Much like the SL65 (the burgundy slide phone), the SF65 flip phone looks sensational. This is by no means a shallow comment - phones are as much a fashion accessory as they are a means of talking these days. The generic model is in white, and the top part of the phone rotates 180 degrees. Then you close it and hey presto! You have what looks like a proper digital camera.
I've never had any trouble getting a signal, and because it's triband it's useable pretty much anywhere. The menu system is easy to understand and the camera is extremely easy to use.
Praise be! I've said all the nice stuff. Now let me tell you why this phone is atrocious.
Firstly, unlike any flip phone made after 1807, this one has no external screen. The result of this is you have no idea if the phone is charging properly without having to open it, and most importantly, you have no idea who is calling you. This may sound picky, but consider this. If you own a flip phone, you know the drill. Your phone rings, you look at the external display, open it and talk. With this one, it rings, you look at it, wonder whether it's your mother or possibly hired goons coming to collect the £300 loan you took out to pay for the phone, then open it and nervously say hello. But you aren't greeted with a voice, just an ear shattering courtesy of the tinny polyphonic ringtones (there is no bluetooth or mp3 player, and anyone who has tried transferring data with IR knows how infuriating it can be). Opening the phone does not answer the call. Again, I may be picky but you expect a flip phone to behave in a particular way, and this doesn't.
Text messaging is no problem, but getting the letters to appear on screen can be a task. Button response is sluggish, and is reminiscent of when you type on an old computer on the verge of freezing up. While easy to use, the menu system is presented in a fashionable grey and white, and unlike it's counterparts, this is not alterable on the SF65.
But oh no, these are just the entreés, we have the main course now.
If you look at the lens on the camera, it reads, very clearly, 1.3 megapixel. Utter nonsense. I parted with my old P800 to have this phone, which has a less powerful camera, yet took better pictures than the Sf65. The camera will only work in "camera mode" (where the screen is twisted round and closed - the Siemens website shows you how it works). This means the spontenaity that was supposedly tyhe whole point of camera phones is gone. Once you have twisted and wrenched the phone into a camera, you are presented with a picture quality that is so bad, I actually removed the lens and cleaned it because I thought it must be dirty. It wasn't. The movement is jerky, when you can make out something on your viewfinder it's usually too dark to photograph, and the flash (which is not a flash, just an LED torch placed just under the lens) only stays on for around 5 seconds before turning itself off. This camera is so bad it would have been tossed aside back in 1906, let alone 2006.
For what you pay for this handset (I've seen figures orbiting the £300 mark), you should expect an awful lot more phone. The white, while pretty, obviously attracts dirt, and for what you pay you should really expect mp3s and bluetooth as standard. Hell, for that price I'd expect Laura Prepon's number programmed into the phone.
As the title suggests, this phone looks wonderful but is absolutely useless. You're far better off looking at the Sony Ericsson K700, or better yet, saving the £300, going on a cheap contract and getting (for free at the moment in Carphone Warehouse), the incredible Sony Ericsson W800i.
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Advantages: Looks good, amazingly robust, i dropped it down several flights of stairs. Disadvantages: Unreliable, a bad phone to use when an urgent text or phone call is needed to be made
j.o.n 26.06.2006 (26.06.2006)
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Review of Siemens SF65
Advantages: Cheap, easy of use, Can phone people and receive text and WAP what more do you want? Disadvantages: Doesnt have camera and nokia is popular brand ie. thiefs like it!
mjwalker 28.08.2005 (28.08.2005)
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Review of Nokia 3510i
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