Das beste Handy der Welt? (Siemens S55)

Member Name: tomshanks

Product:	Siemens S55
Date:	28/06/05 (491 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small size and good features, Excellent reception and ease of use, Very good connectivity

Disadvantages: Battery life distinctly average, Screen only 256 colours, Very short on memory

Where to start with the Siemens S55? Dividing reviewers on its launch with an attractive design, yet unusual feature set, this phone seems to provoke strong reactions from every corner. Winner of the 2003 Industrie Forum (iF) Design Award, the S55 is most certainly the best looking phone I have ever owned. A similar size to the Nokia 8310, I am sure that it will continue to turn heads for many years to come. However, this design appears to have come at a price. The phone has very little memory (under 1MB), and despite being equipped with a clip-on VGA camera, the screen is a paltry 256 colours, displaying at an unremarkable 101x80 pixels. Now, in 2005, it is easy to look back on the S55 with either affection or ridicule: but which is it to be? Let us start with an analysis of its origins.

The 55-series of Siemens phones was launched in 2002, starting with the C55, a phone with polyphonic ringtones, GPRS and Java, most of which we take for granted these days, but still with a monochrome display. A little later came the S55, Siemens’ first phone on the market with more than three colours in its display. The series was finished a few months with the basic A55 and SL55 slider phone. The S55 is by far the best of this lot. For Siemens, there were a lot of firsts to be contended with: this was the first phone to have the aforementioned multi-coloured display, to have Bluetooth, to use Tri-Band technology, to have multi-media messaging. Most of all, it was the first Siemens to be compatible with a camera.

In a change with standard procedure, which seems to dictate that any accessories which a user might want for his phone must be obtained by the user himself, the S55 came as a complete package. In the box, it was possible to find a clip-on VGA camera with flash, software CD and serial cable, as well as the standard battery, charger and manual. The camera even had its own manual, showing how serious Siemens were about marketing the S55 as a multimedia device. Nokia, with its series-40 handsets (7210/6610/6100), which were also compatible with a clip-on camera, neglected to include any extra items in the standard package, and it seems that these were more expensive than the Siemens in any case. True to tell, the Siemens lacked exchangeable covers and a radio, features which the series-40 phones all had, but none of them had Bluetooth or were as small as the S55. Thus, the S55 was actually better than some its rivals in quantifiable terms. However, that screen was not one of these areas.

Even in late 2002, 256 colour displays were decidedly old-fashioned. Most handsets with colour screens had at least 4096 colours, and even my old Sagem MYX-6, launched six months or so after the S55, had a 128x160 pixel 65,000 colour screen, and cost less than the top-of-the-range Siemens. The screen on my old Mitsubishi Trium Eclipse, never designed to show photographs or send MMS messages, and launched in the late summer of 2001, had a 120x143 display, albeit a 256 colour one. The S55’s arch rival, the (Sony) Ericsson T68(i), had also had a 256 colour display in 2001, and had been the first in Europe to introduce us to the idea of the clip-on camera in terms of phones. Whilst other manufacturers, such as Panasonic and Sharp, were blinding consumers with high-resolution colour displays and built-in cameras, Siemens appeared to think that the S55 would be enough to compete. It was certainly insufficient. Another area which came in for criticism was the small amount of internal memory.

Although something like the Nokia 3100, a contemporary basic colour screen model with a clip-on camera and MMS messaging, has only about 0.5MB of memory available to the user, this phone was never designed to be principally used by consumers who would think of downloading that much content. The Siemens S55, with Java games and applications, MIDI, MMF and WAV format ringtones, business functionality, Bluetooth and a standard camera, along with a fairly decent WAP browser, has the potential to be filled up really rather more quickly. When I obtained my own model last July, it had a CD filled with ringtones, games and pictures included with in the parcel, and it was possible to pretty much delete anything one did not require and replace it. This did save a lot of memory, but still the phone proved to be inadequate for what I wanted to do on it. I could have about four Java games, 30 ringtones and two or three pictures on the phone before it filled up, which is fairly shocking for something which was vaunted as a multimedia powerhouse.

The battery was not up to much either. Strangely, the camera takes all its power from the phone when it is plugged in, and this powers the flash too. Therefore, if the phone is not relatively empty and more than about 30% charged, it is not worth using the camera at all. As it is, three days appeared to be the limit of the phone’s standby time capabilities. This was possibly due to the same type of battery as the rest of the 55-series (excluding the SL55) being used, and that colour screen eating it up. The M55, with a 4096 colour screen, was also given the same type of battery with similarly disappointing results. A busy professional, with the phone hooked up to a laptop, using a Bluetooth headset or making work phone calls, could easily wear the device out within a few hours. As a business phone, this is rather disappointing. However, as a device for making calls and nothing else, the S55 scores very well.

My sister looked after the phone for me for two weeks before I bought it, and commented that unlike any other phone she had previously tried on the T-Mobile network in our house, the S55 allowed her to have a steady conversation without having to go upstairs. This encouraged her to move on to her current SL55, which seems to also get a good signal. The phone is also very easy to use, as she, who had never owned a Siemens before, managed to pick it up and use it without consulting the manual. The speakerphone function, first appearing on the S55’s predecessor, the S45, also won praise with her, but it is still neither as easy to operate nor as loud as the one found on Sagem mobile phones. The phonebook is also easy to navigate, and does hold a large number of phone numbers (500). Unlike Sony Ericsson models, it is also possible to have separate lists for numbers on the phone and on the SIM card, and to add individual entries to both of these. There is also a volume key on the side of the phone, which makes adjusting the level during the call ever so much easier. If making phone calls on the S55 is so excellent, is this success repeated with sending text messages?

Suffice it to say that the S55, albeit not as much as some Nokia phones, is an excellent machine for text messaging. The screen, despite being only 101x81 pixels, does hold seven lines of text, and although the phone can be slow in certain operations, such as opening a Java game, text messaging certainly develops no lag. The award-winning design of the phone, which placed the keypad in tiers in order to supposedly make it easier to use, does not seem to compromise this too much either, although it can take a bit of getting used to. The fact that the selection keys and D-pad are made of different material to the number keys is unusual, but this does make differentiation between them slightly easier. Multi-media messaging, although compromised on the small screen with a limited number of colours, is perfectly feasible, but later models have significantly improved this.

In terms of office functionality, the S55 is a winner. With fully-functional infra-red, Bluetooth, a data cable and software CD included in the box and a full suite of office tools, this is probably one of the cheapest proper business phones around these days. Bluetooth connectivity, although appearing to drain the battery a lot quicker than normal, seemed to be reliable. Infra-red, as is normal with Siemens phones, worked without a problem, and I found the software and data cable fairly self-explanatory and easy to use, unlike some other handsets I could mention. On the phone itself, there is an excellent calendar application, a voice recorder, whose files can be played as ringtones, a calculator, alarm clock and currency converter, which all make life more pleasant. The phone can also be synchronised with a PC in terms of the phonebook, calendar and text messages, which is handy. When it comes to audio features, the S55 is also excellent.

The 55-series of handsets are some of the only phones I have come across which can play MMF format music files. These appear to be MIDI type files, but as they are specially designed for mobile phones, they appear to play much louder than normal. Even the normal MIDI files appear to play much louder on the S55 than any previous Siemens model, and the audio chipset appears to be based on Yamaha FM-synthesis technology, which makes for better sounding MIDI. Interestingly, the pre-installed content can be downloaded from the Siemens website if one would ever want to set the phone back to what it was originally, which is a plus for any seller. Although not as loud as the current 65-series of handsets (which are so loud they appear to have a software problem), the audio on the S55 is still perfectly acceptable, even two and a half years later. The other multi-media function, the camera, is not so good.

Although a VGA module with flash, making it theoretically as good as the camera in the Samsung E810, for example, the S55’s camera suffers through no fault of its own. With such a reduced quality display, any photograph is guaranteed to look awful on the phone itself. The lack of memory seems to prevent any more than about fifteen photographs taken at VGA resolution being taken (which is with an entirely empty handset). Finally, the fact that the camera relies on the phone battery means that any photography sprees will not last too long. This is a shame, as the few photographs I had the patience to transfer from the phone to my computer were actually not bad, and certainly better than the ones taken by a CIF resolution camera.

The S55 was a very good phone when it was launched, and it continues to be so. The build quality is superb, it is a very good size, and has many useful features, particularly if Bluetooth and Tri-band technology are a priority. However, with such a small amount of memory, such a poor display and relatively poor battery life, there are probably other phones out there which would cater much more for the MMS generation, albeit at an increased price. As it is, the design is still wonderful, and if these functions are not important, this is still a very good buy. ‘Das beste Handy der Welt’? (The best mobile phone in the world?) Not quite, but close.

Joseph Lloyd

Summary: