I've just bought this phone on Tesco Mobile Pay as You Go for £99.99 (well actually it's £124.99 but you get £25 off if you buy £25 or more in other shopping) and I've seen it advertised in Dixons and on T-mobile PAYG for the same price, you can get it for free if you get a phone on contract. One of the things that attracted me to this phone was the design, instead of the normal keyboard layout, it's set out in an X shape, it fit nicely in my hand and seemed sturdy enough and had a good range of functions for the price. Just as a by the by I'll say that so far Tesco hasn't impressed me with their service on this, I picked up the box and paid for it with the rest of my shopping then went to customer service to collect the phone, only to find after half an hour or more of waiting and them searching that the phones weren't going to be in store until the end of the week. Now, why they had a box there for you to pick up and a phone on display is a very good question, it seems that they put these things out on the launch date regardless of whether they've actually got any in stock or not. Anyway, I decided that I didn't want a refund and gave them my details to contact me when the phone was in. Full marks on that point, unfortunately although they told me they were going to put one aside for me at customer services, when I got there it was another 30-45 min wait while they searched and searched and finally got someone to get it from the warehouse.

Unfortunately when I finally get my new phone home never have I come across a phone that looks so shoddy and ill-made, it certainly looks and feels alright on the sellers' displays but when you get it home and open the box you find that you've got to assemble it yourself. The phone comes in 4 parts the outer plastic case that feels like it's come out of a cheap christmas cracker, the phone innards, a keyboard and a separate battery. The keyboard is a small square, with plastic keys on a plastic back stuck onto a rubberised pad, when you pick it up it flops around and looks cheap and nasty. The keyboard just rest on the front of the phone with nothing to hold it in place until you put the front cover on, no guidelines or clips to hold it in place. OOPs thought I broke it, no it's alright the outer case is meant to fall into two pieces, it's the only way to get the phone in. 10 minutes later I finally get an acceptable fit on the front cover, the tricks to hold the bottom end down tight and then push on the top until it engages, the back goes on quite easily in comparison. Well OK it doesn't look so bad now that it's together but I'm still not happy with the fit of the front cover, it seems loose at the bottom and there's a distinct crack between the joins - not surprising really as there's nothing to hold it together there, no clips or anything, just pressure. At this point I realised that I'd taken the plastic cover off the case but not the display screen, well the phones a little harder to take apart than you might expect, it takes quite a hefty shove to get the back moving. Sure enough there's a piece of plastic with two tabs over the screen, but is it a cover or is it the screen itself ? It seems to be stuck on too tightly to come off, so I debated over this for another 10 minutes pushing a nail under the edges to see if it would shift, finally I decided to take the bull by the horns and started tugging in earnest, it had been glued to the metal surrounds of the screen but did eventually come off thankfully not damaging the screen in the process which was something I was worried about. Again putting it all back together it just doesn't seem to fit well and I'm concerned that at the first fall it's going to come to pieces - whenever it's in my hand I can't resist giving it an extra squeeze just to push the cover together a little.

- Polyphonic Ring Tones - I've been a bit sceptical of polyphonic tones and couldn't really see what the fuss was about, until I turned on the phone and was exposed to the opening jingle, it was surprisingly clear and tuneful. Different tones can be set for different call groups / messages etc. I counted 21 preset tones ranging from very good to the frankly tacky, jazz, classical and techno. So I'm quite happy with this function. New tones are available from www.my-siemens.com/ringtones and Tesco is also marketing the phone as downloadable but I'll comment on that later. If you want to switch off the ring tones the phone can be placed on vibration alert.

- Camera - there's a small camera in the back of the phone that can be activated by clicking 5. Now, I've been to the Siemens website and they show a picture of two girls taking their photo with the MC60 camera and you can see the image produced on the screen - good and clear and picture like. So, advertising puffs aside, I was expecting at the least a reasonable image to be produced, sure enough you can select for indoor and outdoor pictures, adjust brightness, so far so good. Unfortunately what you actually get is a pixellated grainy image with poor colour definition, frankly you'd be very lucky to decipher what the picture actually is, holding the camera very still helps a little but I still haven't been able to produce anything that I'd like to send to anyone. Still, I will persevere for a while extending the exposure time may help, and I'll update the op if I can get a decent image. If you manage to get a decent photo you can use it as wallpaper, screensaver, startup or shutdown animation or send it as part as an MMS message

- Tri - Band cover

- The Phone Book allows you to allocate groups

Pictures of Siemens MC60

CDCOVER EXAMPLE

***GENERAL***

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***CONCLUSION***

CAMERA UPDATE DEC 03 :