The Siemens C65 has a simple layout, a gorgeous little 65,000 colour screen and is being pushed as the company's MMS phone - with 'NewMMS' actually part of your screen so you always have the option to impress your friends with this relatively new feature.
It comes in a blue and silver design with a small joystick just below the screen -- very similar to the Sony Ericsson T68i, although it doesn't work near as well as the Sony Ericsson does. It's very fiddly and at times you have to really push it down to select an option when browsing the main menu screen.
The menu screen is again similar to the T68i. It has nine folders which you select using the joystick. One feature which we found useful was that Siemens have put messages as your first option on the menu -- allowing you to instantly access your SMS and MMS, rather than your phonebook. Very useful for those who use their phones more for messaging than for calling.
Aside from the standard keyboard of numbers and answer and end call buttons, the C65 has a number of shortcut buttons built in by simply pressing 3 through to 9 you will be able to skip the menu system and go straight to whatever you want from games to WAP 2.0 browsing.
Another useful feature is the Inbox -- simply pushing the joystick to the right will bring up a list of all SMS/MMS and calls received for that day.
Features
The Siemens C65 phone comes with a standard CIF camera, which takes nice but small pictures. You can pick up a flash as an accessory for the phone which would make those quick pub pics come out a lot crisper as like most digital cameras on phones it has difficulty in even slight darkness. The camera takes pictures in 352x288 pixel resolution only and has digital zoom, brightness as well as a self-timer for those moments when you want to be in the picture.
The phone book is capable of holding over 1,000 numbers along with home and email addresses. You can arrange people into certain groups -- which can help prevent those 3am calls to your boss when you meant to call your friend with the same first name!
The organiser is a simplified version of the more expensive Siemens phones but works quite well. It has a daily, weekly and a monthly planning option, as well as variety of alerts to remind you of those important dates.
Performance
The battery life for the C65 is around 5 hours of talk time and a stand-by time of 250 hours to begin with -- perfect for those long days where no one calls you. However, when you do receive a call you will feel slightly disappointed in the sound of the call. The sound levels don't seem to be that high a quality and at times you will find it difficult, especially when outside, to hear what the person is saying even with the volume at max.
It's pretty much a jack-of-all-trades phone but a master of none. It gives you some of the performance and abilities of the high-end phones but at a reasonable cost. The phone's biggest rival will be the Nokia 3200, as both combine many of the same features with each phone having its own advantages. In the case of the Siemens C65 the camera and screen quality are much better than the 3200, but the FM radio and flashlight could lure users towards the Nokia.
For the price and abilities you couldn't go wrong with one of these nifty little phones.
