The Phone Software

We’ve established that the hardware and design is far from class leading, however some good software could well save the handset and make it a worthwhile purchase.

Unfortunately the software is pretty much on par with the handset in terms of quality. One of the first failings of the software is responsiveness. The entire operating system feels like its designed for a higher spec phone and the SP65 just cant keep up…in some cases it has the same feel that XP would if you were trying to run it on an Athlon 400Mhz with less than 200mb of memory which is being shared by the onboard graphics. One of the first times you find this is when you first turn on the handset and are presented by a small Siemens animation, which is very jerky and slow. Next up is a screen asking you to confirm you want to switch on the handset. When you do select yes you have a wait of more than five seconds where you wait for the handset to do something, anything to show that your button press was accepted.

On top of the above issue I don’t really feel the confirm feature is beneficial. Certainly when your phone is powered up there can be random key presses if the keypad isn’t locked, however I’ve never had a handset accidentally turn on and so all the feature does is to delay the access to the main screen. Additionally if you forget about the screen and don’t press anything the handset switches off and then you have to go through the whole process again.

 

The main screen of the SP65 has all of the info that you are likely to need. The signal strength and battery change are in the top left and right and the time and date are at the base of the screen. Also on the screen are the GPRS status and the options for the menu buttons and joystick.

Accessible from the main screen are some shortcuts which are accessed by pressing the joystick horizontally or vertically. This takes you into the address book, organiser, inbox and profiles. The inbox is a strange option to have accessible from the joystick considering the same option is accessed via the right screen option key.

Also configurable from the main screen are the keypad lock (hold down #) and an option to disable all ringers (hold down *). Unfortunately the setting for the * key isn’t retained when you turn the handset off and on.

The main menu screen is shown above, as menu screens go its pretty standard, if not a little bland.

As with the menu screen the rest of the operating system is pretty standard. Despite the handset being aimed at the professional there isn’t a lot feature wise that separates the SP65 from most handsets. It has an organiser, supports sending and receiving of email and is Bluetooth compatible so connects to the usual range of devices.

With this standard feature set you would be forgiven for thinking that use of the features would be ok and that the unit would be comparable to many other handsets on the market. Unfortunately, because of the badly designed keyboard and joystick navigation which is harder than a Nokia or Sony Ericsson handset and selecting programs more than often results in intolerable delays with only the “please wait” screen displayed.

In terms of games and ring tones the SP65 is a mixed bag, the stock ring tones are pretty boring and a fair share are quite irritating…in the end I opted for the vibrate alert only. You can’t go wrong with the chess and battleships though and other than the load times those games are ok. Where things go wrong though is the 3d rally game. It’s pretty buggy (you can drive through walls for example) and the framerate is dire so you get a rather jerky game which really can’t be played for any length of time.

We mentioned above that there isn’t a lot that separates the SP65 from most handsets however two features that are pretty unique are the emergency phonebook and survival dictionary. The emergency phonebook lists emergency contacts/useful numbers for many countries and the survival dictionary gives you translations of useful phrases to help you get by when away from home…

 

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