Phones that are cameras, phones that allow you to see who you are calling and phones that are PDA’s are just some of the advances that have driven the mobile phone market forward in the last few years.

All of these are useful features in their own right but not for everyone. What if you’re a busy professional who just wants a decent phone with good connectivity to make life easier? That’s where the SP65 comes into play, according to the info pages on Siemens website it’s a phone aimed at corporate users. (It’s really a S65 without the 1.3 megapixel camera so as to meet corporate security rules). Of course this doesn’t mean it (or the S65) are not a good phone for the average user ….

Packaging and Bundle

The SP65 comes in a very cleanly designed box; there are a few pictures of the phone from various angles and distances however other than the marketing slogan “Designed for life” the box gives you zero information about the product inside. From a consumer point of view this is an incredibly bad decision. When looking for a phone you really want to know what sets it out from it competitors and so in the case of the SP65 you would more than likely pass it over through lack of information.

Inside the box as well as the handset and battery you find the most basic of phone bundles.

The SP65 comes with a manual, software CD and charger. The manual certainly isn’t the best in the world, most good mobile phone manuals come with relatively sparse pages which feature detailed images with accompanying wording. The SP65 manual pages are very wordy and so having a quick flick through to find the section you need is not easy and when you do get to the section you want it’s much harder to follow than other manuals.

The software CD included commits one of the cardinal sins of software upon insertion… without warning, or permission it installs files on your PC in the form of “WINDOWS MEDIA VIDEO 9 VIDEO COMPRESSION MANAGER”. Although it’s not anything dangerous or annoying there should ALWAYS be a prompt asking what you want to do before any software is installed. Following the short install the SP65 CD launches and is a pretty cool video/animation based interface which tells you about the features of the phone and allows you to install the software. It’s all pretty smooth however the install of the software takes an age even on a fast system, really no wonder when you realise its 230mb in size!

Launching of the mobile phone manager isn’t the snappiest experience either and once the splash screen disappears there is one of those long pauses where you begin to try loading the program again before the interface appears.

Above is the mobile phone manager interface which allows you to control the contents of your phone by performing actions like uploading ring tones and also allows you to configure the phone settings through screens such as the following:

Whilst for the main part the software functions well there are certain areas, such as changing skins, in which there are periods of lag in when you are left wondering if anything is happening following your mouse clicks.

Siemens installer also installs software to allow you to use the phone as a GPRS modem and mobile phone explorer for browsing the contents of the phone.

Next: The Handset