Siemens S65 Review

Overall Rating

Great looking, easy to use. Lots of extra features.

Keypad a little fiddly to use.

I decided to upgrade from my Nokia 6600 to the Siemens S65. I have been loyal to Nokia since 1998, but was iritated by the number of bugs with my 6600, so decided it was time for a change.

The S65 is a "candy bar" style handset. Personally I think this is a great looking phone.

You can assign number keys 2 to 9 to a specific shortcut. Press and hold to access the shortcut. Key 1 is reserved for voicemail access, and pressing and holding key 0 brings up a list of countries. You select the country you want to call and it inserts a + followed by the country calling code.

The softkeys and joystick are also used for shortcuts, together with the volume keys on the right hand side of the phone. The manual states the volume keys have 4 shortcuts assigned to them - 1 shortcut accessible on a short press of the key and the other accessible by a long press for each key. However I find that a short press on the "-" volume key does absolutely nothing, not to worry.

A long press of the star key quickly toggles between silent and normal mode while a long press of the hash key turns the key guard on and off.

So many shortcut keys makes virtually everything I use on the phone accessible at the touch of a button.

Operating System
The handset uses a Symbian operating system, and you can purchase additional third party software. The operating system is very fast. I have had the phone for 6 weeks now and it has (only) crashed twice. The menu system is icon driven. Nice not to over-the-top icons with a logical structure.

Additional Features
The phone has an easy to use calendar, which sychs with iCal on my Mac using iSynch. It also has a Notes list and To-Do list which I find useful.

On the rear of the phone as well as the camera you have a socket for inserting an external antenna, should you decide to use the phone with a fully installed car kit.

WAP
The handset uses the Openwave browser for WAP, which can also handle standard web pages to. While I find the browser satisfactory, it is not as good as the Opera browser for Symbian handsets, which scales web pages so they fit nicely on the display and are readable too.

Bluetooth
I have had no problems using Bluetooth. It happily connects to my Mac, and handles a Bluetooth connection to my Plantronics M1000 headset far better than my previous phone. The phone also still rings when it is paired to a headset, unlike the 6600, so I no longer miss calls! If the phone is paired to a headset and you receive a call, you can answer the call on your phone and then use the phone for the conversation, or you can answer the phone via your headset, and use your headset for the conversation. You can also easily swop from headset to phone and vice-versa during a call at the touch of a button. A shame Nokia don't make it all so easy.

Call Quality
Call quality is very good, still clear on maximum volume. There is a built-in speaker phone, which does sound a little tinny but is bearable.

Camera
The camera has 1.3 megapixels, which was the big selling point for me. The camera has a 5-stage digital zoom, and also allows you to adjust the light balance. I have taken photographs and transferred them to my Mac. While the detail in the photos is as I expected, I find that the photos can lack colour. Adjusting the light balance improves the picture quality in low-light conditions but the picture quality is still not as good as on my 6600 for these type of shots. The camera also has the ability to record video (sound is captured via the microphone as well). You can change the resolution of the photos you take so that you can maximise the quantity stored. Overall I would say the camera is of average quality.

Address Book
Very good. There are loads of fields to store names numbers and addresses plus extra info such as fax numbers, office numbers, instant message names, pager number etc. You can also assign contacts to specific groups and add a picture to a contact. You can then set the phone to only ring if the caller belongs to a specific group etc. If you have assigned an image to a contact this is displayed when they call you. All very user-friendly.

Messaging
SMS is easy to use, T9 predictive text is supported. All outgoing SMS are saved in a folder, plus a tally is kept on the number of texts sent. Good if you are a text addict worried about the size of your bill!

Again MMS is just as easy to use. I do find the keypad a bit fiddly to use, I think that the keys could protrude a bit more to make it easier to type as the keys are very close together.

I have set my phone up to retrieve my email via POP. Not the best email client though. Downloaded emails are kept on the server - you cannot change it so that they are automatically deleted once you have downloaded or downloaded and deleted from the phone. You can go into each message individually and choose to delete on the server - the phone then connects to your inbox and deletes the message. A bit of a pain though as you have to do this individually for each message, which can take a while when you have lots of emails to delete! No IMAP or Blackberry support, but this does not bother me. The phone will display any JPGs attached to emails, unlike some other phones.

Display
A big TFT LCD 60-odd thousand colour display. This gives a bright, crisp display even in the sunniest of lighting conditions. Great for reviewing your photos/videos on. You do have the option of adjusting the brightness.

Battery Life
Lithium-Ion battery supplied as standard. I use my phone for about 60 mins per day, 20 - 30 mins of this on the phone. I find that it can get me through 2 full days before needing a recharge, enough for me.

Memory
The phone comes with a 32Mb reduced sized MMC. Plenty of room for storing hundreds photos, even at the highest resolution. The card is hot-swoppable, you insert it in the bottom of the phone via the charging slot.

Annoyances
A few other things I have not covered already that do not please me. The phone seems to have confirmation prompts for everything, for example you turn the phone on and you get a confirmation prompt asking you to confirm switch on!

The phone does not support voice activated dialling. This seems to be an omission as previous Siemens models do support it and you would expect this from a high-spech phone.

When you take a photo the phone emits a very loud camera click noise, even if the phone is on silent mode. I find this irritating and unnecessary.

The phone has a recorder but you cannot use this when on a call, which is a shame. Apparently this is only on models destined for the UK due to issues around the legality of recording phone conversations!!! I think I will by an import next time round!

Other stuff
Ringtones - I just use ring ring. You can download more if this is your cup-of-tea. Again you can download screensavers, wallpapers and themes etc. but that is not really for me.

Alarm - you can set it to come on only on certain days of the week, so you don't get rudely awoken at the weekend. Also has a snooze option - very handy. I use it as my only alarm clock.

Games - a few included. One is a racing car game which seems quite good. Again I am not a gamer so don't know much about this area.

Members' Comments onawoodvine's Review

• churocket on 3rd Dec 2004

  I believe that S65's operating platform is not Symbian but something that Siemens made itself.

• hak on 5th Feb 2005

  Could you advise how one could get an image when someone rings you up, I have already put an image in the address book, and yet it does not display when rung.