The Art Of Seduction (Siemens SL55)

Member Name: I Like Blue

Product:	Siemens SL55
Date:	27/10/03 (1697 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Elegant, stylish, sexy, Light

Disadvantages: More style than technology, Smudge easy screen

From the first moment I saw it I knew I had to have the Siemens SL55. I was seduced by the TV ad that showed its elegance, its beauty and its style.

Then, in early September I finally got one. I've had a Siemens phone before, the C45, and I liked that and over the year or so I had it I came to trust the Siemens brand so I had no worries in upgrading to this little beauty.

On its own the SL55 isn't cheap, and at the time of writing this it can still cost you up to £300 to buy one outright. I waited though, waited for the right pay-monthly offer that would help me get this phone at the cheapest possible price. My patience paid off because I got the SL55 free with an Orange pay-monthly contract via 'e2save.com', but that's another review.

The SL55 only comes in a choice of 2 colours, Ruby Red or Titanium Black. It is small, light and very compact. It is also tri-band enabled as standard and has full GPRS/WAP capabilities. The SL55 also supports JAVA applications and games, MMS and even e-mails when synchronised with a PC. It also has a standard 12-bit colour display and on the main menu screen all the icons are animated. The SL55 doesn't come with an integrated camera but one can be bought and attached to the phone if you wish, and because there isn't an integrated camera as standard like on some mobile phones then this may put some people off buying the SL55.

Siemens claim that the battery can last 200 hours while in standby mode and 210 minutes talktime before it needs recharging. Now, personally my phone doesn't stand idle for nearly 9 days without being used so the standby mode battery time I can't verify however I do know that between the phone just being on and me using it I find I have to recharge the battery every 5 days or so.

There is a fairly good selection of pre-installed screensavers and wallpapers and even better a wider selection of ring and info tones. Tha
nkfully the melodies have improved on Siemens previous efforts and although there are still some rather naff tones/tunes there aren't nearly as many as on previous Siemens phones. There are also 2 games on the phone called 'Mobile Tennis' and 'Rayman Golf', they are okay but I confess that I haven't really played them that much so can't tell you much more about them other than the sound and graphic quality is pretty good although they do take a little while to load.

One of the big advantages with the SL55 over my old C45 is the ability to store more ringtones of my own choice as with the C45, if you've owned or got one you'll know what I mean here, in the Melody Manager option you can only store up to 4 of your own downloaded/received ringtones. You see with the SL55 it has a menu option called 'Filesystem' which is not too dissimilar to one you'd find on a standard PC and even has the little yellow folder icons. This means you now have the ability to store much more on the SL55 including pictures, wallpapers, animations and screensavers as well as your favourite ringtones.

The SL55 is really light weighing just 79g, which is a lot less than say a standard pot of yoghurt! It's quite small too and I was initially surprised by this a bit because I thought it looked like it would be bigger. It's so small in fact that it sits quite comfortably in the palm of my average-sized hand. I have had a number of other comments from admirers that when seeing it and picking it up saying that it looks small enough to lose which is a valid point.

The SL55 isn't exactly cutting edge technology but I feel that it's unique style is unequalled. Rather than follow the pack with flip-top and hinged phones Siemens have designed the SL55 so that one-half of the phone slides above the other and they have called this the 'ProSlide'.

Now, I have to confess that I thought the ProSl
ide was automatic and that on a touch of a button the phone opened up by itself. D'oh! However I soon found out I wasn't alone as I have been asked numerous times if the phone opened automatically. I have to admit the phone is a bit fiddly to open to start with but once you've done it a couple of times it's easy enough.

I find the easiest way to open the SL55 is by getting the bottom half of the phone in one hand, with thumb and finger(s) on opposite ends and with the other hand holding the top half of the phone with thumb and finger(s) on opposite sides then sliding the top half up revealing the keypad underneath which illuminates once fully opened.

On one side of the outside of the SL55 there is an Infrared device which is used if/when you want to synchronise the phone with your PC and/or Laptop. On the other side there are 2 more buttons, one is the volume control and microphone and the other activates the phone's in-built Dictaphone. The microphone is used to voice activate stored numbers which works fine if there isn't too much background noise but I've found that it can be rather sensitive to other noises and on more than a couple of occasions where I've tried to voice activate phone numbers the phone hasn't understood and has prompted me to try again.

Now to the keypad, because it is on the bottom half of the phone it is less likely to wrongly press any keys especially with the top cover down hiding it. You can also lock the keypad as standard on any mobile phone but in the case of the SL55 having the keypad tucked safely away also protects it. The keypad has the standard numbers and letters positioned as other phones and I find the buttons easy to use and navigate as they are fairly well spaced.

The facia on the top cover is made up mainly of the menu screen with the directional buttons and phone symbol buttons. Although this adds to the phone's style if you're a bit of a
clean freak then it can be a bit annoying because the facia sits flush with the top cover surround so the screen is quite prone to smudging and you could find yourself, like I do, quite often wiping it clean.

I have also found that if I'm carrying the phone in a pocket then it is best to only have the phone in my pocket because anything else in there like keys or loose change would surely scratch the screen if it came into contact.

I find using the phone quite easy and using the phone's menu system is quite straightforward. Like I said earlier the main menu is represented by colour icons and each option, when highlighted, is animated. Once an option is selected then the following menu selection is pretty much the same as on other Siemens phones. So having had a Siemens phone before it didn't take me long to get used to getting round all the areas of the menu, and as standard with other phones the SL55 comes with a comprehensive and easy to understand manual taking you through all the phone's capabilities with clear instructions.

A mini-CD comes with the SL55 for use with your PC and on the CD there is a summary of the phone's capabilities and instructions on how to use it. Also, from the CD you can download the software that enables you to synchronise the SL55 with your PC or Laptop.

As yet I have had no problems with the SL55 and I don't regret getting it one bit. There is one quite annoying thing though and when I first got the phone I have to admit it took me a little while to work out how to store numbers the way I did on my C45. Sounds a little silly I know but let me explain.

For those of you familiar with Siemens phones you may understand this. When storing phone numbers on a Siemens phone, especially the later models, there is an Phonebook option to save a number to a particular group. The groups are titled Family, Friends, Office, VIP, Leisure, Private and Business. You can
also assign a particular ringtone for each group. Once you have typed in a number for the first time you can save it to one of those groups, well you could on my C45.

On the SL55 however when I tried to save a number into the Phonebook the only selection available was either No Group or VIP. Quite frustrating indeed. I finally worked out that to get a number stored into a particular group in the Phonebook option I first had to save the number into a new option Siemens have added called Addressbook. In the Addressbook option you are able to assign a number to any one of the groups I mentioned earlier and copy it to the Phonebook. Once you have one entry in a group in Phonebook you can then save other numbers straight to that group without having to save it to Addressbook first. You just have to remember if the number you want stored to a particular group is going to be the first entry in that group then you must save it to Addressbook first.

To finish with I'd say that as a phone the SL55 functions like many others in the range and so doesn't stand out technologically but for size, weight and looks alone, for me anyway, I think it leads the way.

I have no hesitation in recommending this phone to anyone although I would say if you do decide to get an SL55 then shop around first and get it as cheap (or free) as possible with a good pay-monthly contract.

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