BenQ-Siemens E52 and C31

Expected June/July 2007
13th June 2007

Here's a surprise - a couple of handsets bearing the BenQ-Siemens brand.. surprising because the collapse of the BenQ-Siemens business last year would indicate that this particular brand was now defunct.

Well, it's been a long time but after a 10 months gap parent company BenQ Mobile has rolled out two new devices with the promise of some more on the way.

BenQ-Siemens E52

The squared off design of the BenQ-Siemens E52 is very reminiscent of Siemens designed handsets - but underneath this is a pure BenQ device with little or no input from the old Siemens Mobile arm of the business.

Priced at around €130 or less, the E52 is a tri-band GSM phone with GPRS and Bluetooth, an MP3 player, FM radio, 1.3 megapixel camera and expandable memory using microSD cards. The display is a 1.8" 176x220 pixel panel in 262,000 colours.

So far the BenQ-Siemens E52 looks like an inexpensive, smart but fairly dull phone. One interesting twist though is that the E52 has a built-in laser pointer and it can even be used as a mouse in PowerPoint presentations via a suitable Bluetooth link. It's an unusual twist which shows that the E52 is aimed at business users.

It's quite a heavy phone at 122 grams, but it's hard to say where all the weight goes.. the battery life is pretty unremarkable at 4 hours talktime and it's not as though it's a 3G phone. At 102 x 45 x 15mm in size, the E52 is a fairly typical size for a business handset.

We understand that the E52 will be available in Russia and Eastern Europe from June 2007 with no word on other markets. It's certainly an attractive device for the money.

BenQ-Siemens C31

Physically identical to the BenQ-Siemens E81, the C31 is an attractive lightweight GSM phone with a built-in MP3 player, and FM radio and microSD expandable memory (supporting up to 4GB).

There's no Bluetooth and the C31 only has a 1.8" 176x220 pixel display and a 1.3 megapixel camera, but as we think that the handset will be less than €130 before tax and subsidy it still offers pretty good value for money.

Although it looks like the E81 on the surface, underneath this is purely a BenQ device. It appears that the Siemens legacy only lives on when it comes to styling.

As with the E52, we understand that this will be available in Eastern Europe from June 2007 onwards. We don't know about other markets yet, but the C31 certainly seems attractive enough to sell well for prepay customers in other parts of Europe too.