Siemens CF62 (CF62T) review

Intoduction
The tested CF62T is the first Siemens clamshell style phone that works in the North America. Siemens' last try was the CL50, which only supported European frequencies. I was kind of skeptical at first, but by the end of my phone trial I must say that the device offers good set of features and it offers excellent match between functionality and the audience it was indented for.

Unlike most Samsung phones which feature dazzling animations and TFT displays but lack basic functionality like speakerphones and voice dialing, Siemens has chosen a different path. CF62T has almost all features you will expect from a midrange with not so great display and slow GUI.

Design

The strap holder is the first design feature I noticed. Even though it looks like Sony Ericsson designers originally came with this concept and used it in the Z200 European model, it is still a good differentiation mark and according to Siemens, the strap holder is actually the external antenna.

The phone's external display is blue backlight with 98 x 64 pixels, capable of displaying one line of text. The top portion of the display is used for the signal and battery meters plus other relevant information. After the screensaver kick-in (several minutes after use) only the time is displayed on the screen. Since the phone lacks any external keys, the only was to activate back the external display is to open the shell.

The actual dimensions of the phone are 3.2” x 1.8” x 0.9 with a weight of 3.0oz - pretty much standard for this class of device. The phone felt very comfortable when I was holding it with only slightly noticed squeaks when I tried to slide the battery cover back and forth.

The open the clamshell, I had to push it to around 45 degrees after which the spring action kicked-in the clamshell opened by itself. Achieving this with one hand is very hard, so plan to have your both hands free to answer a call, since there are no external keys. The phone can be set to answer a call with just opening the clamshell, or you if you want you can set it up so you have to press yes before you pick up. The closing of the clamshell is equally easy and the spring does the work after you close it to around 45 degrees.

Opening the clamshell reveals the 4-way navigation keypad plus the functional keys around it. The main keypad's design is not that flawless. I had to different C62F phones for my review. The phone's keypad was with easy to press and excellent response keys. The second phone was a disaster – it was way too hard to press the keys and you had to be Ms. Clio to know if you have actually pressed one. The metal accent lines which separate the rows of keys did not help the matter. So, I can not give a verdict, since I am not sure if one of the phones was defective or what.

The main display is a 130 x 130 CSTN unit with seven lines of text plus line for service related icons on the top. There is nothing to brag about it, but it does OK job is displaying information. What I liked is that you can not only adjust the contrast, but the illumination level also. What I though was worse then the rest of the phones in the same segment was the color saturation. Siemens have included an option to make the letters big, but it is not very convenient since in this mode only the menu text is bigger – not the digital dialed etc and the only one line of text is displayed.

Quite interesting concept are the running lights around the edges of the phone. Siemens calls then Dynamic Light but the originator was Motorola which calls them Haptics. Different light patterns can be selected for different events – for example you can select speed pattern, light house, seesaw, pulse and more, or you can create your own.

GUI

The menu consists of a grid of 9 icons. When you enter the menu, the active icon is the one in the middle of the grid. The menu icons are animated and you can use number navigation also (for those who don't know – a number is assigned to every menu so if you want to access Messages for instance, you push #3, then if you want to send new message you push #2 etc). My probably the only issue with this phone is its speed – sometimes it is SLOW beyond all belief. For example, to start a JAVA game it takes around 4 minutes and 30 seconds. The other area where I noticed very sluggish performance was Messaging. The speed of the rest of the menus was not top notch, but it was bearable.

Voice messages

Allows you to record a message of around 1:12 minutes max and then send it. Unfortunately, the message can not be saved and listed to later.

T-zones

The WAP browser performed satisfactory and for my surprise started considerably faster then for example JAVA games.

Call Logs

Call logs are stored for the last 10 missed, received and dialed numbers. There is a date and time stamp available from the missed and received calls, but it was missing for the dialed ones, so you have no way of knowing when you called someone.

Messages

According to the manual, around 100 messages can be stored. This number depends on the phone's free memory and the size of the messages. SMS templates and MMS are also supported. Overall setting the speed problems aside, the Messaging is well designed with no missing functionality.

Phonebook

You can switch between sim card (phonebook) and addressbook (numbers saved in the phone). The number of contacts saved in the phone is around 500 but depends on the available memory.  What I did not like is that you can not search for a full name, but you are limited just to the first character. For example, if you wan to search for John, you can only type J, and all people staring with J will appear. I have more then 250 entrees, so it is not fun looking for a particular contact only by the first letter.
Multiple numbers per contact are also supported, so you can add home phones, mobile, fax numbers, e-mail, URL, company and physical address. You can also input the contact's birthday so you can get a reminder on that day. Picture or graphic can be assigned to every entry so when they call, the image is displayed. Voice dialing is not missing and you can assign voice tags to up to 20 contacts.  The caller groups feature allows the user to put their contacts in one of the 9 predefined groups and then assigned different ringtone to every group.

My Stuff

As the name implies, all your pictures, sounds, games, extras, color theme (shouldn't it be under display settings?) are here. Just don't try to play any games – it takes 3 minutes to see the first game picture, and 4:30 minutes to actually be able to start playing the game. The JBenchmark's score is the lowest of all Siemens phones and is between 231 (highest) and 159 (lowest). For comparison, the fastest one is the SX1 with highest score of 1971.

If I was Siemens, I would have removed the games altogether instead of to embarrass myself with such load times. Also, some very frequently accessed features like the Alarm Clock, Calculator and Voice Command are dug in under My Stuff / Extras. All those should have been placed under Organizer. The rest of the features under extras are the currency-converter, stop-watch with intermediate results and the count-down timer.

Organizer

The C62T features very decent organizer with the regular functionality such as monthly views, weekly views and daily views. Up to 500 different events can be stored.

Settings

• Profiles – you can choose and customize several different ones. You can customize the sounds, the dynamic light, screen brightness, illumination etc.
• Display – you can choose your langueage – English , Spanish, French
  , active the T9, select your background image, color scheme ((blue, brown, light blue, yellow)
  setup the screensaver, enable large fonts if you have problem reading the screen, adjust the contrast or brightness(illumination).
• Call setup – allows you to setup the called ID, call waiting, call fording, clam-shell open auto-answer or the minute beep
• Clock – time zones, time/date formats
  

Performance
I'll start with the phone's abysmal speed. Missing Bluetooth or IrDA option I can bear. Not very one needs to synchronize their address book with a PC, or need to send stuff between phones. But everyone is sending text messages or browses menus and having to put up with very sluggish response is not what I will expect from a new phone, being even an entry level one. The speed problem is the only thing that really bothered me a lot. Otherwise, the phone had very decent RF (signal) strength and performed satisfactory. The sound quality was very clear on both ends of the line. The speakerphone was not the best I have heard but it was performing OK for a phone of this level.

Conclusion
Siemens CF62T with its dynamic lights, unique design and functionality is primarily oriented towards the young audience. Even though it is considered entry-level device, CF62T still sports most features found in mid-range phones. Exceptions are the connectivity options – no IrDA or Bluetooth. The CF62T's main drawback is its abysmal speed performance and keyboard (at least on one of the two phones I had for my tests).