Siemens CF62t Review

Siemens CF62tLike Nokia, Siemens is rather new to the world of the folder design mobile phone. Their early folders were actually designed and manufactured in Asia, and merely had the Siemens logo stamped on them. But with the entry-level CF62, Siemens is showing that they are starting to get how it is done. Starting to, at least.

Siemens USA supplied us with the CF62t variant of the handset. Unlike the standard issue CF62, the CF62t has been customized for T-Mobile USA's network. As such, there are differences. I'll point those out where I am aware of them, but please bear in mind that what I say here about the CF62t may or may not also pertain to the normal CF62.

Physical Aspects

The CF62t is a small, attractive handset. No bones about it. While its actual weight of 89.3g is a bit over the weight claimed by Siemens, it is still quite reasonable. The handset itself measures 82mm x 45mm x 22mm, which means it is about as wide and thick as a Sony Ericsson K700i, but a bit shorter. That's a compact phone. The tasteful two-toned gray body, highlighted by a bit of dark blue and chrome, strikes me as being both modern and cool looking. The loop type antenna at the top of the handset also gives it a bit of character. The blue backlit external gray scale display also looks quite classy on the dark blue face of the device. No complaints so far.

But there are complaints. For one, there are no external controls on the CF62t's body at all. That lack of any external controls means there is no way to silence a ringing phone without answering it if you have the active-flip feature enabled. When active-flip is on, if you want the phone to stop ringing, you have to answer it - you have no way to reject a call. At least you can move the d-pad up and down to adjust volume easily enough.

But then again, the 4-way d-pad and the rest of the keypad also have their share of problems. The d-pad controller on my unit didn't like the down direction much. Often instead of getting the down motion that I sought, I would instead be greeted by a plastic on plastic creaking sound. In fact, that sound is common to most of the keys on the phone to some extent. While the exterior of the phone and its hinge all seem solid enough, the same can not be said of the internal controls. In addition to having a poor feel, the numeric keys are also very poorly backlit. The amber lighting behind the keypad is just bright enough to make the numbers on the keys blend into the gray plastic that surrounds them, making them nearly impossible to read in a lighted room. You need darkness to be able to read the keypad well at all. Darker plastic for the keys would have made a bit difference.

The surprise element in all of this is the Dynamic Light system that surrounds the numeric keypad. The Dynamic Lights can be seen while the handset folder is opened or closed. These amber colored lights can be set to light up in different patterns to denote different circumstances, such as an incoming call or an incoming message. The lights really look cool, and give you an extra chance to notice an incoming call even when you are in a noisy environment. The good vibration alarm also helps in that respect, but is not nearly as cool to behold.

Multimedia

Like many entry-level handsets, multimedia is not exactly the CF62t's strong point. There is no camera in the handset, for one, something that almost seems to be de rigueur these days. With that in mind, though, the CF62t's 1.5MB of internal memory seems pretty reasonable.

The polyphonic system is decent. It only supports 16 simultaneous voices, but the quality of the sound is good. I would have liked the maximum ringtone volume to have been a bit louder, though. The selection of ringtones is pretty spartan. There are only 8 to choose from, and none of them are traditional sounding tones. What I mean to say is, that people who prefer phones to sound like phones will not be satisfied. Even the ringtone named "ring ring" is actually a melody.

 

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