BenQ-Siemens P51

Expected July 2006 (possibly cancelled or renamed)
8th March 2006

We looked at the BenQ P50 last month and concluded that it was a promising looking phone, but its long period in development had meant that it was looking a bit dated on release, especially the operating system, lack of internal memory and no EDGE or 3G support. Well, hot on the heels of the BenQ P50 is the BenQ-Siemens P51, which addresses some of those issues by including the new Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system and doubling the internal memory to 128Mb.

It's still only a quad-band GSM device with GPRS, but no EDGE or 3G, and the camera is still the same 1.3 megapixel unit found in the P50. However the BenQ-Siemens P51 does have WiFi, expandable SD memory (and SDIO card support), a touch-sensitive screen (2.8" and 240x320 pixels), small QWERTY keyboard and inbuilt GPS (SiRF Star III) capabilties. The BenQ-Siemens P51 also support VOIP (voice-over-IP) using Skype.

Everything else is pretty standard for a Windows smartphone - multimedia playback is handled through Windows media player, there's a web browser, email client, support for Microsoft Office documents.

It's still a big, heavy phone at 122x60x20mm and 170 grams, and unlike the Benefon Twig Explorer, it doesn't come with a satellite navigation system built in. The battery life is also a little on the short side, with 4 hours talktime and 6 days standby.

It's clear that the BenQ-Siemens P51 isn't a huge upgrade over the BenQ P50, but it does fix the main problem of an out-of-date operating system. Unfortunately, the P50's high-speed data capabilities are limited to WiFi only, which we think is somewhat limiting.

BenQ-Siemens say that the P51 should be available from July 2006 in silver.

 Subscribe to our newsletter for more news on upcoming releases