Snazzy Silver Swank (Siemens SL45)

Member Name: Jon Tech

Product:	Siemens SL45
Date:	04/08/01 (602 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Max pleasure from phone, MP3 player, way more than just a phone

Disadvantages: Can't make assumptions about features, Not for the 'feature-phobes', non-standard head-set connection

I've been using the SL45 for a couple of months. I bought it mainly for the MP3 player. I had actually looked at the phone some weeks earlier and decided it was too small & fiddly to be of any use, however when the 2 weeks of English Summer Sun threatened to tempt me out on my mountain bike again, I decided that I was not going to strap on my two-phone and walkman 'utility belt' again. Any way, my Walkman batteries struggled to make 2 hours of play, and I always ended up missing important phone calls while I was out cycling.

A combined MP3 player & phone seemed the ideal answer. After the usual mis-information from an assortment of retailers, I finally settled on the SL45.

Once I focussed on its benefits, I was really happy with the spec. It is really small, pretty light & gives me a good 6-7 hours of MP3 play-back if I don't make any calls.

Here are the 'real-life' issues I have found:

1 Infra-red port and supplied 9-Pin Serial interfaces are desparately slow! They are fine for transferring 20-30k files - maybe a small diary or Outlook data - but for MP3's of any size, say 40 min's of reasonable quality music = 20 Mb, expect a transfer time of some hours!

2 My phone has an odd tendancy to turn off or lock up if you are using the Infra-Red port to transfer a file that is too big to fit on the Multi-Media card.

3 Don't make any assumptions. The data exchange software supplied works fine using the serial port connector, but not the infra-red interface. Even if the IR port on your PC is set up as a virtual com-port, the data exchange software does not work unless it finds the SL45 on a real com-port. Siemens told me this was doe to the speed of the IR i/f, but in my experience data transfers just as fast over IR as the serial cable.

4 Don't expect too much from the support line (at least the one I called from the UK). Staff were polite but not very well informed abo
ut the deaper (darker?) side of the product.

5 I am a hard addict of audio-books. Once I got the phone, I suddenly realised that since I carry it at all times, I could feed my addiction. Compared with one of the many dedicated MP3 / audio players, the main drawback of the Siemens is that it is not supported by the transfer software used by many vendors of copyright audio material. This requires lengthy massaging of file formats to get them to standard MP3 capable of playback on the SL45.

6 If you expect to make or receive many phone calls, then also expect to get very familiar with the same sections of your MP3 selections! Phone calls do pause playback, but when you re-start playback you are put back to the start of the program again! Of course you can wind forward, but it is a big pain.


Standard phone features are good. The key-pad is fiddly, but once you have developed the right hand position it's no worse than any other small phone.

Menus are OK. Better than the Motorola L7089 Tri-band I have - but what isn't?! I can't find out a simple way of dialing a phone number received in a text message. Especially if there are 2 different numbers in the same text message. It looks as though it should be possible, but I can't see how. Text messages sent from a central service all arrive with the same originating number, so replies don't have the correct reply number.

To get around the lengthy file transfer times, get the USB card reader/writer. It works like a removeable disk drive and speeds are comparable with a hard disk. Once you have that, it is reasonable to upgrade the supplied 32 Mb Multi-Media card with a 64 Mb one. With 64 Mb I have got 6 hours of good quality audio-book playback on the phone. Watch out for card types though. This is not SD, but they look similar.

One very nice feature that I hadn't even thought of using before getting the SL45 was 'print to Infra-red'. If
you have a printer with I/R port (like the HP2100 or its recent successor) then just holding the phone in front of the printer, selecting a file, message or other item to print & 'print to I/R' prints out on the printer.

The SL45 is now part of my life! Of all the phones I have had, this is the only one that I have had so many compliments on by those 'in the know'!

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