Siemens SL55 + Камера Siemens QuickPic – Back to the Buttons
In 1999, Siemens introduced the world's first slider phone. Despite its popularity, the company did not return to this form factor for a long time. Only 4 years later, the SL fashion line was replenished with a second slider - a stylish and compact model of the 55 series. At the time it went on sale, the cost of this phone in Russia was just over 16,000 rubles (≈550$), and over the course of a year its price dropped to 7000₽ (≈240$). It was available in two colors: ruby and titanium, but there were also limited editions in other colors.
The device has a phone book with 500 numbers, 16-voice polyphony, the ability to send MMS messages, Java support, GPRS class 8, a voice recorder, an infrared port, the ability to connect an external Siemens QuickPic camera and about 1.5 MB of internal memory. The height of the phone is about 8 cm, width – 4.5. Weight – 79 g. The thickness of the device is just over 2 cm. The display is made using CSTN technology. It displays over 4000 colors and has a resolution of 101x80 pixels.
The stated operating time from the 500 mAh battery built into the back cover is about 9 days in standby mode and 5 hours in talk mode. At the bottom there is a microphone and a charging connector. It also serves to connect a headset and other accessories. On the left side there is a voice recorder button and a double multifunction key. On the right is an infrared port.
At the top there are holes for the strap. The antenna is also hidden at the top of the phone. The SIM card slot is located under the battery. As in the first Siemens SL10 slider, the main device control buttons are located on the front panel. And to access the number keys you need to slide the top half of the phone.
This design made it possible to place a comfortable keyboard in such a miniature case. It has a bright white backlight. The phone turns on by holding the call reset key. When starting the device, you must confirm that it is turned on to avoid accidental startup, for example, on an airplane. On the main screen, in addition to the date, time and the name of the telecom operator, there are various icons. The left soft key changes its purpose when notifications arrive.
The active alarm clock and the event for the current day are displayed next to the clock, and the status bar indicates the operation of GPRS, infrared port and other functions, but it contains no more than two icons. The main menu is designed as a grid of 9 icons. When you press the left soft key, a quick access menu to your favorite functions opens. Contact numbers can be recorded in the SIM card's telephone directory, or in a more advanced phone address book. In it, for one name, you can save up to 5 numbers, two email addresses and a link to a page on the Internet, add a contact to a group, indicate the company name and home address, set a birthday reminder by first filling in the date field, and also add a photo that will be shown during the call. After saving, all this data can be viewed in a convenient contact card.
But the address book can be made even more convenient if you use the ability to group contacts. Each group can be renamed, set its own ringtone and select an icon - one of 20 - that will appear during a call from a member of this group. The magazine is located next to the reference book in the main menu.
In addition to lists of completed calls, it also includes call duration and cost counters. Text messages are entered letter by letter or in T9 mode. Detailed instructions for using this mode can be found in Help before you start typing a message. The editor allows you to select part of the typed text and format it - adjust the font size, apply underlining, and align the text to the center or to the edges of the screen. You can attach a standard melody or an animated emoticon with a duckling to your message. These emoticons were borrowed from the 45-series phones, and colored, in connection with the transition to color screens.
In the device’s memory you can find several dozen more static and animated monochrome pictures, intended for sending by SMS message. And as a soundtrack, try attaching a melody in Midi format. It will lose its polyphony and become suitable for sending, although this will not work with every melody.
You can share a polyphonic ringtone or photo via MMS. Multimedia messages can consist of several pages, each of which can contain a picture, melody and text. The duration of display of each individual slide is customizable. The phone also allows you to send and receive emails. You can attach any files to them, even Java applications. However, support for the Cyrillic alphabet is not provided.
By the way, a total of 5 applications are preinstalled on the phone. Among them are two games. Both are sports. The first game is a tennis simulator. In it, you first need to create a character: choose an appearance, come up with a name for him, indicate his age, choose shoes and a racket - the characteristics of the character depend on the equipment. After that, you can play a training game, a single match or a tournament.
In the training game, you need to hit endless balls flying towards the player. Much more interesting are tournaments in which you will meet with other opponents of different skill levels. There are 10 tournaments in total, each of which takes place on a specific surface, in accordance with the actual courts at these competitions. This also affects the course of the game. There are two control modes - normal and expert.
In normal mode, the player cannot control the character's movement. All you need to do is choose the direction of the strike and hit the ball in time. And in expert mode, you must first use the same buttons to set the tennis player to the desired point and confirm the choice with five, and then proceed to aiming and hitting. All these actions need to be completed while the ball is flying towards the player and this is not very easy. Fortunately, this mode does not need to be enabled.
The character's skill increases as the game progresses, which is useful for competing with friends. To do this, you can send the tennis player to other phones via SMS, where he will appear in the list of opponents. The second game is golf with the participation of Rayman, the mascot of the French company Ubisoft. The game was developed by Gameloft, a mobile gaming company created by one of the founders of Ubisoft. Before starting the tournament, you can complete training and study the help with management instructions.
In order to make a shot, you first need to choose the right club. They are divided into 4 types. The most massive clubs are called Woods. They are designed for long-distance shots.
The maximum possible distance is indicated when choosing a club. Iron's iron clubs send the ball higher and closer. Wedges are used to overcome obstacles and knock the ball out of the sand.
This is of great importance in the game, because... there are many obstacles. Therefore, to prevent the ball from hitting a tree or pond, you need to choose the right club. The ball is rolled into the hole with a putter when it is on the green - the lawn where the hole is located. After choosing a club, you need to set the direction of the ball's flight, determine the force of the impact and its accuracy.
It is also important to take into account the direction and strength of the wind in order to correctly adjust the blow. You need to hit the ball into the hole in as few strokes as possible. You can follow the result in the table that appears after completing each hole. To win tournament play, you must complete eighteen holes with a minimum score. You can practice on the field before the tournament in training mode.
The Remind Me application is an assistant in organizing everyday activities and tasks. It allows you to structure them by creating several thematic lists. For example, a shopping list. You can enter any products into it and tick only those that need to be purchased at the moment. The selected items will move to the top of the list.
They can be shared via SMS message, excluding unnecessary products. After completing the task, just uncheck it. In the future, you can continue to use this list, adding new items as needed. Unit Converter is used to convert various quantities from one unit of measurement to another.
The application suffered a bit during localization. Without long scrolling, it is impossible to know. Without long scrolling, it is impossible to know which categories of quantities are represented in the first three positions of the list. However, the converter is capable of converting not only conventional units of measurement, such as length, speed or temperature, from one system to another, but also clothing size designations for some countries.
This converter is placed in a separate menu, in which you can select an item of clothing and the desired size from the list, and convert it, for example, from a European standard to an American one. You can also convert human height parameters from centimeters to feet and inches, and vice versa. To quickly search for a value in an extensive list, numbers can be entered from the keyboard. The result obtained after conversion can be sent as a message to friends and family.
And the “Wonderful Voyage” application creates the atmosphere of a journey by displaying thematic pictures on the screen and playing corresponding sounds. The application can simulate the sound of sea waves, flower meadows and mountain nature. Each slideshow consists of 5-6 photos and a looped 5-second audio track. Other games and applications could be downloaded through the WAP browser located in the same section.
It allows you to bookmark web pages and share links to them via SMS and email, download images and disable their display to save traffic. It is also possible to change the font size. The “Organizer” menu has a calendar with three viewing ranges and a list of events.
These events are divided into two types: “Meetings” and “Tasks”. In each category, events are further divided into 4 types. So, for example, in the description of a task of the “Call” type, you can indicate a contact number from the phone book, and record a voice note for an event from the “Voice Memory” category. For each recording, you can specify the place and time of the start and end, as well as set a reminder and the frequency of the signal repetition. It is even possible to specify a specific date until which the event will be repeated, which will be reflected in the calendar.
If a new event overlaps in time with another, a warning will appear when it is created, and it will be highlighted in a different color in the calendar. For entries in the “Tasks” section, in addition to the date and reminder, you can set priority and status. When a task is marked as completed, it is removed from the calendar. Complete lists of appointments and tasks are located outside the calendar in separate sections. Some additional calendar settings are also placed in a separate menu, as is the list of missed reminders.
And above it is a notepad for writing short text notes, with a limit of 150 characters. Each note can be protected with a four-digit phone code, which ensures the confidentiality of notes. The phone also has a voice recorder for recording voice notes. Moreover, it can be used during calls to record conversations. For this purpose, there is a special button.
You need to hold it down to record, and to pause, just release the button. If recording is not continued within 10 seconds, it will automatically end. The recording duration depends on the amount of free memory.
And to play the received file, you need to press and release the recorder button. The Time Zone tool allows you to automatically switch your device time to local time. Just select the desired city from the list. A number of additional functions are located in the “More” section.
For example, an alarm clock. Just enter the time, select the days on which the alarm will go off and activate it - the alarm will ring even if the phone is turned off. The built-in calculator offers a number of functions that can be called up by pressing the right soft key. Basic operations are also duplicated on navigation keys for quick access to them. There is also a currency converter, in addition to the Unit Converter app, which lacks this feature. You need to select the name of the currency from the list or enter your own title and set the current rate.
This calculator allows you to work with three different currencies. The stopwatch can keep track of time in the background. Then the corresponding icon appears on the main screen in the status bar. During the countdown, you can put two marks. If you put a third one, the first one will be overwritten. The result obtained along with tags can be saved in the phone’s memory.
Like the stopwatch, the timer can also run in the background. The countdown time is indicated to the nearest second. Below is the "Camera" item, but the phone is not equipped with it; you need to connect an external Siemens QuickPic camera, which was sold separately.
On the front side of the camera, in addition to the lens, there is a flash and a viewfinder window. This means that a preview image does not appear on the screen and you must look through the peephole from the reverse side to compose the frame. To the left of the window is the camera readiness indicator. On the side, opposite the connector, there are holes for a strap.
Before connecting the camera, you need to make sure that the phone is charged. When the battery level is low, the camera will not receive power. If everything is in order, the indicator on the camera lights up green, and the left soft key on the main screen changes its purpose to quickly launch it.
Here the user is greeted with a counter of remaining frames and help on using the camera, localized with errors in each word. Or the last photo, if there is one. You can take photographs in low resolution 160x120 pixels to send frames via MMS, or in high resolution 640x480. But in the second case, the photo will still be duplicated in low resolution to display it on the phone screen. Deleting this copy will result in an error when you try to take a photo, but you will be prompted to quickly move the unknown files to another folder.
At the moment of shooting, the diode on the camera blinks, and the phone screen displays the process of saving the image, which lasts several seconds. And in low light conditions, you can use the flash. It needs to be charged before each shot, which takes about 8 seconds. Photography is not accompanied by a sound signal. Compared to the first cameras built into Siemens phones, QuickPic is superior in quality to both the MC60 and C65. In terms of characteristics, it is closer to the camera of the CX65 model.
They have the same resolution and aspect ratio, there is no “black sun” effect, but the viewing angle, color rendition and lens resolution differ. The resulting photos can be found in the folder with pictures in the Card-Explorer file manager, where they are sorted into separate directories, depending on their resolution. There are also standard color and monochrome images. In addition to static ones, several animated images are also preinstalled. The phone is not able to immediately reproduce such an animation at full speed. Each frame in the first loop is loaded within 2-3 seconds.
To watch a GIF at normal speed, you need to wait for each frame to load. Other types of files you can find in Card-Explorer include color schemes, applications, voice recordings, and sounds. In total, the phone comes pre-installed with 23 ringtones in .mid and .mmf formats, adapted for playback through the phone's 16-voice speaker. All ringtones and other materials are available with a subscription to BTTB+ on Boosty. Link in the description!
Separate folders contain alternative options for turning on and off the device, which can be used instead of the standard ones, as well as sounds for opening and closing the slider. When listening to saved melodies, the rocker at the end of the device does not function. In volume control mode, it only works in the voice recorder player and during a call.
But it can be used in the menu for navigation. But this is not its last role. For example, holding down the bottom key will launch the voice control feature, but to use it, you first need to write down commands. For most features, this can be done in the “More” section, but voice commands for quickly calling contacts are configured in the address book. In total, you can record up to 20 commands. And the “Remote Synchronization” function allowed you to exchange data with a remote server. All phone settings are grouped into several sections, but some parameters are duplicated in them.
In the “Display” menu, you can select the language of the user interface and keyboard, add a background image to the main screen and replace the name of the telecom operator with a picture, set one of the color schemes - standard or to match the color of the phone body, and also customize the screensaver: select a style, including a clock, picture or energy saving mode, set the appearance time and activate automatic keypad locking. You can change the animation when turning on and off to any one available in memory, create a welcome text that will be displayed instead of the screen saver when the device starts. It is possible to increase the font size of menu headings, which will affect the display mode of sections, and adjust the backlight brightness and display contrast. In the sound settings, you can activate or deactivate sound signals, and also replace them with a short beep. Turn on vibration alerts, choose a ringtone for your contacts list or for individual groups, the sound of messages, alarms and reminders, and adjust the volume of different types of notifications, features and applications.
In most cases, you can enable a gradual increase in the signal volume. When you turn on the “Filter”, all incoming calls, except for the selected contact group, will be received in silent mode. You can select the sound of keystrokes and turn on a every minute signal to monitor the duration of the call.
Most audio settings can be adjusted for individual device operating modes in the “Profiles” menu. In addition to the usual parameters, you can select the display backlight level and font size in the menu. The only profile that cannot be edited is “On the plane”.
When you select it, the phone turns off. To quickly change the profile, just press the top of the double key in standby mode. The “Keyboard” section contains key lock controls and the option to answer calls with any button. In your phone settings, you can disable your number identification and enable call forwarding, after first checking its status. Reset settings to factory defaults, format or optimize storage, set automatic shutdown times, as well as view information about the device and test its individual functions.
It is possible to check the display for dead pixels and the correct display of colors, the keyboard – for the functionality of the keys, the sound of the speaker and the vibration signal. In the “Clock” section, you set the date and time parameters, as well as the format for displaying them on the main screen if the display function is activated. In the “Data transfer” menu, GPRS and infrared port are enabled or disabled, and Internet, MMS and email access profiles are configured.
And the cellular communication parameters are located in the “Network” section. In the security settings, security codes and various locks are managed. For example, the “Nanny” function is needed to prohibit calls to all numbers except one. Separately, you can set a password for using the phone with another SIM card and block certain types of calls.
In the “Accessories” menu, you can activate some options for additional accessories: car kit and headset. The last section of ProSlide contains several specific parameters applicable to this device design. Siemens SL55, despite its stylish design, did not immediately gain popularity.
Users were dissatisfied with long application loadings and the low speed of the device, periodic freezes, a not very high-quality screen, and the controversial decision to place the battery in the back cover. But the main drawback was the price at the start of sales. For this money, you could buy almost any phone. For example, among the interesting fashion options, although less functional, you could choose a model from the Xelibri line - they were significantly cheaper.
Or Panasonic G70. The price of the SL55 was approximately twice as high as the S55 model, which had similar characteristics, and even exceeded the cost of the slider from Nokia - 7650, which belonged to the class of smartphones, ran on the Symbian operating system and had a built-in camera. But the price of the smartphone remained the same, and at Siemens it began to decline sharply. And when Samsung began mass-producing sliders, and Siemens released the SL65 model, the 55-series phone remained on sale and, despite its outdated characteristics, was successfully sold due to its more affordable price. The text is read by Roman Beletsky. Script, camera, editing by Roman Osokin. Music by Anna Nesterova. Phone provided by Ivan Spirin.
2025-02-18 04:30
