Siemens A50

Click for pictures of the Siemens A50

In the battle of cell phones, the polyphonic ringtones, color screens and built-in cameras dominate the headlines. But quietly, an equally intriguing contest is being fought in the low-end arena. For phone makers and operators, the question in this segment is: What is the best phone you can give away for free?

Better Than Before
The A50 is Siemens' latest participant in this market, and follows the rather mediocre A40. The star of bubble tea promotions a year ago, the A40 ultimately disappointed with its two-line display, chunky form factor and lack of predictive text input.

Thankfully, the A50 bears nothing but a passing semblance to its predecessor. With its curvy and ergonomic form, the 97g handset seems to have been made from a similar mould as Siemens' other models, the M50 and C45. The A50's gray-blue exterior, while looking a tad dated, is nevertheless pleasing on the eye. The four-line text display is lit in amber, while the menu interface is straightforward and intuitive. The rubberized buttons are slightly wobbly but otherwise average in terms of responsiveness.

Plain Features
The A50 makes no secret that it is a no-frills handset, so don't expect anything more than basic voice and messaging functions. It comes with programmable soft keys, enhanced messaging service (EMS) and calling faces. With the latter, address book names can be tagged with a face that shows up every time the person calls. There's a fun twist here where you piece the faces together like police photofits. By mixing and matching the foreheads, eyes and mouths, a variety of interesting faces can be created.

The phone also comes with a lunar calendar, Chinese text input and allows customizable CLIPit covers. It lacks, however, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and organizer functions.

Reception And Battery Life
Reception is average, failing only in zones with very poor network coverage. In conversations, the other party's voice sometimes sounded hollow even when he was indoors. This might be because we were testing a pre-production unit of the A50.

With its 650mAh Lithium-ion battery, the phone is expected to have standby of over 10 days and 5 hours of talktime. In our real-world tests, the battery life lasted us a good four days.

Conclusion
Unlike many other entry-level phones that we've tested, the A50 doesn't compromise too much in terms of looks, features and quality. And while it doesn't boast of any cutting-edge features, it isn't too shabby, especially for the first-time user.

The A50 is scheduled for arrival in November. Officially, Siemens is looking at a launch price of around S$200 with a two-year contract, but that's unrealistic given that the GPRS-enabled M50 now goes for S$168. In fact, we expect the A50 to follow in its predecessor's footsteps and go virtually free for a song, a two-year contract, and maybe three bubble tea drinks.