Read Oliver Thylmann's take on the new dual-band GSM 900/1800 MHz Siemens' C55, which brings GPRS, J2ME , WAP and polyphonic ringtones - a Siemens first - to youths in Europe and Asia.
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Finally, Siemens is making an attempt at catching up with other manufacurers in terms of polyphony with the release of the C55, a GSM 900/1800 MHz phone with support for GPRS, WAP, J2ME and polyphonic ring tones targeted at the youth market.
 | Siemens has jumped on the polyphony bandwagon with its latest youth phone, the C55
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The Siemens C55 comes in a standard Siemens box which includes the manual, a charger, the standard battery and the phone itself with one CLIPit cover. In relation to the recently reviewed Siemens M50, the front cover has already been attached - which made me wonder whether Siemens noticed that people who put the back cover on first without reading the manual got themselves into trouble. In any case, this particular stunt is impossible to perform on the C55.
The C55 seems to be more of a spiced up M50 in a toned down design. At 101 x 44 x 21 mm, it's slightly smaller than the M50, which makes the screen look a bit bigger - even though it's the same small size as that of the M50's screen. The production quality is very good even though the keys feel a bit plasticy at the beginning. Due to the good tactile feedback and feel you'll soon forget about this though, and particularly so due to the pleasant price of a mere 229 EUR. The front and back cover as well as the keypad can be exchanged, which makes it relatively easy to customize the phone to add that personal touch.
Features
The phone comes with basic organizer functions included which allow you to set appointments, greetings (such as birthdays), alarms and take notes. Also, you can configure voice commands that allow you to for instance start writing a new SMS by simply by means of a snappy little order to your phone.
Under the Surf & Fun menu, you'll find Games, Internet, Bitmap Viewer and Sound Manager - all of which are important in this phone. J2ME games can be downloaded over the air and will end up under the Games menu, and Prince of Persia by Gameloft came pre-installed on the phone I had here. The screen has a resolution that makes it comfortable to read text and look at images in-game, while the polyphony engine provides that extra touch. The gaming experience is really nice, despite the lack of color. The phone also supports GPRS and has a WAP 1.2.1 browser accessible from the Internet menu item in Surf & Fun, where a few links have been made available to let you quickly connect to the Siemens website and download more games - a procedure which not only easy to accomplish, but also comfortably fast.
The Bitmap viewer comes in handy for looking at included bitmap graphics files stored in the C55, which when transferred can be attached to entries in the address book. These pictures will then appear on the screen instead of person's phone number - provided whoever is calling has caller ID switched on. Address book entries can also be grouped together in a total of 8 groups, and a ringtone can be assigned for any of these groups.
Moving on to the fun part, the Sound Manager lets you record any audio you want to, store it and use it as a ring tone. Within minutes, I had my phone screaming "Phone for you!". And seeing as how address book entries can be grouped and assigned ring tones, there's also a bit of usefulness tucked away in this feature - just think about having the phone alert you whenever one of your colleagues is calling. "Oliver, someone from work is on the phone - time to come up with a good excuse."
Sadly, while the phone can be used as a modem with a serial cable, it doesn't have an IR port - and neither does the serial cable allow users to access the flash file system, which is most likely due to DRM issues related to its ringtones. That's too bad, since users would benefit from having direct access to J2ME applications and bitmaps stored on the phone. To make matters worse, the C55 also uses a new type of connector which is different from other recent Siemens phones. In effect, that means older accessories will be incompatible, and you'll have to run out and buy new ones.
Other features include SMS support for sending to an entire group, easily select a number of contacts from one of your groups to set up a conference call and changing the 'Dynamic Vibration' in any of the profiles. Now, if you're wondering just what Dynamic Vibration is, it takes place when a call comes and delivers a combination of audio, visual and tactile alerts - for instance, you'll have the phone shout "Phone for you!", while blinking and vibrating like a helicopter. I must admit I didn't like neither the UFO, nor the Train, Mosquito, Shock or Standard vibration :)
Conclusion
If you haven't guessed this already, the Siemens C55 isn't a business phone. On the contrary, it's an amazingly fun and nicely priced phone for the youth market. It's loads of fun, has voice dialing, it flashes, it vibrates like a helicopter, has full polyphony, can be enhanced with games and other J2ME applications, is well built and small. For 229 EUR, it's a bargain.
- What's positive: Polyphony, good feature set for the target market, well built
- What's negative: Small monochrome screen, J2ME applications load slowly
| Features | 7/10 |
| Exterior | 5/10 |
| Ergonomics | 6/10 |
| Performance | 5/10 |
| Value: | 5/10 |
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iSW Score:
5.6/10 |
Price and availability
The will start selling for TBA () in November 1999.
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