05.02.04 - I have edited this so you might just want to skip to the bottom.
I used to have a nokia that i dropped so many times it was held together by sellotape. I shopped around for a new nokia and decided that I didn't want to pay the £80 for a new one - after all with my track record I am only going to drop it again.
I am on Orange Pay as you go and wanted to stay with them, so I went to my local orange shop. The Siemens A55 was on offer there for £39.99 - a bargain I am sure you will agree but thats not all. There are currently doing a deal where they give you £10.00 free air time credit and they give this to existing Orange customers to thank you for staying loyal to them and also to new orange customers to thank you for joining with them. This then in theory put the price the phone down to £29.99 as I would have needed to get credit sooner rather than later.
Being an orange customer already I simply inserted my SIM and I was ready to go. The
phone is really easy to use and is incredibly light weight. It measures aout 3 inches by 1 inch and is lighter than my old nokia and i didn't think they got much lighter than that. It has all the usual features that you would expect, Text Messaging, Conferece Calls, WAP, Games, Alarm Clock, Games, Currency Convertor, Hundreds of Ring tones and text tones, Predictive text, Text delivery reports, Answer Phone etc.
It took me a while to get used to as I had been using a nokia for years and years and when i was texting I kept putting a full stop in instead of a space as the characters are different - however give it a week and that had all passed.
I really would recommend this little phone if you want a cheap cheerful phone that has all the usual features. The battery seems to last forever and literally only needs charging up once a week - and I use it a lot. However I don't know if the long battery life is due to the make or because its new so I'll update this if the situation changes. Also I get great reception on this phone but again I don't know if this is down to the phone or down to Orange as in this area I have never had any trouble getting a good reception.
All in all if you want a cheap little phone that has all the usual features and more then you can't go wrong. Especially if you buy it from an orange shop on pay as you go and you get £10 free credit - a bargain in my eyes.
05.02.04 *** EDIT ***
Well I have had this phone for several months now so I thought it was time for an update.
The battery life on this phone is still very good - I probably only charge it up every 5 or 6 days and even when the battery life is showing empty it still lasts nearly a day.
I took this phone to Australia and had very few problems. The phone did however take ages to roam and find the network. My friend had a Nokia and this found the Australian network within my seconds - mine on the other hand literally took hours.
The other big problem that I have found is admittedly a small problem but it bugs me. The key pad is not very sensitive. I know I keep comparing this phone to the Nokia but as its the only other phone I have owned I can't help it. When texting you need to push the key pad really hard for it to register a character. This is difficult for me as I text really quickly and often look back and it has missed letters and spaces out. All you have to do is push the keys harder but it still slows things down. Its the same with phone numbers you need to push the number keys hard for them to register.
There are however more good things about this phone that I have discovered. You select your ring tone and when your phone rings the ring tone emits (obviously) however if the number calling you is withheld or is a number that your phone does not recognise it rings with a different ring. This might drive some people mad but for me its great. If I am cooking dinner or in the bath and the phone rings with a different ring tone I know that its possible I don't know the person so therefore do not need to rush to get to the phone. You can also put your phone book into groups so say family and friends will come through with a different ring tone as will work colleagues etc. You can of course select the ring tones for the groups - although I must confess I haven't done this as it looks like too much grief.
The vibrate on the phone is good and often I don't hear the phone ringing if its at the bottom of my hangbag buried under everything including the kitchen sink but I do normally hear it vibrating against something. The games are terrible but then who really cares about the games???? Ok some people might but I never seem to get the time to play the games.
I hope you have found this update useful - I still love the phone but dispite my initial beliefs its not as great as I thought it was. Mind you I haven't dropped it yet so see no need to replace it.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: Easy to use; Light; Small; Quick loading times; Performs the basic well and efficiently; Durable Disadvantages: Old; Does not have an in-built camera
aznben1 24.08.2008 (24.08.2008)
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Nov 23rd, 2003
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