A Compact hit from Siemens, the SL55

Siemens SL55The Siemens SL55 was one of those phones that we knew was coming for a long time and had seen early photos of long before the official announcement. But we were never really sure what the capabilities were going to be. There was much speculation about display color depth and Bluetooth support, and even talk of a memory card slot. Well, eventually Siemens did announce the device and the cat was out of the bag - albeit a very small cat.

It's all in the palm of your hand
The most obvious, and probably interesting aspect of the SL55 has got to be its physical being. The device is rather small, being considerably shorter than a T68i thanks to the sliding keypad mechanism. It is also pretty light, coming in at only 79g. This all adds up to a very compact package that slips easily into nearly any pocket ever invented by man.

But the nice thing about this compact design is that it manages to be compact without compromising usability. The sliding keypad that I mentioned before houses a very nice and usably large numeric keypad. The two soft keys and the yes/no buttons are on the main face of the phone and are always accessible. On the side of the device, accessible at all times, is the up/down volume rocker key and the button for activating the voice recorder. Everything is pretty well placed.

I do have a minor gripe with the keypad, though. The 4-way directional controller. There were times when it felt as if it got caught on something briefly. Nothing a second attempt couldn't fix, but overall I didn't find it to be as smooth as the d-pad controller in the S55 or any number of recent Nokia handsets. I also have a nit regarding the numeric keys, which are faceted, somewhat like a diamond might be. While this gives it a somewhat interesting appearance, it also opens the door for picking up glares from a multitude of light sources. I would have preferred keys that were more flat. But this is minor.

I have reasonably large hands and found the device to be quite comfortable. Perhaps the keypad would still be a bit small for a NFL Linebacker, but I would argue that most phones would fall into that category with such a person. If you happen to be a NFL Linebacker, you can buy a SL55 for your assistant and have them dial for you.

Naturally we need to talk about the sliding mechanism a bit more. Siemens calls it the ProSlider. I don't really see how it needs its own name, but perhaps they are planning to implement it in more devices, which would be a good thing. Anyway, the SL55's slider was easy for me to open one handed. I would imagine that even women with average sized hands could do this rather easily, unlike the feat of trying to open a Motorola V70 one-handed. The ProSlider does give me some cause for concern, though. The display ripples a bit when the device is being opened or closed. I imagine that this is probably a ribbon cable pressing against the LCD, and really don't know if that will cause any long term problems or not. I assume not. But it is a bit disturbing none the less.

A major complaint people had about the S55 was the 256 color display. Considering it arrived on the scene a year and a half after the original T68, it seemed very outdated on a new model like the S55. Siemens heard that complaint, and has put a 4096 color display on the SL55. At first you might not realize that it is a different display, since they are the same size, but you will notice it when looking at photos or pictures with gradient colors in them. It isn't compareable to the 4096 color displays found in current Nokia devices, but it is much better than the 256 color display of the S55.

When a handset is as compact and light as the SL55, you have to expect that some sacrifices were made in the design stage. This is the case with the battery. The battery in the SL55 is pretty small, coming in at 540mAh. Something in the area of 700 would be typical for a high-end handset these days. As a result, I found the battery life to be a bit short. This won't be a problem for a typical user that doesn't mind charging the device every couple of days, but it will be a big issue for heavy talkers. Bear this in mind.

One last thing on the physical front. The front face of the phone is hard to keep clean. The glossy front lens covers the majority of the front of the devices and is really good at picking up finger and cheek prints. This is only a bit annoying and has no real impact on use. I do have a concern that it might scratch easily, being basically unprotected. Time will tell, I suppose.

 

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