Review of Siemens SL55 at Chromewalker.com

[helio005]

Read the Review of the Siemens SL55 at Chromewalker.com

http://www.chromewalker.com

[MHR]

Nice review, but I disagree in a few spots and have a few observations. I have had the SL55 for a week and also recently had (and still have) a 7210:

1. The reviewer had a defective unit, evidenced by the popping in the speaker. I do not have that problem. Not sure if his unit was defective in other ways.

2. RF is as good as the 7210 or perhaps only slightly worse. It is not fair to compare it to a t68i.

3. It seems like the reviewer is just too comfortable with the Nokia OS to be fair to the Siemens. I say this because I often feel that way too. But, I have used Nokias for 4 years and Siemens for only a week. The Siemens OS is fine. There are places where it is better than Nokias and places where it's worse. On balance, they're about the same. However, both the SL55 and Nokia Series 40 pale in comparison to Symbian.

4. Battery life seems to be improving over the week. Not sure why as i have not really been using the phone less. Odd. I guess I just don't understand battery technology. It now lasts a solid two days.

Overall, I am very pleased with the SL55. That's not only because of the form and style, but also because of the functionality.

[helio005]

I appreciate your comments. Regarding the unit itself, I evaluated another one as well, and it seemed that the reception is still not up to par with that of my 7210 on how it handles marginal signals.

Regarding the operating system in general, I'm willing to agree with you that perhaps I favor the Nokia OS, but I will say that I favor it as much as I favor Mac OSX over say, Windows in how well thought out it is. Although the Siemens OS is leaps and bounds better than what it used to be, and even better than the latest Motorola OS, for example, I still feel it lacks that intuitive nature typically associated with the Nokia series 40.

Once again, and as with any review, these are merely subjective views, and can often lead to passionate points of view in either direction. I appreciate your objective response to my review.

[ultra_vox]

in regards to the SL55 or 7210, the latter has more reported bugs and defects than the former so i don't consider the 7210 reliable.

[molna]

I wouldn't call that a review. It's only an article comparing the SL55 with the 7210.

[MHR]

Originally posted by ultra_vox
in regards to the SL55 or 7210, the latter has more reported bugs and defects than the former so i don't consider the 7210 reliable.

While that may be true, it is really not a valuable comparison. The 7210 is widely distributed and has been out for many months. It is only natural that it has "more reported bugs." That said, I had very few problems with my 7210 and have very few problems with me SL55.

[helio005]

Just for the record,

I find the 7210 to be my comparison phone for it performs best in the criteria that I have set forth as ideal.

1. Size
2. RF reception
3. Usability
4. Operating System sophistication


Regarding bugs, the 7210 and the SL55 have their fair share of bugs and I did not include them in my grading, for I know that eventually they will be fixed. That is why I didn't make a big deal of one phone having a weird popping sound. Just a comment.
I'm sure that when the SL55 firmware is stable, however, the general usability and Operating System will have almost no changes from their design today. Usually bug fixes only improve the stability of the OS, and rarely do they add features, or change the user interface entirely.

Regarding the reception. The 7210 clearly beats out the SL55 in areas of Marginal signal, and yes, the SL55 beats out the R520m, T39, and T68, but the failing of the call is very similar to that of the ericssons. With the Nokias, it seems that the receive sensitivity is in tune with the transmit power, so that when there is a failure in either, both are affected. In other words, when you can't hear your buddy, they can't hear you. With the SL55 I found that they would lose the abililty to hear me before I would lose the ability to hear them. This is indicative of a lower transmit power, and perhaps this is how the Siemens engineers managed to get battery performance. Just a theory. However, I am not saying that the SL55 is horrible in the RF department, just that it is not up to par with what I consider to be a phone of comparable size (compact) and features, mainly the 7210.

Anyway, my review is to help others and not to 'bash' any one given phone or manufacturer. I hope that for some, it may be useful while they compare and evaluate their present phones to the SL55 if they are considering purchasing it. Thanks again for all of your feedback.