The Siemens A55 is a budget-level mobile phone with a suprising array of features for its price point. Check out our Australian review.

The A55 is Siemens latest entry-level model, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to last year's A50 model, although it is slightly smaller. It measures in at 103 x 46 x 21.5 mm. Easily fitting into your pocket, it is also lightweight at 84g and is housed inside an average-looking plastic case. The front and back covers of the casing are removable (albeit hard to remove) and Siemens make a wide range of snazzy snap-on covers for the phone-fashion conscious out there.

Unlike the irregular keypad on colour-screened S55, the evenly spaced and sized keypad on the A55 is trouble-free providing painless SMS entry. The right soft key is hard coded to bring up the menu while the left soft key creates a new text message by default and can easily be changed to any other of the phone's functions. There is an up/down scroll key in between the two soft keys and pressing downwards is the shortcut for the phonebook. Holding down the hash key automatically locks the keypad while a long hold on the star button turns all ring tones on/off.

Text messaging is a breeze on the A55 especially with T9 dictionary activated. We have found much more expensive mobiles (such as the camera-equipped Panasonic GD88) unable to adapt to new words. When an unknown word is entered on the A55 you simply press the left soft key, type it in once and it is stored in memory.

The A55 supports sending group text messages as well as EMS (Enhanced Message Service) messages with basic pictures and sounds. It is very user-friendly when you're compiling a message, displaying the number of available characters left (from a maximum of 760) and displaying the number of pages, which is the number of messages your entire SMS will be broken up into.

Phone screen technology has come a long way and there are some interesting OLED products hitting the market. However, Siemens has stuck with the trusted monochrome LCD with an orange backlight for the A55. It's not the smartest looking display on the market but it does its job well, and the screen is clear in bright and dark environments. For a more prominent visual experience the phone offers a "big letters" setting that doubles the size of menu text. Finally, the contrast can be adjusted, although we found the default setting on the test model to be about right.

A budget phone generally comes with budget (monophonic) ring tones, but the A55 also has polyphonic capabilities. A total of 36 tones can be stored in the phone but only 4 polyphonic ring tones come pre-installed. These comprise of an interesting mix of styles that are identifiable by their prefixes. "Traditional" are the usual discordant bleeps and rings while "classic" are melodies inspired by classical composers. The "classic rock" jingles aren't exactly AC/DC and we haven't heard any of the "pop" songs in the top 30 in recent years. The volume can be set soft, loud or to crescendo and overall the tunes provide a pretty good choice to suit your mood, or profile setting.

A loudspeaker can be used during calls by pressing the left soft key. While in hands free mode, callers are audible and the microphone picks up well. The volume can be increased and the maximum setting is loud but not distorted.

There is fun to be had with the A55 and we're not talking about the vibrating alert. Under the surf & fun menu is a WAP browser, games and a couple of applications. First up is Wacko, a fast-paced whacking game where you manically hit buttons, which corresponds to thumping gophers back into a hole. Next is an addictive puzzle game called Move the Box where you control a man in a maze, strategically moving boxes around to cover spots on the floor. Balloon shooter is a self-explanatory and rather dull game. Last is Stack Attack, a puzzle/platform game where you run and jump around pushing falling boxes into place. The couple of extra applications included are a calculator, a currency converter and an alarm clock.

In terms of power consumption, the A55 lays at the other end of the spectrum to the 3G-capable NEC e606. The life of the lithium ion battery that comes with A55 is very impressive--the phone lasted an averaged of six days during our tests before conking out.

The Siemens A55 is an easy to use mobile and with a RRP of only AU$239 will appeal to the budget-conscious looking for a good, practical phone without all the bells and whistles.

Siemens A55
Company: Siemens
Price: AU$239
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 555 564

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved.
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive.