Some review of ME45
Или кое-что о ME45 от какого-то Halcyon (noneofyourconcern@no.no)
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Siemens ME45-
*Keyboard feel is not as good as my worn Nokia 6150 (IMHO). Newer
Nokia phones (33x0 series) require much less force and have a
better feel. It's much easier to press keys rapidly on them.
Size is ok, rounded edges are very nice. Side buttons are rubber
and there is a round ring of rubber on the back side so that when
you place your phone on a sloped surface it doesn't slide off so
easily.
Back battery compartment is weird: you have a huge opening into which you
insert a battery that does not fill the whole opening. On top of this whole
you put the external plastic cover which you screw in place with plastic
screws. To be honest, this is the only that looks a bit flimsy on the
phone.
Looks (IMHO) are ok, although the all rounded design motive (in not just
the outside shape) make it look a bit unstructured.
Does not have rubber edges like I though it would (only the side buttons
are rubber). It is moulded plastic, one part bottom, faceplate is three
parts and the screen + keyboard.
Looks sturdy enough, but only time will tell.
Screen is nice with adjustable contrast and ok backlighting.
Use of screen estate is nowhere near as efficient as with Ericsson T39,
thus making both phones equal in their amount of screen space, even though
ME45 has a physically bigger screen.
Menus are slow compared to 6150. I will have to learn shortcuts as pressing
menu down four times repeatedly only makes the phone receive 2 or perhaps 3
presses. This is a MAJOR gripe. This is mostly down to the
keyboard feel (it's too ridig), but the software itself also causes
slowdowns in some situations.
Even writing SMS messages is slow (as of now, perhaps the keyboard will
become more sensitive with use) compared to a new Nokia keyboard. Keys need
to be pressed much harder and one key cannot be repeatedly pressed too fast
or the phone will not register. Thankfully I'm not a heavy SMS user like
most teens are, so I can live with this.
Menus are quite weird from usability point of view. Sometimes you get back
with the left arrow, sometimes with the left selection button and sometimes
with the hang up button. Consistency is golden in UI design, Siemens
doesn't understand this.
Confirmation is always a two press situation: right select then a left
confirm. You need two hands or finger movement for this. Inefficient, why
not double right (the built-in keypad delay would surely remove all
possibility of double press errors)?
In general there are way too many confirmation and "XXX done" dialogs that
stay on the screen for way too long a time (you have to press "hang" up
to get rid of them and gain access to phones other functions again).
Help system always brings up confirmation for different settings. This
confirmation can be skipped with the hang up button, but not with selection
or arrow keys. Again, minor flaw, but affects speed and one hand use.
Calendar has month/week/day view. Looks ok. Voice memos work ok and are
quite audible/intelligible.
The things I really like about the ME45 so far is the sound quality (very
good, perhaps the best I've tried including T39 and N6150/6210), reception
quality (much better on weak transmission fields than my old N6150), voice
memos, four personalizable ring tones, synching features and the upload
ability for software updates, ring tones and graphics.
The things I would really like to have in it are: more caller groups than
three
(now it has phonebook, vip and the rest), faster/more efficient menus (this
needs *a lot* of improvement), speed (I have to look at the hourglass
animation a bit too much), better use of screen estate (small fonts
selection like in T39), better keyboard (the biggest problem IMHO),
I don't have GPRS on my account yet, so no comment on that yet.
In general I think it is a very good phone regardless of it's shortcomings.
You can probably also guess that I'm biased towards Nokia having used their
phones extensively previously. Still, I must say that even with my bias I
think Ericsson and Nokia understand the UI design much better than Siemens
do. In this are Siemens has a lot of catching up to do. If you can live
with the occasional slowness and get used to pressing 1.5-2 times more
buttons to get the same result, then this is a great phone.
I have also compared this quickly to Ericsson T39, although I have not
used T39 as extensively.
I've decided to keep my ME45, although I think Ericsson T39 is technically
better featured (HSCSD, bluetooth, 4+1 gprs slots, etc) and better
usability wise. For memory features they are about the same and have many
of the same gimmick features (voice memo, voice dialling, etc.)
The reason I decided to keep ME45 (over T39):
- I don't like the protruding antenna or the flip on Ericsson
- Siemens feels and looks a bit more rugged (perhaps just an illusion)
- Comes with a free data synch cable/software that can...
- upload free graphics, tunes and Software updates (!) into the phone
- Synch with Outlook
The looks (I prefer grey and round outside shape) and the free software
updates (no need to go queuing in the repair shop anymore) really did it
for me.
I also hate to pay a euro a piece for every ringing tone I try to some
crappy service provider. I'd rather just download midi files for free.
Please note that I'm not putting down T39 at all. I think it's a great
phone - very hard to beat, if you like the looks (and many do).
As to Nokia, it isn't even on the same playing field in respect to
technical features with their currently released selection. I also didn't
think they would shrink their form factor enough for me. The biggest reason
for switching over to Siemens were the constant quality problems I had with
my Nokia series (two malfuntioning 2110i:s, three malfunctioning 6150's and
the endless problems with my friend's 7110 series). I hope Siemens will
prove to be better in this respect.
I hope the above was useful to someone out there.
<font size=-1>[ Это сообщение было изменено: 2001-09-10 21:10 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ Это сообщение было изменено: 2001-09-10 21:11 ]</font>