Sindre Lia takes a closer look at Siemens' all new CX70 PTT phone, sporting a big 65K colour screen and a much-improved joystick.
Review summary of the Siemens CX70:
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 Price: $300.
Pros:
Cons:
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Full Siemens CX70 Review:
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The number of mobile phones supporting Push To Talk functionality is increasing, and the CX70 is Siemens' first model to offer it. As Push To Talk is network dependent, most major mobile operators are currently upgrading their networks to fully support it. Unfortunately Push To Talk is not yet available in Norway, so we've not been able to test this specific feature of the CX70. Still, the CX70 has plenty to offer - perhaps even so much that it claims a position in the upper end of our chart.
Finally a pleasant joystick
Being a phone with candybar design, the CX70 measures 108 x 46 x 18 mm and weighs 90 grams. In the front sits a 132 x 176 pixel 16-bit display, offering crisp and clear colours. Just above each upper corner of the screen, Siemens has placed so-called dynamic lights. Although meant to signal various functions, they were quickly found to be so distracting we decided they were better left switched off.
On the brighter side, the 5-way joystick of the CX70 turned out to be pleasantly comfortable, after receiving a slight - yet very noticeable - makeover since being added to the Siemens SL65. The keypad is however only of average quality, offering somewhat oddly shaped and noisy buttons.
The integrated VGA camera shooting 0.3 MP pictures is placed on the back of the phone. Pictures taken in daylight are of good quality, while pictures taken when it's darker tends to turn out very blurry. Pictures can easily be sent via MMS or e-mail from the camera application, and brightness and zoom factor are adjusted by means of the joystick when being in the viewfinder. Video recording is also available, however only at a resolution of 128 x 96 pixels.
Just ordinary plus PTT
Common functionality such as tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz, GPRS Class 10 and IrDA is available, while features like Bluetooth, FM radio and a music player are missing. On the other hand, the CX70 offers Push To Talk functionality, a decent WAP 2.0 browser enabling viewing of XHTML pages, and a very good Organiser suite. Given the phone's features, its memory of 10 MB RAM should be spacious. The CX70 also offers 40-tone polyphonics, voice dialing, and of course fully supports SMS, MMS and e-mail (POP3/IMAP).
Siemens has recently implemented a very user-friendly menu system, and this is luckily also to be found in the CX70. The interaction between the joystick/keypad and the phone's operating system also proved to be good, and overall performance could best be described as slick.
The Siemens CX70 has very good reception and voice quality, and the same applies for the phone's talk time and standby-time as it offered close to 4,5 hours and 6 days respectively during our test period.
Availability
The Siemens CX70 is at the time of writing available in several European markets, selling for approximately $300 USD without subscription.
Price and availability
The Siemens CX70 will start selling for $300 () in November 1999.
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