The most reliable phone ever? (Siemens S25)

Member Name: tomshanks

Product:	Siemens S25
Date:	16/06/03 (828 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reliability, Packed with useful features, Good size and weight, considering its age

Disadvantages: Dated design, Text messaging, WAP is useless

I am increasingly aware that I need to keep a spare mobile phone. It seems to happen to me too often that I have problems with my two main phones, and very seldom will a company send me out a replacement phone, so something which will definitely bridge the gap between the start of a fault and the end of the repair is very useful. It is this that the Siemens S25 has provided for me.

Bought from Ebay for the princely sum of £18 a few months ago, my example did not look particularly appealing. Despite its silver cover, next to the Siemens C45 I currently own, it does not just look two years older, but twenty years older. The external aerial, the black buttons and the whole square profile of the phone make it seem very unappealing. The first thing that one greets upon turning it on is a clown animation, fronted with the Siemens slogan 'Be inspired'. Never was there such a paradox from a first impression. However, I am happy to report that things do improve after this initial shock.

Siemens was the first manufacturer to bring out a mobile phone with a colour screen. This is not considering the 256 colour screens of the Mitsubishi Trium Eclipse and Ericsson T68, both of which came out a lot later, but rather a thing called the Siemens S10. Launched in 1998, this was pushing the boundaries of product description right to its limit, since the number of colours totalled three (red, green and blue), but it still looks better than many a monochrome display today. The S25 continued in this tradition, and although on the whole the three different colours are superfluous, the white backlight which accompanies them is a very nice feature. Only on the Nokia 8310, and in monochrome over two years later was this repeated. The fact that the mix of colours can also be adjusted in a similar way to a computer monitor means that the S25 really does have hidden talents. The colour screen is not the only thing to which this phone can lay claim to fame, however. r>
Along with the Nokia 7110, this was one of the first WAP phones. Unfortunately, the WAP cannot be used since it is standard 1.0, and this country has only ever supported WAP standard 1.1 and above, but it is good to know that Siemens were thinking ahead, even ahead of the technology available to them at the time. One can tell that certain phones, such as the Trium Mars, were built to a price, which is not necessarily a bad thing because the market at which it was aimed did not have that much disposable income, but the Siemens S25 is not one of them. Being the second in the series of the 'S' class business phones ('C' class phones deal with the lower end of the market, 'M' class phones are in the middle and sports segment, and 'S' class phones are the top-end business class ones), the market at which this phone was aimed was similar to that of the 7110. Whereas the 7110 had the WAP facility and that slider in order to show off to clients, the S25 impressed with the 'colour' screen and excellent size. Even today, it is smaller than some current phones, such as the Motorola Timeport 280 and the Mitsubishi Trium Eclipse, and shares the Lithium Ion battery in common with them. It is unfortunate that the example I had was rather old, and thus did not have very good battery life, for I am sure when it was new, it would have impressed no end compared to what was out there at the time.

The Infra-red port and voice memo buttons on the side of the S25 show its amazing functionality. With a calendar, built-in fax modem, calculator and four 'colour' games in addition to the aforementioned IR and voice recording features, this phone can still hold its own as a solid business tool. Compared with the S35/S35i, which was the next step along the line of evolution from this phone, only the external design and text messaging was improved from this model onto the next. This shows how ahead of its time this phone was, and t
he fact that the model I used, which must have been at least three and a half years old, was in full working order is testament to the fact that they were built to last whatever the world's businessmen could throw at them. The Nokia 7110 in comparison seems to have been plagued from the start by software bugs, and a very fragile flip, which is a real shame. The fact that the phone was about half the price on Ebay when I bought it of a fully working 7110 simply reinforces this phone's status as a bargain. However, not everything is perfect with this phone.

The first gripe I have concerns text messaging. Even the Nokia 5110, which pales into comparison with the S25 on so many levels, had far better text messaging than this phone. Siemens appear to have made an major oversight with regard to this useful option on the S25, which makes it even worse than the dreadful Philips Savvy. Like the Savvy, words do not necessarily run on separate lines on the S25 screen when writing a text messaging, making it frustrating when even relatively simple words are broken up and spread across a line. This is a feature of phones from long before the S25's time when people did not normally use text messaging, and it is amazing that Siemens allowed it into what is otherwise a very up-to-date machine. What makes it even worse is that there is no facility to assign text messages with the numbers of people in the address book, meaning that memorising numbers becomes part of the S25 user's daily life. This was bad on a Sagem MC920, but it is almost unexcusable on a business phone like this. That said, however, there are a few more good features.

The customisation of the S25 is amazing. There are more than 40 ringtones, as well as a composer, which is far more than the more modern C45, and the quality of them is far superior. The games are also fantastic, with a rendition of a 3D maze, Connect 4, and also Microsoft's own Minesweeper. Added to this is the i
ntegral help function on the phone, which is just as well, considering the S25 has one of the most confusing menu systems I have ever seen. I am glad that I owned a Siemens before using this one, and even then, I had trouble. A manual is definitely recommended to make the most of the Siemens and its many hidden talents.

There is no need to overlook this phone because of its age. It has all the features of many a modern phone, and a lot more besides. However, heavy texters and Nokia fans should stay away for risk of being lost in the menus or frustrated by a strangely inexplicable text messaging system. Those in the know say that this is one of the best phones ever. They may be right.