has a stopwatch, currency converter and calculator, all of which are very useful. The call lists on the phone are also reflective of the huge amount of memory: 100 dialled numbers, 100 calls received and 100 missed calls, ten times more than any other phone I have used.

The biggest use of the phone memory, however, is for the games. On the C65, there are three games, and one application, which is a sort of tamagotchi. Photopet, as it is known, uses the C65’s own Java technology, and means that the user can look after a certain pet as their own. The three other games are Stack Attack Advance, Bubble Trouble and some other eminently forgettable platform game. I did wish to obtain more games for the phone than the standard ones, but no site seemed to have them for free, so I was unable to do so.

The C65 is actually rather a good phone, but blighted with some serious problems. The biggest of these is the unreliable firmware, which can be updated, but only at extra cost to users on a fast Internet connection. A phone should never have been allowed onto the market on this state. There is also the rather poor camera, and back cover which is hard to remove, but then becomes rather too loose after several times taking it on and off. However, if a user was to obtain a phone with the updated firmware, these would be very minor concerns in what is, after all, one of the cheapest camera phones on the market today.

Joseph Lloyd

Summary: