| Siemens ST55 |
| General |
| Network | Gsm 900 / Gsm 1800 |
| Announced | 2003, 3q |
| Status | Available |
| Size |
| Dimensions | 99 X 47 X 22 Mm |
| Weight | 87 G |
| Display |
| Type | Tft, 65k Colors |
| Size | 120 X 160 Pixels, 7 Lines |
| | - 5-way Navy Key |
| Ringtones |
| Type | Polyphonic (40 Channels) |
| Customization | Download, |
| Vibration | Yes |
| Memory |
| Phonebook | 255 X 15 Entries |
| Call Records | 10 Dialed, 20 Received, 20 Missed Calls |
| Card Slot | No |
| | - 1.2 Mb For Photos
- 1.3 Mb For Mms
- 1.1 Mb For Email Messages
- 100 Short Messages |
| Data |
| Gprs | Class 10 (4+1/3+2 Slots), 32 - 48 Kbps |
| Hscsd | No |
| Edge | No |
| 3g | No |
| Wlan | No |
| Bluetooth | No |
| Infrared Port | No |
| Usb | |
| Features |
| Messaging | Sms, Ems, Mms, Email |
| Browser | Wap 2.0/xhtml |
| Clock | Yes |
| Alarm | Yes |
| Games | 3 - Wacko, Toggle, Tetris + Java |
| Colors | |
| Camera | Vga, 640x480 Pixels |
| | - T9
- Organizer
- Currency Converter
- Calculator
- User Profiles
- Built-in Handsfree
- Syncml |
| Battery |
| | Standard, Li-ion 750 Mah (eba-595) |
| Stand-by | Up To 140 H |
| Talk Time | Up To 4 H 30 Min |
|
Siemens - ST55Review Siemens ST55
Standard kit:
Phone
Charger
Battery
User’s guide
Siemens ST55 is not a typical product of the product range made by Siemens. In fact it is an ODM-phone elaborated by Taiwan company - Quanta (earlier it was said about Arima, but it was false information). Taking into account that another company developed this handset, many features, traditional for Siemens, are absent. On the other hand, the phone supports 40-tones polyphony, had TFT 65K display. To some extent it is a transitional model between old models from Siemens and those, which will be launched in the beginning of the next year. We doubt that this model will have successors, it was made just to give users the most popular today functions – a camera and color.
The design of the phone is typical for Asian models. Originally the handset was produced in silver color. Probably later some other color solutions will be launched. When you look at the phone, you could notice a large screen (more than half of all the phone). It measures 28õ38 mm. The resolution is 128õ160 pixels, what allows to display up to 7 text lines, title and tips to the soft keys. The screen has a good brightness and contrast, the picture is vivid and rich. You can change pre-installed settings but the difference won’t be very large.
The picture is not so bright under the Sun, but the advantage of this phone is that it is quite visible. Screen saver (digital clock) or set of pictures chosen by you is displayed in the standby mode. They will change at a certain interval. Own photos taken by the integrated camera also are used as wallpapers. Really the screen is one of the best ones in its class.
Dimensions of the phone are compatible with Siemens S55 (98.5 x 47.2 x 21.6 mm, 87 g.), but it looks a little bit thick. It’s not very handy. Although the phone has a bending shape, you always feel its edges. There are no control keys on the sides.
System connector is placed on the bottom of the handset. It is not standard. It is possible to connect only handsfree or system cable (not included in the standard kit) to it. Accessories from other models are not compatible with ST55.
A strap hole is located on the top of the phone. Only two models from Siemens – Siemens CL50 and Siemens SL55 had it before. Siemens CL50 was also an ODM-phone like ST55, it was produced by another company. Siemens SL55 is aimed mainly for women and that it is why it was decided to make a strap hole their. Ladies are not a target group of ST55. We think that the main users of this model (80%) will be men at the age of 25-35 years. The second focus group will be younger users, but they will be interested in this phone only after first price reductions.
The next difference of the Asian phone is a blue color of backlighting. It is very bright and all characters are clearly seen. The keypad has a terraced spacing; all keys are small. Close spacing of keys is not noticed when you dial a number, but it is not very convenient to input text messages. Developers decided not to increase phone’s dimensions, but reduce the size of the keypad. It was a controversial solution. Of course you’ll get used to this keypad, but it is not very comfortable.
If you lay the phone on the screen, the keypad won’t touch the surface. It is a guarantee that ther will be no casual pressures. The phone supports manual and automatic keypad guard.
Joystick can be used to move through the menu. It also reacts to pressures. The joystick is not large, functional and convenient. Unfortunately, the menu is not well thought out because in some menus you could move only in vertical or horizontal directions. If you confuse them, you will reach the upper level of the menu. It is just a tiny software shortcoming; may be it will be corrected later.
If you lay the phone on the back side, you could see an angle between the phone and the surface. The angle is explained by the presence of camera, which is placed not deeply in the case. It doesn’t have a protected shutter. Near the camera there is a mirror to take picture of yourself. If you look from the left, you could see a loudspeaker which is used to play back melodies and speakerphone function. It is very important that the phone is raised a little above the surface, other wise the sound would be muffled, as for example, in the phones of Panasonic.
The phone is equipped with a lithium-ion battery of 750 mAh capacity. Back cover doesn’t have backlash, it is reliably fixed. According to the manufacturers, the phone could operate about 140 hours in the standby mode and up to 4.5 hours in the talking mode. In reality (MTS network) the phone worked about 2 days in case of 20 minutes of talking and 30 minutes of using other applications. The screen used in the phone has large power consumption. If you adjust all display settings (brightness of the backlighting, contrast) to minimum you could slightly increase battery life. On the whole the phone will operate 2 days or less it you have more conversations or you use more functions. Total time of battery re-charging is about 1.5 hours.
Menu
You can enter the main menu, pressing right soft-key. The main menu consists of 9 menu items, located in three rows. In spite of rich display capabilities, all the icons are rather simple. They look even simpler than on Siemens M55, which doesn’t support too much colors and doesn’t have high screen resolution.
Shortcut number navigation is available in the menu. Voice tags can be added to selected items (list of this items is pre-default).
Submenus of the main menu represent just lists of commands. A way to display information is very simple. You won’t se elaborate icons, beautiful warnings or any peculiarities.
As usual you can assign switching on of digital camera to the left soft-key. The same menu will appear if you press joystick to the left. It might’ve been more interesting if Siemens assign the other function to this key. If you press joystick down in the standby mode, you’ll call a phonebook. If you press it up, you’ll get an access to voice control functions. Press the joystick to the right or just press it and you’ll reach the main menu. Let’s describe the main phone’s featuers.
Phonebook. Up to 255 entries could be stored in the phone memory. Several fields are available for each entry (up to 4l phone numbers, post address, e-mail, URL, caller group). A special picture and a melody can be added to each name. Any graphic file or a photo can be used as a picture. Phone number, his/her name and a photo can be displayed while incoming call. It’s interesting that they also can be displayed while outgoing call.
Voice tags are added to main phone numbers (default). Voice recognition is realized quite well. It operates stable, even outside.
Phone numbers from the phone memory are displayed in the list of phone number. All records from SIM-card are hidden in a separate menu. There is a quick search by first letter (second, third letters) in the total list.
Up to 5 caller groups are available in the phone. It is possible to assign a picture or a melody to each of them.
Messages. This handset supports usual SMS-messages. There are 10 templates (5 of them are editable). Predictive text input (T9) is available. Up to 50 SMS-messages can be stored in the phone memory, the same number of messages can be kept in the archive. ST55 supports EMS. It means that it is possible to attach simple pictures and melodies to your message. The variety of pictures is not impressive.
The phone has a good realization of MMS. You can create several slides, add picture, melody and text for each of them. According to this menu up to 1.4 Mb of memory can be used for MMS-messages.
The phone supports POP3/SMTP e-mail client. It is very similar to one in other models manufactured by Siemens. We didn’t find considerable changes. Up to 1075 Kb can be used for e-mails. The use could download either heading or the whole e-mail. He can’t download special number of Kb from the message.
Menu
Surf&Fun. The handset supports GPRS 4+2. So, it is easier to use wap-browser (versions 2.0) here.
There are three games in the phone - Funny Toggle, Wacko, Tetris. Your mission in the first game is to turn over pictures so that they become similar. In the second one you should press keys to prevent small animals from going from the hole. The third one is well-known Tetris.
Downloads. There are two folders in this menu: Melodies and Images. All downloaded files are kept jeer.
Call counters and lists of the last 20 missed/received and dialed calls can be viewed here.
Sound settings. Profiles are not available in this phone. Only one type of ringing tone can be used. You can select sound volume and kind of ringing tone. Any voice record can be used as a ringing tone. The melody also can be created with a help of musical composer. The user can edit MMF-files just in the phone. The main and 15 extra tracks are available. It is pleasant to carry out an experience with sound.
Extra. The calendar has monthly and weekly view. When you view the list of reminders, they are displayed only as records of a special date, full text of reminders is not displayed. To view it, the use should press a key. It is not possible to set duration of the event, only its beginning. Recurrent records are not available either. Up to 50 reminders are stored in the phone memory.
Up to 10 text notes (50 characters each) can be created in the phone too.
Alarm clock can be setup for special days of the week. It’s easy to use it.
Countdown timer is also available in the phone.
World time function is not wel realized. Firstly, you can see a text menu. To choose a city, you should enter settings and them list cities on the map.
Autopower on/off function is available too.
There is calculator and currency converter in the phone.
Voice memo allows to make records (maximum time is 1 minute 14 seconds).
Settings. This menu doubles the other menu item – Audio settings. It is not obvious why it was necessary to do it. Nevertheless, this menu item is number one in Settings. There was an impression that developers just had to fill in the main menu, so, they decided to double this item. Among unusual display settings we notice a possibility to adjust wallpaper; the picture could be placed in several ways in this phone. For example, you can multiply the picture if the picture has lower resolution than the screen, or it is possible to stretch it to fit the screen. The easiest way is to locate picture in the center, not changing it.
It is possible to switch off keypad backlighting and remain display backlighting.
Any set of pictures (you choose their order yourself), not only digital clock can be used as a screen saver.
Camera. A camera integrated in the phone is situated on the back cover of the handset. A small mirror is placed there too. The camera allows to take pictures of different resolution: 120õ160, 320õ240, 640õ480 pixels. All pictures are stored as JPG files. You can select quality of files (low, average, high).
Screen of the phone is used as a viewfinder. When you take a picture, it is well seen on the screen. When you view it after shooting, it is blurred. Probably, the phone processes the picture when it outputs it on the screen from the memory.
It is also possible to set brightness (5 points, 0 – by default, moving from –2 to +2), switch on/off night mode. Sensitivity of the matrix is increasing in this mode, but noises are increased too.
You can apply different effect while shooting. The picture could be black-and white (effect Mono). There are also such effects as Sepia, Bluish. You can apply different effect while shooting. The picture could be black-and white that is why there are such effects as Sepia, Bluish. Illustration of Mono effect is clear, illustrations of two other effects are too complicated to understand what these two effects mean.
One could set Light Frequency (50 or 60 Hz) in the phone. This setting is necessary to change if the picture is trembling on the screen.
You can also use Zoom function in the shooting mode. Certainly, it’s not an optical zoom, just digital zoom (õ2, õ4). There is no sense is using this feature, because you can increase size of this picture on PC and the quality will be better in this case.
All photos are kept in the photo album. You can view them from the whole list, there are small icons of each photo. It is also possible to view detail information, concerning creation time, bit depth, resolution. There is a possibility to increase an image using Zoom feature. These photos can be setup as wallpapers.
The phone doesn’t handle IrDA and bluetooth, to synchronise images with PC you should use a data adapter. It is not included in the standard delivery kit, that is why I couldn’t download photos from PC. All pictures can be send via MMS messages. Unfortunately we couldn’t send photos, probably it is a shortcoming of the current version of firmware. We hope that this bug will be corrected in a commercial sample.
Quality of the images on the screen is average. It is difficult to recognize the face of the person. We think that the problem is again in the way of processing images.
Impressions
The phone offers standard capabilities, if to say about sound quality and loudspeaker volume. There are no problems with them. Speakerphone function is well-realized, the volume is high. Ringing volume differs depending on selected melody, but the sound is one of the loudest among phones produced by Siemens. Polyphony is very nice, though it differs from the phones of other manufacturers. The sound is more sonorous than in the phones made by Samsung, Panasonic, Alcatel. On the one hand, it increases the volume, but on the other it becomes not so soft. The 40-tones polyphonic ringing tone sounds as 16-tones or 24-tones polyphony. You can listen to the melodies yourself (the link is below). Vibrating alert is strong, it is almost always felt.
One of the biggest shortcomings of this phone is a short operating time in the standby mode. The reason is large power consumption of the screen. The other defect is absence of IrDA, inconvenient keypad. Unfortunately, not all screen capabilities are used. Menu icons, menu interface are made in ascetic style. It is not an advantage of the fashion phone. Compare the icons with the menu in Alcatel OT 535 and you’ll immediately notice the difference.
The advantages of this phone are wonderful display, which operates well even under the Sun. The phone has good speakerphone and voice dialing functions. Then, it is equipped with camera. But if compare it with the products of other manufacturers, it doesn’t have exclusive features, just standard set of capabilities.
After reading official press-release, most people thought that the phone had 1.2 Mb of memory. In reality it is not so. This memory can be only to store photos. Besides, there is space to store SMS-messages, e-mails. The memory is not dynamical. It is not obvious why, because many users of this phone will not use mail client.
The manufacturer positions this phone as a fashion solution. Siemens ST55 is placed between MC60 and SL55 in the product range of this company. It means that the phone will cost about 300-330 USD in the end of October, beginning of November. It is not the lowest price, taking into account absence of IrDa. But it’s OK, if remember that ST55 is a fashion phone.
Java is absent in the current version of software.
Unfortunately designers from Siemens did not take part in creating this phone. Design and ergonomics of the phone considerably differs from typical phone from Siemens. Taking into account that users of the fashion phones pay attention mainly to design, it could influence sales of this phone. Concerning functionality, ST55 is not the winner either. Already in September we could see Alcatel OT 735 whih would cost 120-150 USD less, have comparable functions, but worse screen (lesser size, 4096 colors). The main rival of ST55 will be Motorola E365, equipped with TFT 65K display and integrated VGS-camera. The main advantage of this model is its price – 190-210 USD. The model will be available at the same time as Siemens ST55.
All facts connected together allow to say that Siemens ST55 will be just a niche handset, which will not provide large sales. We recommend to pay attention on this model in April-May, when it would leave the market and cost about 200-230 USD. It can be a nice middle class model in spring. It will depend on price policy of the rivals. On the whole, you can buy much more functional phone spending the same money. For example, price for Sony Ericsson T610 will be similar, although this phone offers much more functions. The main difference is worse quality fo the screen (STN), it is not visible in sunny day. Anyway, we recommend you to try this phone in autumn yourself to have own opinion about this handset.
They say that in February we would be able to see a new Siemens ST55i, where all shortcomings of ST 55 would be corrected. The new model would support Java. There would be also a possibility to record video clips. So, let's wait and see. |
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