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Review Siemens C62

Siemens C62, live pictures

Standard kit:

Phone
Battery
Charger
Manual

Siemens C62 is a very important model for Siemens itself. It’s all up to C62 to show if ODM models will be successful for Siemens or no. This phone is built on Ericsson’s chip. In this very case only platform was bought, the phone’s design was developed by Siemens itself. Another important moment is that there is a big difference in hardware part of the phone; you can compare C62 with any phone from 55 series in order to see it. Different hardware and circuit technique.

Siemens lovers will start denying all arguments and telling that Siemens just modulated this phone differently and all coincidences weren’t made on purpose. Siemens decided to change the battery holder system, which used to work for quite a while now. From now on it’s similar to Sony Ericsson’s one. Here are the pictures of Siemens C62’s and Sony Ericsson T630’s:

Of course it’s just a coincidence and doesn’t prove anything. Just like quality screen which is similar to one of Sony Ericsson’s models by technical specifications. This model is the first one from Siemens in this segment that shows the picture very nice (Siemens ST55 is targeted on another segment and is ODM phone as well). You can compare the screen quality of Siemens A60 and Siemens C62. By the way, Siemens C60, M55 and SL55 use the same type of screen as the one in A60. It’s not hard to notice the difference, and I got to tell you, it’s not in favor of Siemens’s “own” phones. Siemens original displays picture quality doesn’t have the saturation level alike C62’s (with equal, but not maximum settings), you can also see grains, and screen’s behavior while encountering direct sunlight was far from being perfect.

The fact that Siemens C62 is ODM model lead to the lack of exchangeable covers feature, which became a standard for Siemens phones. On the other hand, phone’s size got reduced, and it’s really small for its segment. 101x44x20 mm size allows you to carry your phone anywhere you want, and the weight is 85 grams isn’t much nor small.

An interesting fact is that phone’s size is identical to Sony Ericsson T630 (it was laying near so I decided to give it a try, however, I could have tried Т610, but there is no real difference between them). The only difference is a phone’s shape, it’s more round than the T630 has. Siemens S55 and Ericsson T68 were similar as well. That wasn’t made on purpose neither then nor now. It’s just that such sizes are typical for the segments. However, after making this statement I’ve found only two phone manufacturers that use such sizes: Siemens and Sony Ericsson, now that was the time I became shocked. Buy anyway; the sizes were not made similar on purpose.

This phone will be released in three color themes: Eagle White (white case with grey sides), Pigeon Blue (Steel color front edging and keyboard), and Cherry Red (Cherry edging and keyboard). All three designs look stylish, Cherry Red is the brightest, and most likely fit to women instead of youth people. This phone is targeted for its segment rather nicely; it’s made for youth people who like classical design and something new as well. Phone’s shape and its edgings stand for classical design, meanwhile the grating located on speaker and keyboard design stand for something new and innovative. The screen turns black during the stand by mode, screensaver presented as digital clock can be activated. The most effective way to combine such screensaver with phone’s design would be Eagle White, the little contrast trick does the whole thing. Phone’s style on the whole will be accepted not only by Siemens lovers, but other people as well. The phone is actually successful in all key design elements.

However, keyboard’s ergonomics is the price for good outlook. Buttons are formed in vertical rows; they are not small and are located too close to each other. On the other hand, neighbor rows are located on a suitable distance from each other which makes discomfort during work with SMS and Organizer. Reaching a button in the same row is easy; meanwhile it takes some effort in order to reach a button in upper or lower row especially if you have to skip one. The keyboard is the weakest part of this phone, you can get used to it but the fact that you actually have to do it is rather annoying. Those who love typing SMS perhaps won’t be satisfied by the keyboard’s quality; the keyboard’s button pace is rather small, so your hands get tired rather fast.

The keyboard’s backlight color is orange, symbols are seen nicely only indoors, meanwhile while you’re outside the plastic starts blinking and the font is not always readable. All soft keys are comfortable even without looking at their size, mostly it’s because they were made relief and above phone’s case. The navigational key is four-positional.

No soft keys are located on the phone’s sides, you can see hole for strap located on the back cover (strap is not included). You will see Li-Ion battery with 630 mAh capacity after removing the back cover. Siemens claims that this mobile phone can work up to 250 hours in stand by mode, and 4.5 hours during talking. We tested this phone in Moscow and our operator was MTC – the phone worked for 3 days with about 50 minutes spent for talks and 20 minutes spent using other functions daily. It takes 1 hour and 45 minutes in order the phone to charge.

The battery should be inserted carefully since it fits its slot tightly. You will have to put some effort in order to remove it, but watch out since you may accidentally break it. On the other hand this secures battery’s stability. There are no shaking parts inside the phone.

There is no SIM-card holder at all, most likely Siemens wanted to save some money on that. There is just a slot for SIM-card; it gets covered by the battery.

We almost forgot to mention the phone’s display technical specifications: the resolution is 128x128 pixels (27x27 mm), up to 4096 colors can be displayed at once. Five text lines with two extra lines for service needs can be displayed as once. Font size is not big, the letters are thin. The font looks nicely on the screen because of its good quality. When the display encounters direct sunlight the picture is still visible. However it will get worse when the summer sun will be shining in the sky, but this problem is present for most of modern phones.

Shortcuts can be used as an alternative to the main menu. Shortcuts can be assigned to any digit key (except for 1 which is Voice Mail). A phone book’s entry can be bind to these keys as well. The left soft-key can have its own custom list of functions. The phone’s navigational possibilities are very nice and allow using them without making special effort.

Besides using software part from older models some unnecessary weren’t removed. For example when you enter the first item of Main Menu you will hear a shutter click, this legacy came from Siemens MC60 which has built-in camera. You will hear the exactly same sound when you will be leaving this menu item.

The phone’s memory is 1.6 megabytes, about 1mb is occupied by applications right from the very beginning, and so only 600kb are available for user.

Phone book. Only one phone number can be assigned to every entry in the phone book, however you can choose a custom group (only four groups are available), and define e-mail address. The maximum length of the Name and Address fields is 50 symbols which is enough for entering all required information. Five entries can be assigned with custom pictures; you can choose them from your phone’s memory after this they will be moved to a special folder. About 50kb are dedicated to the phone book, which means that you can have only 50 entries + the SIM-card’s memory.

Call list. 10 dialed, 10 received and 10 missed calls are stored in phone’s memory. Date and time can be looked up for each.

Messages. 100 SMS can be stored in phones memory, which is spread dynamically by the way. Messages from phone’s memory and SIM-card are displayed together, the SIM-card’s ones are marked with appropriate icon. You are free to create templates and custom folders. This model supports MMS, the settings are quite simple you just have to follow your operator’s guide and after 3-4 minutes you will set everything up. Of course it’s better to turn GPRS on that way it will cost you less.

I didn’t really like the MMS creation interface; you can’t move quickly between slides, a special menu should be entered first in order to do that. MMS size warnings before sending it came as a pleasant surprise. You have to setup maximum validity time (starting from 1 hour and up to eternity). If your operator charges money for traffic this function is rather important. MMS can be received automatically and manually, you can also set an option when MMS will be received only when you’re in your home country and roaming is not in use. If you set this option to Automatic you will get a warning that sometimes this can become expensive.

The fact that only EMS v4 is supported, meanwhile v5 is the latest and provides real capability with other phone manufacturers is rather unexpected. As to MMS it is .99, which theoretically can cause problems in some networks. Most modern mobile phones use updated versions of EMS and MMS, the reason why Siemens C62 has rather outdated ones is because the only change the phone had was interface and not actual software part.

Organizer. Up to 100 entries can be saved in phone’s memory. Warning can be set for each of them. Calendar can be shown in several ways: weekly and monthly as well as weekly schedule shown together with hours. You can also see entries for definite day or all entries at once. To cut the long story short I have to say that the calendar has all what its consumer will ever need.

Extra. This menu has stopwatch, countdown timer, calculator, alarm clock (it can be set ringing only once, however there is an improvement as well – current time is displayed from now on). Dictaphone is located here as well; it allows recording conversations and whatever happens around your phone. Maximum length is 30 seconds. You can set Dictaphone’s record as ring tone.

File system. All pictures and melodies are stored here. Besides this there’s nothing interesting.

Profiles. Typical set of profiles, you can customize sounds for various phone’s alarms.

Settings. Typical set of settings, nothing extraordinary is located here. Only the usual Language, Sound and Display settings.

Surf&Fun. WAP-browser v1.2.1 is located here as well as two games – Achevo and Falling. The first game is one of the many Dice games around, you have to pick required combinations, in my opinion – it’s rather boring. Falling – is a logical game, original and overall good.

Impressions

This mobile phone doesn’t have any problems with network quality. Speaker’s volume is nice, and it is enough almost everywhere. 16 tone polyphonic ring tone quality is high, it’s volume is louder than other Siemens phones have you can hear your mobile phone ringing everywhere as a result. Vibrating alert’s power is just above average, you can feel it calling even if it’s located in your winter jacket.

In my opinion this phone has several advantages like: good screen, polyphonic ring tones, form-factor. The disadvantages are: difficulties with removing the battery and overall fragility. Small phone book’s capacity can be counted as another disadvantage; however the capacity is big enough for most of this phone’s users. The phone is well-targeted for its segment, and the lack of latest EMS and MMS versions is not the deciding factor while you will be thinking about buying Siemens C62.

Considering that this isn’t Siemens’s own phone some problems with service center’s support can be expected. Most likely spare parts will be missing and this will affect the terms of your phone getting fixed. Another negative factor is relatively share for Siemens C62 in sales. This model was developed as a transitional one and wasn’t supposed to become a top-sale. Nobody wanted to invest a lot of funds in order to develop software and reach the level of other Siemens phones because C65 will be released pretty soon. At the moment Siemens C62 costs 170 dollars which is slightly more expensive than its potential consumers want to pay for, in fact there aren’t many of them. The price will be decreased to 135-140 dollars starting from February. From that moment this model will become more popular, however you shouldn’t expect long life cycle for this model because it will be exchanged with another one pretty soon.

The main competitors for this phone will be Alcatel 535 and Samsung C100. Siemens C62 will be demanded by those who want a good and big screen (comparing to C100) and model’s overall novelty. Alcatel is still the price/quality ratio leader. The lack of Java support makes these phones similar on the first sight, however 535 has significantly more functions to offer.

Samples of ring tones С62 (mp3, 280 Kb)

Eldar Murtazin ([email protected])
Translated by Alexander "Lexx" Zavoloka([email protected])

Published — 09 January 2004

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