The Handset

The SP65 handset is a strange unit, from a distance and in many of the product images the handset looks first class (in terms of quality) however when you unpack it the handset is again less than perfect.

The screen size is one of the benefits of the SP65 as it is a little larger than many phones. Specification wise it’s reasonable and features 132x176 pixels (TFT) with a colour pallette of 65,000 colours and is backlit. Unfortunately the number and quality of themes are poor and really don’t show the screen off in any favourable light. The theme used in this review is “Cosmos” and is the best of the ones on offer. As you will see its pretty bland and the quality of graphics is very poor indeed.

On the front of the phone is of course the screen, speaker and keypad. The sides of the unit are very sparsely populated as is the rear. The only features of these sides are the volume button, infa-red port and Ariel.

Left - IR Port

Right - Volume

Rear - Ariel

Also you can see one of the minor defects in the construction of the phone. The battery compartment cover is not a perfect fit and there is a millimetre or so of a gap which lets dust into the handset.

Removing the cover you can see the Lithium Ion battery. Charge time is approx 2 hours and the charge lasts around 2 days of normal use ( comprising a few 5min calls a day and ten or so text messages a day).

Finally on the inside of the phone we can see the sim card and manufacturers label.

Back on the outside and looking at the base of the handset we see there is space for the phone charger or car kit connector as well as a larger slot above it. This larger slot’s cover folds down and a reduced size multimedia card can be inserted to expand the storage available on the phone. Unfortunately this is another area of construction where the SP65 is a let down. The cover is very fiddly and never opens correctly on first attempt which can be annoying.

Returning to the front of the handset we see that in the centre is a joystick, common on recent handsets. A common failing of handsets is hard to use joysticks through being stiff or unresponsive; the Siemens model doesn’t fall into this trap however feels cheap, flimsy and really doesn’t have much feedback. Due to the lack of resistance (unless you have a particularly light touch) pressing in the joystick to select an option often results in accidentally forcing it into the right, left up or down position.

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