Siemens SL45 Review

Overall Rating

Style

Poor hardware and software quality

Though it's the best looking (and most expensive!) phone I've ever owned, I can safely say that it's also the worst mobile I've ever owned. In less than one year, it's been back in the shop three times. Next week I'll be on my fourth, as I've just handed it back to the shop because the "clear" button stopped working, which meant I couldn't correct mistakes. Before that, it was the spontaneous-power-downs. Before that, the LCD screen went dead (though you could still make and answer calls), and before that, it just didn't work out of the box when I bought it. Excellent "out-of-box experience". Then there's the realy poor reception quality. And the less-than-average battery life, and the poorly-designed battery connectors which can cause spontaneous power-downs (after which you have to remove the battery, reconnect it, and then set the date and time on the phone.) As an MP3 player, you can forget it with the standard 570 mA/H battery. Not to mention the 115Kbits serial transfer, which means you're transferring MP3s at slower-than-real-time rates. I won't even bother talking about the software crashes. It could simply be that I got a lemon. But three of them? We're talking three different phones here! Or maybe I'm just unlucky and keep getting refurbs. Until Siemens get their build and software quality sorted out, I would not recommend this phone other than as a fashion accessory.

Members' Comments ontty.'s Review

• Nigel. on 2nd Jan 2003

  perhaps you don't really treat your phones well as i have had a number of phones out of the box and i have had them for years including the siemans sl45. Please mention some of the good points about this phone such as; it has a mp3 player that No other phone has, it has a good amount of games as well as having a dictaphone...

• Sean. on 7th Jan 2003

  I did treat my phone well and have had many power downs. After 4 months the display vanished, and I have had to turn off the phone and reset it to get the display back up. As for the MP3 and games, there are much better phones on the market which offer much more...stay away from this one!

• Nigel. on 9th Jan 2003

  well Sean, everyone has there opinion, this is my piece if advice; do not get a Samsung T100, the phone has been rushed into the market to compete with nokia's colour screen phones, the colour screen soon loses it's charm as the menu is boring and bland. The only other thing this phone has is it's "colour games", which run so slow they are unplayable. So I was looking for a phone with a mp3 capability and the only one I could find was the SL45, so I took my t100 to a phone shop and I swapped it for the SL45, the SL45 was a brand new one, the shop also gave me a device called IC35, which is a organiser device which controls the SL45 through infared.... I've had no problems with my SL45, it looks like you have just got bad look with that phone...

• Jennifer. on 24th Jan 2003

  Both myself and my partner got SL45's and have also had nothing but trouble with both of them. All the same problems as you've said - it has poor coverage, it shuts down whenever it feel like it, the screen has also died (although as you said you're still able to call and receive calls). Also the screen - when it works - is more often than not scrambled. And most of the problems started within 2 months of taking the phone out of the box. STAY AWAY FROM THIS ONE!!!

• Nigel. on 24th Jan 2003

  It seems that it's just Australia that has faulty handsets then, i still think the siemens sl45 is a good value for money phone...

• gp1. on 8th May 2003

  I too purchased a siemens SL45 in 2002. While the phone loooks great and has a number of features which attracted me to purchasing it, mine went back for repairs 3 times. The most common being the blank screen which could not be corrected despite being replaced 3 times. Sadly, i am going to give it away and purchase the S55.I hope i get a better run with it.