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Review GSM-phone Siemens SX1. Operational system, advantages and disadvantages. Interface

Review Siemens SX1. Summary>>

Siemens SX1 has Symbian OS 6.1 installed. In we take the OS version into consideration; the phone should be compared with Nokia 3650. This comparison is just useless since the phone is targeted on different segments, Nokia 6600 is the competitor. The usage of v6.1 was not based on any technical or political reason, the product had been in development for quite a while, that’s why it was too late to change the OS version. The Siemens SX1’s successor will feature another OS version, so for now we have to deal with what is installed. Almost complete compatibility with software made for Nokia phones is a certain plus.

You can learn more about Symbian OS ver 6.1 here

You can learn more about Symbian OS ver 7.0 here

We will briefly describe the main difference between v6.1 and 7.0 for those who don’t want to spend his time for reading big documentation, and care about the noticeable changes. A text line with current date and time is displayed during the stand by mode. When there is a missing call or received message, a special icon appears, but in case with 6.1 the date/text line disappears, in v7.0 this was fixed. At first this seems to be a minor change; however it’s a pleasant one.

Another aspect is related to the smartphone’s appearance, its interface. The elder OS version didn’t have such thing as themes (a set of pictures, icons, sounds, color menu themes). This is more than just disappointing in case with Siemens SX1, since the preinstalled color menu themes set is no ordinary to say the least. We advice leaving the default color theme, the others are just way too extreme and will most likely not be used by users. You will have an ability to upload new color themes in near future; however I’d prefer seeing them preinstalled.

The fact that Siemens decided to redraw the interface seems more than simply strange. The new icons are drawn thoroughly, and leave a pleasant impression. The icon quality is the reason for high marks given to the interface. Such attractiveness plays role of the last or additional argument in SX1’s favor for most of consumers.

Placement of fonts and graphical decoration was changed in many applications. Sometimes the new solution is more successful than Nokia’s one, but sometimes it leaves uncertainty and questions. We end up with a sort of parity, I can’t really say what interface is better, something looks good at Nokia 6600, but something looks good at Siemens SX1.

The way of how various applications open, and the picture get portrayed are Siemens SX1 disadvantages. A smartphone with required amount of memory shows the process of slow interface portrayal, first the upper header appears, and then the rest of the picture after it gets turned on.

Video – an example of slow interface portrayal (AVI, 3.91Mb)

Sometimes ridicules situations occur, when parts of earlier launched applications remain on the screen, here is one of them:

The phone works slowly with the internal memory. For example if you have about 300 contacts with several phone numbers stored for each in your phonebook, fast search will become rather slow. No, the smartphone will not be alike a turtle, but it will actually work not as fast as it could have. Calling out phone number search from SMS/MMS composing menu turns out to be an even bigger disappointment, the phone starts freezing, and sometimes this lasts for quite a while. This is not typical for such kind of mobile phones, and forces you to think about the smartphone’s performance. We’ve used several applications in order to measure it up.

Siemens SX1 performance – calculations and graphical sub-system

There aren’t many applications that can define the performance of a Symbian-device. The first think that you should draw your attention is the Graphical sub-system performance. Jbenchmark (ver 1.1) suits perfectly for this - http://www.jbenchmark.com/.

This program draws test figures in a certain resolution (not in full-screen mode), in our case the resolution was – 176x144 pixels. But this doesn’t affect the final results, so you shouldn’t care about it.

The full description of how this application works can be found here - http://www.jbenchmark.com/index.html?F=BEHIND

Numerous measures showed that the final result varies from 1575 to 1720 points; this depends on the number of launched applications. Let’s consider 1720 being an average point; even though it’s lower in reality.

As you can see the difference from Nokia 6600 is about 500 points, which means about one third of SX1’s graphical performance. This is a very huge difference. Attempts of explaining the poor results by better icons do not have any real proof behind them, these are just speculations. The phone’s work with processor and memory is just worse than the analogue in 6600; these are the phone’s weak points. The only explanation for this is that these are mistakes made during the device’s projection.

The tests that will verify how the phone works with other tasks, the way how the processor works in reality are required in order to prove or disapprove this statement. We all know that big mhz does not play a big role for Pocket PCs, they just don’t guarantee bigger performance. We’ve decided to verify our hypothesis with Float Test application that tests calculation speed with floating point. Its author comes from Russia; you can find the software’s description here: - http://henson.newmail.ru/j2me/Float.htm

I will describe the software’s features briefly: various calculations related to mathematical functions are being made, the result and time being spent for calculating it. Higher amount of time means worse result. Here are the results of time spent for calculating different tasks:

Notice that SX1’s results are too close to Nokia 3650. The phones have one and the same OS version and same processor. In my opinion this test shows that there isn’t any higher processor mhz rate, or the OS can’t use it. The result will not be changed with the reason being clarified; we still see that the phone is an analogue to Nokia 3650, whose processor works at 104Mhz. We can see a certain lose to Nokia 6600 with the speed of floating point calculations. Another conclusion that can be made is that SX1’s weak spot is not its processor, bus but the graphical system.

We will be glad to hear the following explanations made by the specialists, why it had turned or hadn’t turned this way. We’re grateful in advance, since the question is very interesting and should receive its explanation.

All measurements can be done on your own. If you will manage to increase the results for your Siemens SX1, we will be glad to find out the way how you had managed to make this.

Review Siemens SX1. Summary>>

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

Published —13 February 2004

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