Finally, colour screens have made their way into Siemens phones. In the fast evolving world of mobile communications, can Siemens late entry catch up with the rest?

It's not surprising that many users will be won over by the ergonomic, petite outline of the S57. Weighing about 85g, it is one of the lighter colour-screen mobiles around. We had no complaints about the build or the stylish silver finish of the handset.

Adding to the good looks is the S57's new seamless keypad--there are no gaps between the buttons. Unfortunately, this new design turns out to be somewhat mixed in terms of performance. The buttons are highly responsive, but the keys can feel stiff if depressed at the wrong spot.

The S57 uses a new icon-based menu to better harness the colour display. This is generally very easy to navigate. However, there are uncharacteristic quirks. While using the mobile, it hung on us once. A few other times we had to put up with significant response lags.

Siemens may subscribe to the adage that it's better late than never. However, the late start doesn't appear to have benefited the company. Upon switching on the phone, users are treated to an underwhelming default animation that showcases the phone's greatest weakness. The images in the city scene, which has cars zooming along, appear pixilated, with the colours looking washed out. The polyphonic accompaniment is little better, sounding somewhat muffled.

Still, the user will discover the S57 does get better. Aside from the unfortunate starter sequence, the mobile comes with some cartoonish graphics that look surprisingly good. Even better, the S57 offers loads of customisation. You can assign an image to a friend's address book entry so his picture appears whenever he calls. Alternatively, you can set the image as a wallpaper, screensaver, or startup graphic. Unlike some of Nokia's recent phones, users can quickly and easily beam new images into the phone by using the built-in infrared port. Popular JPEG, GIF and BMP formats are supported, so you can have a new wallpaper everyday. Interestingly, we found it was possible to upload your own transparent GIFs and transpose them over the wallpaper. So Photoshop whizzes, get your virtual paintbrushes ready!

That said, the S57's limitations can sometimes be cruelly exposed when photographs are shown onscreen. The phone supports up to only 256 colours, which pales in comparison to the 4,096-colour handsets that rivals are putting out. Furthermore, parts of the picture management system proved rather unintuitive.

Apart from the colour display, the S57 comes with a good set of features, including Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), triple band technology, polyphony, and wireless Java.

Siemens is a major proponent of Java in mobile phones. Fittingly, the S57 comes with a few imaginative Java games and applications. KungfuAerobics requires you to press the right buttons in sync with a disco beat, similar to the arcade hit "Dance Dance Revolution". The application fit@work is also nicely done. This somewhat esoteric program demonstrates some exercises you can do at work, coming complete with a toned-down Lara Croft-like instructor. We were, however, disappointed that a personal favourite, Stack Attack, has been omitted.

As mentioned previously, the polyphonic ringtones here aren't the most sparkling, but there is a good variety of melodies pre-installed with the handset. The speaker is also pretty loud when playing melodies. The S57 also supports a camera add-on.

According to the manual, the SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) value of the phone is 0.53W/Kg. Based on the recommendations of the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), this is well below the limit of 2.0W/kg.

Reception was generally good and we experienced no problems except in areas with dodgy network coverage. There were no issues with voice quality, either. The S57's built-in speakerphone proved average, although the mic and speaker should work fine in enclosed areas such as in your car.

The 700mAh Lithium-ion battery offers a standby time of up to 300 hours and talktime of up to 6 hours. In our tests, the phone provided less than three days of usage.

While a credible foray into the colour-screen market, Siemens' inexperience shows in the S57, which one hopes will be a launch pad for bigger and better colour-display efforts in the future.

Siemens S57
Company: Siemens
Price: TBA
Phone: 13 72 22

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