Siemens SL45 Review

Good Points
Battery life, MP3 player, (upto 128-mb of memory in a phone, anyone!) Specification, (actually has useful, non-gimmicky features!) and build quality. Massive amount of packaged goodies - headphones/handsfree kit, docking cradle/charger, CD full of software, memory card. Plus it looks damn funky!

Bad Points
Some people find it tricky to use - it's just different to more common makes of phone, that's all. After a month, though, you're there. My only real gripe is that when the low battery warning tone sounds you've got about 15 seconds of talktime or a minute on standby before it switches off.

General Comments
I own an SL45 and have had no problems whatsoever with this phone. Battery life is great (about 3-4 days inc. about an hour of calls a day and use of the MP3 player) and build quality easily the best i've come across. After 6 months of use there are no scratches or marks or creaks and rattles on the phone and it all appears solid and well put together still. Reviewer commented on dodgy build quality... you obviously haven't used a Nokia recently - they all seem to squeak and creak and scratch easily! This is indestructable compared to 3 the Nokias (Banana, 5110 and 3110), two Samsungs (A110, A300) and Sony J5 i've used.
Plus, I picked mine up for just £20 (not expensive) on an o2 contract because I managed to get a £50 trade in on my old A300!
All in all I find this a fab phone. Little things like the ability to download ringtones and logos off the Net and transfer them across via the docking cradle are a bonus - no more spending £1.50 a minute to download them from premium rate numbers! At the mo i've got 100+ ringtones, 140+ screen logos in different categories, about 180 SMS messages and about 30 different startup animations on the standard 32mb 'card.
On a formatted 32mb card the dictaphone will record for about 4 hours non-stop! Crazy storage would be possible with a 128mb card!
General phone reception and call quality is fine, much better than the A300 I used to own - people always complained that they couldn't hear me on that!
I've marked the VFM as 5 because the phone is becoming rare and still commands a big premium offline - I was quoted £440 by a 'high-street mobile retailer'. On contract (if you can find anyone which still stocks it!) this is much more respectable.
Anyone want a break from the norm? I highly recommend this phone.