Siemens' S45i phone is screaming business from the get-go; Oliver Thylmann takes a look at the GSM 900/1800 MHz phone with GPRS, WAP, E-Mail and full synchronization capabilities targeted at the business user.
The Siemens S45i is, as the name already suggests, a minor upgrade to the S45, which brings users an e-mail client, improved synchronization, a new game and 2 new styles to choose from for the outer shell. It comes in a box together with a battery, charger, a mini CD-ROM with synchronization software (also available from my-siemens.com) and a well laid out manual in Spanish, French, English and German. A cable to connect to phone to your PC is sadly missing and needs to be bought separately.
 | The S45i packs a lot of features into a small, well-designed package with a nice big screen.
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After charging it for the first time and turning it on, the phone asks you to set the display contrast and whether you want to use the down button to access the phone book, to which we suggest you choose yes. The good thing here is that from then on you will know that moving the 4 way navigation key in the middle down, will bring you to your address (or phone) book, as you might otherwise be looking with no luck for a phone book button.
The phone feels very light in the hand but does seem to be rugged enough to survive the occasional drop when falling out of your shirt pocket. The keypad is very well laid out, with all keys having a very good tactile feedback in a short travel distance, permitting very fast and easy typing. They are also evenly backlit in the same orangish color as the screen, which permits easy usage of the phone in the dark. The screen is very big in relation to other phones of the size with a possible seven lines of content. There are also two possible screen modes, with either small or large letters for both the main screen and the menu, which is certainly good for people who do not want to get their reading glasses out every time they want to dial a phone number. The large mode closely resembles a Nokia phone interface.
Beyond the standard buttons the phone has a long button on the left side which allows for easy changing of the currently active profile as well as to turn on the microphone for voice control commands, which can be either linked to phone numbers or to specific functions of the phone. So "Peter" could start a call to Peter, set the phone to a silent profile or simply turn IrDa on or off. The button on the right side starts the voice recorder, which allows for over two minutes of voice recordings to be stored on the phone, very handy for a quick note.
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