Mobile Phone Reviews
Name
Rate
Location
Review
Ivan Zelic
6
Croatia
 THE SIEMENS C45 Low cost phone, aimed at younger population and less demanding people. FIRST IMPRESSION Small, nice looking, feels good in your hand, sturdy. With a lots of exchangable covers, aestethic impression is very good. One of the top choices for the people who appreciate design of their phone. GETTING STARTED Standard package contains Siemens C45 mobile phone, standard charger, 550 mAh NiMH battery (NOT Li-ion as specified on Keep-Talking.NET, with all due respect) and user manual. Nothing special, but usual for this class. Manual is good, simple and informative. First thing you'll notice after you turn on the phone are uncomfortable keypad and slow menus. Keys are put too close together and therefore typing errors are common thing. Very annoying until you get used to it. If you like sending SMS messages maybe you should consider some alternatives (Nokia 3310/3330 - best keypad in my opinion). Response to pressed keys is somewhat slow. Time for executing some commands (e.g. enter SMS inbox, phonebook search) is longer than average. Avoid this phone unless you have a lot of patience! (I don't!) Menus are a bit complicated and take time to get used to them. Display has pleasant amber background light and letters are easily read. Screen is a bit small (3 text rows+menu choises) especially if you plan to use WAP. FEATURES As mentioned before, nothing special. 50 phonebook entries capacity, caller groups, SMS to group, EMS (send pictures, sounds and long (concatenated) messages), alarm, reminder, 3 (stupid) games, monophonic ringtones, set of bitmap pictures that can be used as logo or screensaver and WAP. No GPRS, IrDA or some other advanced connectivity technology. For its class features are more than satisfactory. HOW IT WORKS Not good! With some older versions of firmware, Siemens C45 is unstable and turns itself randomly without warning. This oftenly occures when typing a message. I had this problem with firmware v31, and had it replaced with v35. It works fine so far. Make sure you have installed v35 or higher! With new firmware, phone is as slow as with an old versions. Signal reception is very good. For example me and two of my friends once have found ourselves in very poor signal area. I have been able to make a call, while they couldn't even establish network connection (with Nokia 6210 and Ericsson T20e, all on the same network, of course). Big plus for siemens. Sound quality is a bit less good, but still satisfactory. Voice transmission is good, and others can hear you fine. Battery is 550 mAh NiMH, offering some 2-3 days of autonomy, depending on usage. Most modern phones are supplied with lithium batteries, so this is another minus for Siemens. Battery Care option, in this case saves the day. With it you can maintain your battery at optimum capacity, and avoid usual fate of NiMH batteries (rapid capacity deteriration, "memory effect"). Ringtones are nice and loud. Vibrating alert is sufficiently strong. Organizer for appointements and reminder work are simple, work fine and very useful. Reminder is activated even if the phone is turned off (e.g. not in case of more expensive and advanced Nokia 6210). There are three games: BattleMail, Baloon Shooter and Stack Attack. Except for Stack Attack maybe, boring and not very playable. Personally, I would trade them all for good old Tetris. WAP browsing is possible only through CSD connection (top speed 14400 KBit/s). WAP browser is slow just like the rest of the phone, and not very practical on such small display. If you're planning to use WAP for something else than downloading logos and melodies, avoid Siemens C45. MY OPINION When you give money for something, no matter how small amount of money, you probably expect to see that thing work. Lousy software can't be justified by low price in this case. This is critical weakness of Siemens C45. However, this can be easily corrected. If you have already bought Siemens C45 with older firmware, visit your nearest service centre and ask for a quick and free update. Keypad is not very good, but you get used to it. All in all, Siemens C45 is a good phone. However, if you spend a bit more money, you can buy Nokia 3410 with li-ion battery and JAVA or SonyEricsson T200 with li-ion, GPRS and tri-band.