Siemens' M50 phone has been on the market for a while; Oliver Thylmann takes a look at the GSM 900/1800 MHz phone with GPRS, WAP and J2ME support, targeted at advanced consumers.
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The Siemens M50 comes in a box containing the bare-bones hardware itself, a CLIPit cover, a charger and a manual. Upon opening the box, I quickly found myself staring at a butt naked phone without its CLIPit cover attached, requiring a bit of assembly - a simple procedure if you follow the manual, but not quite as easy if you don't (Editor's note: I can't help but wonder how Oliver found out :). The phone either comes with a blue or orange backlight, and a manual that is well laid out and contains the necessary information.
The M50 itself has a good feel to it - as does its keypad, and seems sturdy and rugged enough to survive the lifestyle of the younger generation, which is the target audience of the phone. It screams style, hip and cool - not business, which is obvious from the lack of an IR port, a full address book, synchronization and a full-blown calendar. There is however a built-in data and fax modem, but this can only be used in conjuction with a serial connection to a laptop or handheld - an odd choice in a time and day where most phones with such features have IR ports.
 | Siemens' M50 is a rugged and trendy phone with a good feature set
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Features
While the phone doesn't contain much features aimed at business users, there are still a few features that have a similar use. Alarms can be set for tasks, and birthdays and similar recurring events can be added to a special application. In a journal type fashion, users can jot down notes and protect them via the phone pin or send them via SMS - which is contradictory in itself, but still useful. Expecting such things in an Office like menu item will get you nowhere though, as all of the above mentioned can be found under "Get in touch". Apart from that small quirk, the menu structure is well laid out, and as an extra bonus each key on the keypad can be set to open a specific application.
The phone lets users order their contacts into 4 contact groups: VIP, Leisure, Office and Family, but there is no option to add more groups. A special feature, "Calling Images", lets you add a picture to a contact entry, and upon receiving an incoming call from a phone number stored in the phone with an image attached to the entry will result in the image being displayed. Sadly, there is only room for storing 50 contacts in the phone memory - which is a bit on the skimpy side.
The group feature also comes into play if you want to send an SMS to a particular group of people - but it's only possible to send an SMS to the entire group, which limits the usefulness severely. Similarly, making conference calls is made easy inside a particular group by allowing a user to choose up to 5 people to add to a call, but there is no option to add people from other groups - nor even to do something of the kind from the full contacts list.
Also on the negative side is that when adding special characters to an SMS message, the second line of the SMS will be partly hidden due to the pop-up that shows the available characters. The fact that the screen is small - but fortunately has a high resolution - doesn't contribute positively either.
Buzzword bonanza
Next stop, WAP and GRPS. After an initial setup procedure - which should already have been performed if you purchase the phone from a carrier, WAP browsing works nicely even though the screen is relatively small, but very clear. You won’t be reading Wall Street Journal on the phone, but that’s not what it’s for anyway.
J2ME support, with room for 228 KB of applications, is one of the most positive features of the phone. Unfortunately, the carrier used while conducting the review initially blocked OTA (Over The Air) downloads of J2ME applications, so it took a bit of time and some clever workarounds to be able to download and test some free games available from Siemens' WAP portal. Premium applications for the M50 are currently only available in some countries in Europe, which goes to show that J2ME is still in its infancy.
Conclusion
The phone, which retails at 250 EUR without a contract is a good alternative for those who want a no-fuss handset and don't require business type functionality and synchronization. It will hold up well to a bit of rough handling, and you'll get a bit of fun out of it as well. GPRS and WAP add a nice touch to the phone for those that want access to online content, and J2ME is the icing on the cake. In our tests, the battery life also matched what is advertised by Siemens.
- What's positive: Good form factor, rugged, GPRS and J2ME support
- What's negative: J2ME problems, lack of IR port
Overall: 
Price and availability
The will start selling for TBA () in November 1999.
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