Incredible amount of features in a tiny package (Siemens SL45)

Member Name: GAThrawn1

Product:	Siemens SL45
Date:	31/10/01 (1623 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: size, weight, features

Disadvantages: No GPRS, slow text access

I like the x35 series of phones, but not quite enough to tempt me away from Nokia. When the Sl45 came out though, it immediately got my attention and when my contract came up for renewal tehre was no way I could avoid such feature packed phone.

The first feature that strikes when using the phone is the size, and then the weight, it really is very small and light. It isn't the smallest, nor the lightest phone on the market, but it does so much, it's incredible for the size. The screen is also very big, again a suprise for such a small phone. To be slightly different it's an orange screen, which has a rather unique fading backlight. It's certainly different, and it seems to suit the phone although I have to admit I like the route Ericsson have taken with blue backlit screens. The network stength is displayed at the top left, and the battery the top right of the screen. At the bottom, the phones diplays the two softkeys along with the date and time. The main part of the screen can be used as an operator logo, or simply display the network. The front of the phone is made of a very smooth metal, which make the phone look good and make the phone good to handle. Up the left hand side are four button, voice memo, mp3 and volume up and volume down. The volume buttons adjust the volume of a call or the volume of the mp3 player (surprise, surprise), and holding down the volume up button starts voice dialling. The voice memo starts recording if you hold it down, or plays back the first memo recording, which can be done when the phone is in standby or during a call. A handy feature carried over from the S35i is the ability to answer a call with this button with a predefined message. This is meant to be for answering a call whem you are in a meetind or busy, but I have found it very useful when receiving crank calls.

Siemens have really decided go for it when it came to features with this phone, the main feature is of course the m
ultimedia card. For anyone who doesn't know what an MMC is, it's a small piece of plastic about the size of a postage stamp, that can store various amounts of data. The MMC that comes with the phones can hold 32mb of data, you can of course buy a bigger card if you want to hold more files. Most people simply assume that the MMC is for listening to mp3's, but it allows you to have far more storage space than a normal phone, plus it gives you the facility to customise the phone even more than other phones. The SL45 supports operator logos but simply stores them as bitmap files on the card, making it very easy to create your own logos. Unlike Nokia phones you can have a large selection of logos so that you can change the logo as much as you like. Custom ringtones are simply stored as midis, meaning you can store a lot of different ringtones at any one time. The startup animation, and the wait animation can also be changed, you simply put a sequence of bitmaps in a folder and create the animation from that. SMS's can also be backed on the mmc, plus you can load miscellaneous files if you want to transport them from your computer to another. To actually transfer the files onto your PC, the SL45 comes with a cradle that plugs into the serial port of your PC. It's handy for charging the phone, but I decided to invest in a USB mmc reader from Jessops. With this, you take the card out of phone, plug it into the reader, and then transfer the data to and from the mmc as if it were an extra drive. The cradle is very slow to transfer files, so for £30, the usb reader is well wroth buying. All the software you need does come in the box, you can write texts and convert them into sms and vice versa, plus you can convert any voice recordings you have made into wave files. As for the mp3 player, to be honest I'm not an mp3 person, I prefer minidisc but I have been impressed with this aspect of the SL45. To listen to the mp3s, the phone comes wit
h a stereo hands-free kit. The sound quality is surprisingly good, keeping the compression fairly high I can squeeze a whole album onto the phone, which is very handy when I forget to charge the battery for minisdisc player.

Phew! As for the features, well, the SL45 has pretty much everything else you would expect. You can voice dial up to 20 numbers, either through the phone itself or using the hands-free kit by pressing a button beside the microphone. On other phones I tend not to use voice dialling as it doesn't always work very well for me, but the SL45 allows you to access menu functions as well as phone numbers simply by pressing a number. For example, you can activate the IR sensor by holding down 9. For this reason I persevere with the voice dialling. You can also use voice control, you can assign voice tags to start the mp3 player or the dictaphone, which I really like, as it means you can start the mp3 player using the hands-free kit, without taking the phone out of your pocket. The voice memo functions is made much more useful with the mmc card, you can store around 5 hours, which is much better than the 30 seconds I've had on previous phones. To be honest, I don't use it, but I'm sure there are people out there who will. The builtin IR modem works fine with both my laptop and Palm, although you can't exchange data this way, which I find strange and quite disappointing. It would great to be able to place the phone beside my laptop and upload new logos or whatever. As with most phones these days, the SL45 has predictive text input. The builtin phonebook can store 500 names, but you can assign 14 fields to each name, so you can have name, home number, office number, etc. similar to a PDA. Carrying on with the PDA theme, the phone has a calendar, allowing you to set appointments. The Sl45 has a selection of 7 games, although I find the mp3 player sufficient when I am bored. As you would expect with a phone like th
is, the SL45 has a calculator, stopwatch, countdown timer and currency converter. The calculator works ok, but it does take a little getting used to.

Well that's about as much as I can think of for the moment for the features!

I always found the x35 series of phones to be slightly clumsy with the use of four softkeys and no fixed up/down buttons, so I am pleased that Siemens have revised this. the SL45 only has two softkeys, and a four way 'compass' button, as well as the usual dial up and hangup buttons. To go into the menu, all you need to do is press 'right', to then select a menu item you press 'right' again or 'left' to go back a menu. This makes menu navigation a doodle, and very fast. I really liked the naviroller on the 7110, because you could move up and down and select items without lifting your thumb. The SL45 is even better, because you can go back menus as well. If you are having any problems, the SL45 has a complete help guide for all the functions. And no, I'm not meaning an annoying little popup that's virtually no help. The help system is entirely independent, you navigate it like a wap site. It's very handy if you see a function and would like to know what it does.

Oh, hang on the Sl45 is a phone isn't it?! It's very easy to forget that... As a phone the SL45 excels, I was worried that this part may have been overlooked due to all the other features the phone has. Call quality is superb, people who I call say that it is crystal clear, even better than the 7110 which I didn't think was possible. The handsfree kit works very well, having the two headphones makes it that bit easier to listen to who you are talking to. As for battery life, well I expected this to be one of the downfalls of this phone, something I would have to accept. Surprisingly, batterylife is fine, even using the mp3 player. I have been using the mp3 player for most of the day t
oday and yesterday, and it is almost empty, which I think is incredible as the battery is very small. Without using the mp3 player, the phone lasts for several days with a few calls. As for charging up, all you need to do is pop it into its cradle. As is becoming pretty much standard these days, the SL45 has a wap browser which works well with the 'compass' button. It also seems to be faster than the 7110, although it doesn't seem to handle bookmarks as well as the 7110 did.

So what are the downsides then? Well first off, the Sl45 does not support hscsd, nor GPRS. No hscsd isn't much of a problem, it is only available on Orange, who don't sell the phone. Even then, the withdrawal of free 0800 data, means that it unlikely to be of any consequence. The lack of GPRS is a disappointment though, I doubt I will want to use GPRS but it means that phones like the Nokia 8310 and Ericsson T39/T68 have a major advantage over the SL45. The phone is also quite slow at accessing text messages, both reading individual messages and opening folders which I can see being frustrating if you do a lot of texting. Unfortunately Siemens have not done anything about the caller group function, you can still only have normal and vip, assigning a ringtone to either. This really isn't very helpful, I still think the 3210 was the best for this, being able to assign individual ringtones to numbers meant I knew exactly who was calling. It seems a strange omission on a phone like this with such excellent ringtone support. Oh-oh, this is where I go on and on describing hundreds of flaws with the phone... Thankfully not, there are a few other niggly faults (I think the battery and signal indicator are too small) but overall the phone has fairly minor disadvantages that are easy to overlook. The price is going to be off putting for many but you have to look at what you're getting for the money; firstly a very good phone, secondly a cradle allowing y
ou to charge the phone and exchange data and a stereo hands-free headset. If you chose any other phone on the market, by the time you buy an offical desktop charger, data cable, hand-free set and software the SL45 doesn't look so expensive after all.

The SL45 doesn't stop there, soon to be available is the SL45i, which will add Wireless java support allowing you to store programs on the phone, adding even more PDA functionality. This will also be available as upgrade for existing SL45s, which I am looking forward to.

As for the competition, the main rivals are probably the T68, T39, V66 and 8310. If you are looking for GPRS then the SL45 is nothing against these phones. Certainly the 8310 will probably be more popular but it doesn't really offer much apart from gprs and fm radio. Personally, I think that the MMC adds an extra dimension to the SL45, that's not found in any of these phones.

The SL45 is a truly outstanding phone, one which I am very pleased with and have never looked back, there isn't any other phone on the market I would rather have. To have so many features in such a small phone is incredible. Well done Siemens!

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