Siemens S40

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The next time someone talks about the S40 being a sleek, intelligent, reliable and well-designed piece of work, it may not be a Volvo. The Siemens S40 is targeted at jet-setting executives and trendy yuppies with an eye for elegance, a need for reliability and a streak of uncompromising practicality.

Relearning The Features Menu
Siemens fans will, however, find the S40's features menu a very different user experience. The R&D folks appear to have deviated away from the previous range (C35i, M35i, S35i) with new fonts and layout, which take some adjusting to.

For the S40, the features menu has been split in two: if you hit Menu, you will go into Setup where you can configure network services, networks, tones, phone, call, calendar, security and message setup. If you use the up arrow or up button on the volume rocker located on the top right of the phone, you gain access to the services menu. From here, you can go into SMS mailbox, dictaphone, view call registers, access SIM services, phonebooks, calculator, calendar, WAP browser and IrDA.

Don't I Know That Blue Backlight?
Among the first batch of phones to pair Bosch's award-winning designs with Siemens' practicality, the antenna-less S40 looks to be a serious competitor for Nokia's 8250 market. Boasting the blue backlight that the 8250 is famous for, the S40 is easy to read in the dark (although dimly lit areas still make the display difficult to read), and slips just as easily into a pocket.

The matt-silver front is complemented by a translucent back with an opaque blue battery cover, giving the S40 a quasi-industrial look. However, the keypad is a quite a different story. Depending on the user, you either tolerate the slim slices of blue rubber keys, or hate its squeaky feel. The directional and volume keys are particularly hard to depress.

Style With Functionality
Weighing just 97g, this triband (GSM900/1800/1900) mobile offers the kind of features that a frequent traveler would expect: infrared connectivity to Palm OS- and EPOC-based handhelds and Windows notebooks, HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data) support. Here, you get surfing speeds of up to 43.2kbps, dependant on the network provider. SingTel currently offers bandwidth of up to 28.8kbps, while all others are at 14.4kbps.

The S40 menu also features Calendar and Address Book synchronization with Microsoft Outlook, sends/receives events and contacts from Palm OS- and EPOC-based handhelds, an HDML/WML-compatible WAP browser, a very comprehensive voice recorder, and T9 intelligent text input for speedy composition of short messages (SMS).

Siemens has added an extended address book that supports Fax, Data, Email, Address, Birthday, and Note fields recognized by Microsoft Outlook, Palm OS and EPOC-based handhelds. For easier communication between devices, the S40 can send and receive contact information wirelessly over infrared to and from Siemens and other handsets like Nokia. Likewise, users can exchange Calendar events, thanks to the phone's adoption of the vCard and vCalendar standards, respectively.

A Large Phonebook Capacity
Like the Nokia 7110, the S40's advanced phonebook stores up to 1,000 entries. XTND Connect and BVRP Fax software are included on a CD-ROM for installation to Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000 machines, rounding up the package beautifully. Software updates are available at the Web site.

Advanced Voice Recording Features
The voice recorder, or Dictaphone as German phone maker calls it, offers three minutes of recording time for taking down memos or recording conversations (do note that phone etiquette dictates that the other party be notified of the recording). The quality of playback was admirable, with very little background hiss.

Siemens has taken the Dictaphone one step ahead of the competition by allowing the user to pause the recording midway, extending recordings and titling--features that few, if any, other phones of this size support. Through the Status feature, users are easily able to determine the remaining memory available on the SIM, phonebook and Dictaphone.

Using WAP
One major plus in the use of Phone.com's UP browser is that it supports HDML, a WAP language used commonly in the U.S. by popular sites such as vVault.com, eBay.com and Amazon.com. The downside to this is that the UP browser takes a bit more patience to set up, compared to Nokia's WAP browser on the 7110 and 6210 models. Good thing profiles only need to be set up once, and up to eight different profiles can be stored on the phone for use with multiple providers such as banks. The UP browser performed well in both HDML and WML environments, responding quickly and never once hanging in the five days of regular use at about an hour per day.

More Ringtones, But
Understanding that personalization is de rigueur in today's phone-toting community, Siemens' R&D folks have thoughtfully included 42 standard tones with space for an additional 20 that can be composed through the Composer. Unfortunately, operator logo customization such as that available on Nokia handsets and earlier Siemens models like the S35i, M35i, C35i and S25 are not available on the S40. Siemens has also left out games, which some industry pundits see as a good move as this is targeted at the executive set.

Decent Bang For The Buck
The S40 performed admirably with superb sound quality, even in noisy areas. Like the Panasonic GD92, the S40 is slim and lightweight without feeling flimsy or fragile. It probably wouldn't fare too well landing on hard surfaces, but then most phones short of the rugged Ericsson R310 and Siemens M35i wouldn't anyway. At a launch price of S$388 with a two-year plan at some retailers, this phone gives the other two triband handsets available in Singapore a healthy run for their money.