Siemens SL65

Discontinued
20th June 2004

We regard the Siemens SL55 as something of a design classic, with its cute design and groundbreaking sliding keypad. Since the SL55's launch, many other phones have followed suit, but the SL55 has proved its value by being the class leader for over a year.

However, the SL55 looks a little dated from a technological point of view, and really has done since launch. The new SL65 seeks to fix some of the problems that the old SL55 had in the features department.

Firstly, the bad news the SL65 has been piling on the weight and now comes in at 99 grams, compared to the SL55's 79 grams. It's larger too, at 90x48x21 mm compared with 82x45x22 mm for the older model. The SL65 also loses the cuteness factor of the SL55, replacing curves with straight lines and turning it from a "girlie" phone to a "macho" one. We think that this is a very bad move by Siemens, as the SL55's unique selling proposition was its small size and cute looks. The SL65 is neither small not cute.

However, there is some good news. The SL65 is a much more feature rich handset that the SL65. The screen has been upgraded from a small 101x80 pixel unit to a more useful 130x130 pixel unit, and there's now a VGA resolution camera. There's more internal memory, a built-in speakerphone, better WAP browser, better games and other enhancements too.

The SL65 isn't a bad phone though - in fact it's rather good, however the SL55 is an outstanding phone, and frankly the replacement model is not anywhere near as good - really the SL55 was a fashion phone, and the feature set was secondary to its small size and good looks. Siemens seem to have forgotten this, and in our view the SL65 will not stand out in any significant way when it hits the market.

Subscribe to our newsletter for more news on upcoming releases