Siemens C55

I picked up my C55 in March ’04 at a decent price of Rs.5300/-. All I wanted was a no frills, inexpensive phone with decent features.

Features that were a strict no-no were: [ all these came at a premium ]

1. Color screen

   
   




2. Camera

   
   




3. Bluetooth

   
   




4. Lots of memory with a provision for expansion

   
   




5. Infrared

   
   

Features that were required were:

1. Call screening

   
   




2. Voice calling

   
   




3. EMS [Enhanced Messaging. supports 760 char in the SMS]

   
   




4. Decent sized address book

   
   




5. WAP

   
   




6. GPRS [ with gprs support, u can get wap-over-gprs which is faster than regular wap ]

   
   




7. Good standby time [ Make sure u turn off the backlight ]

   
   




8. Faster charging time

   
   




9. Decent talktime

   
   




10. Voice commands. [ I could turn the backlight on and off with a voice command ]

    
    




11. T9

    
    

I looked at the Nokia 1100, Siemens C55, some model of Benq that had got introduced with a color screen. Of all the three, the C55 came loaded with all the features that I wanted. If someone wanted a comparison between a siemens phone and a nokia or sony ericsson, I’d say nokia/sony ericsson was Microsoft Windows and siemens was linux in the cellular world. The C55 is also a very sturdy phone and I have accidentally dropped my phone so many times and still it works beautifully. A problem that you might encounter is that many of the messages ur cellular provider might send are nokia and sony ericsson specific so u might think its a disadvantage, like the feature where nokia and sony ericsson phones display the area where u are, on the screen.