It was that time to buy a new mobile, but for a change I opted for something different instead of a Nokia, so I chose the Siemens A55 and boy it was worth it.
To start the A55 looks similar to the A50 with the exception of a new type of connector in the 55 series, it supports 16 polyphonic ringtones and has a handsfreespeaker system built in to the phone.
The A55 is really simple to use all the phones navigation is done via three buttons just below the screen, the middle one for up, down and the phone book and the outer buttons for selecting the required options.
The phone is
a nice size, not to big and not to small (45mm x 100mm) and weighs a mere 84g.
The screen on the A55 has a good resolution of 101 x 64 pixels and hold 4 lines of text with up to 16 characters per line, and an orange or blue back-light depending on the phone colour.
The sound quality is very good and the speaker on the A55 is quite loud on full volume, but when you have the built in handsfree speaker phone turned on it does get a bit crackly, but it is extremely loud, with this option turned on, even on a low setting.
The A55 has the ability to hold up to 50 numbers + SIM card memory (140 on the one I have) and the ability to assign graphics to callers, so when they call you get a picture or animation displayed on the screen.
You can also download polyphonic ringtones for the A55, but I must say that most places I've seen only seem to supply for Nokia, but using the A55's WAP you can access ringtones for the phone and some of them are FREE.
The A55 also uses EMS (Enhanced Message Service) the ability to send text with pictures and/or sound and when your typing in your text you have the option of using T9 (predictive text) which is great if you want to get your text entered a lot quicker. For those of you who are not sure what T9 is here's an example:
On a standard phone to enter dog you would press 36664, but with T9 you would enter 364.
The A55 has a superb alarm clock where you can set it to go off on certain days of the week, user profiles and several games.
The games on the A55 are Stack Attack, where you have to stack boxes, it's a bit like tetris, Balloon Shooter, place the cross over the floating balloons and pop them, Move the Box, move the boxes into the places in as few moves as possible and Wacko, where you must hit the teddy bears on the head but not hit the cute bunnies.
As for the WAP I can't really say much as this is the first time I've used WAP, but this enable you to access a text based internet for information such as the weather, lottery results and loads of other stuff you can find.
Overall the A55 is so easy to use, you can just pick it up and within two minutes you've mastered it, I would say it's easier than the Nokia 3310 (My old phone) and the ringtones are pleasant on the ears instead of high pitched beeps you get 16 polyphonic tones which means you can get the sound of drums, symbols etc in your ringtones.
Ok so the small keys get a bit of getting used to, but the smaller the phone the smaller the keys and these keys are not tiny, they are well spaced apart so you don't hit the wrong ones.
Now, onto the price, this all depends on what Network you are on, I bought mine on Orange for £79.99, but I have seen the A55 on O2 for £69.99, but it all depends on which network you prefer.
Now Information for the Techies out there:
General features ---------------- Announced in: February 2003 eGSM900/GSM1800 Battery type: Li-Ion 650 mAh Autonomy: Standby time: up to 250 hours Talk time: up to 6 hours Re-charging: about 2 hours Graphical display with the resolution of 101 x 64 pixels, it contains up to 4 text lines (16 characters each), one line with icons; it has either orange or blue back lighting, it depends on colour of the phone Interchangeable covers - CLIPit Weight: 84 g. Dimensions: - 45mm x 100mm
Memory ------ Phone book: up to 50 phone numbers + SIM-cardmemory. Small pictures could be assigned to contacts. Lists of the last calls: 10 dialled numbers 10 received numbers 10 missed numbers with date and time indication Up to 4 caller groups Reminders of anniversaries and birthdays
Call management, ringing tones ------------------------------- Vibrating alert 16-tones polyphony Integrated handsfree mode Speed dialling: for up to 8 phone numbers Autodialing (up to 10 attempts) EFR, HR, FR
SMS --- EMS A possibility to send and receive ringtones and animated pictures A possibility to send a group SMS message Predictive text input T9 Templates (up to 14) Concatenateted messages: up to 760 characters Russian text input
Connectivity ------------ WAP 1.2.1 Over the Air interface
Organiser and extras --------------------- Time, date Alarm-clock, it can alert in special days of week Calculator, currency converter User's profiles Organiser, which supports different types of events Games: Stack Attack, Balloon Shooter, Move The Box & Wacko
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Jun 9th, 2003
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