Siemens CFX65 review: The chameleon clamshell

Environment and control

If you've already had experience with some of the new Siemens phones, I am sure that you won't get lost in the CFX65 menu. It's very clear. On the main display in emergency mode you'll see a status row showing signal and battery strength indicators. Also you'll find there information about date and time, provider's name and a bottom status row with the context keys functions. Of course you can set a wallpaper of your choice in the background.

You can access the main menu by pressing the confirmation button. You'll see a matrix of nine icons, which get larger and animated by clicking them. Those of you, who are not comfortable with that, can view the menu in large and individual icons. The deeper levels of the menu are in text form only. The colors of the menu can be changed in different schemes. In the testing phone there weren't any of them available but we assume that the phones for sale will be better equipped.

Display in standby mode • main menu in the matrix … • the icon view • display settings possibilities -color schemes are also available

Faster browsing the menu is possible. There are three options for quick menu selection - by pressing a number (all menu functions are numbered internally), by easily accessible list of the most used functions or by speed selection. Speed selection means assignment of a function or a phone number to a key on the numeric keypad. Two favorite functions can be assigned to the context keys. Each direction of the navigation key has also a function assigned, but it cannot be changed. The right direction will get you to the received messages. The left direction is assigned to the camera. The way up leads you to profiles and down direction goes to the address book. For moving in the menu you can also use the side buttons. In opened position the upper button starts profiles and a longer press activates the camera. The lower button does nothing on a short press and on a longer press it activates the voice recorder. In closed position the upper button turns on the outer display, the lower button activates the lighting diode.

Telephony and address book

In the previous chapter I have described the functions of the side buttons and I am going to continue in this chapter. During telephony the side buttons are used for call volume control. The sound is clear and the volume seems to be sufficient. You can also turn on the handsfree but if you are holding the phone in your hand, it won't be really loud. That's because the sound is coming out from the back loud speaker. The upper side button is used to reject a call during ringing. I would appreciate if the lower button could silence ringing during incoming call. You can do that by pressing the "•" key when your phone is opened.

Dialing a number and calling

The phone rings in 40 channels melodies. The playback quality is not reaching the quality of the Asian competitors but it's sufficient. The ringing volume can be changed easily by using the profiles. There are seven of them available, the eighth one is designated for Airplane mode, which turn's off sound including alarms. It's not possible to change ringing melodies in profiles, just the volume. There is also a possibility to activate vibrating alert, illumination intensity or calls filtering.

The phone is dual and because of to the missing 1900 MHz band you can't make calls e.g. in USA with it.

Multi-item address book where you can search by several initial letters • a record view

As we are used to the Siemens series 65 phones, we will praise the address book. It has not so big capacity as its classic brother CX65 but 250 names should be enough to most of the users. Of course you can search by several initial letters. You can assign up to 14 records to every name with individual surname, and moreover a picture that will be displayed by ringing. Besides four phone numbers and an email address you can save to a name an identification for various instant messaging systems or a postal address. Contacts can be sorted in groups and a specific ringing tone can be assigned to them. Separately from the address book a phonebook is kept where you can find your contacts that are saved on the SIM card.

Entering new contact • address book capacity • a phonebook a SIM card is kept separately

SMS and multimedia, email receive only

Siemens CFX65 supports text messages, EMS, multimedia messages and partially emails. Thanks to the comfortable keypad message writing could be a fast thing. The speed is not bad, but passive display and response of the phone are slowing it a bit. Most users will be satisfied.

During writing an SMS you can see the countdown of characters in the right upper corner and in the middle the number of the message you are currently writing is displayed. T9 dictionary will help you with writing. It's possible to save up to 100 text messages in the phone. The most important messages can be saved in the archive, which is limited only by the amount of free share memory.

You can create either text or multimedia messages.. •… and receive emails

For creating multimedia messages there is a well arranged editor available. It's possible to create pages and you can send messages up to size of 100 kB. Pictures are displayed right in the editor. The phone features also a simple email client, which can only receive messages via POP3 protocol. You can download either complete messages or just their headers. It does not support attachments.