Siemens S66

Packing a pile of features into a slim 3.5-ounce design, the Siemens S66 one-ups the value-priced competition in many ways. The tri-band S66 has a large color LCD screen, a 1.3-megapixel digital still and integrated video camera, built-in Bluetooth, and an included 32MB reduced-sized MMC card roomy enough to store up to 150 pictures or other files like downloadble games. You better have some patience and some small fingertips to take advantage of this handset's features.

Even though the S66, like the identically priced T637 available from Cingular, is not a true smart phone, you can sync up with Outlook for calendar, contacts and POP3, IMAP4, or SMTP e-mail via IrDA, Bluetooth, or optional USB connectivity. The phone book holds 1,000 contacts with full address, phone, and even birthday fields.

GPRS WAP 2.0 Web access speed is adequate, but the 2-inch display makes navigating, reading small type, and viewing downloaded images and clips more satisfactory than on less roomy cell screens. The speakerphone and 40-chord polyphonic sound clearly project both voices and ringtones. There are about a dozen ring tones scattered in varying menu options, and when it's time to head into a meeting, six vibrating settings.

The 1.3-megapixel camera captures images up to 1280 x 960 pixels and features an easy-to-access 5x digital zoom and 7-level brightness, although we couldn't see much difference between the settings on the screen. With no flash, indoor photos are typically grainy, but shots taken in bright sunshine are as crisp as any cell-cam's.

Before you can enjoy the S66's features, you'll have to grapple with its sub-par ergonomics and unintuitive interface. Even though the 4.3 x 1.9 x 0.7-inch S66 is slightly larger than the T637, it has smaller, ridged keys that are best pushed with a thumbnail rather than your whole thumb. The flush camera key under the joystick is particularly difficult to click with confidence. The S66 lacks dedicated "back" and "clear" keys that on other phones make navigation and text entry much easier.

Using the joystick, moving around the varying menus and sub-menus is easy. Some of the functions are awkwardly arranged, however. Siemens inconveniently buries the Bluetooth menu under Settings/Other Options/Connectivity, along with the infrequently-accessed Security and Network Settings features. Once you find the Bluetooth settings, searching for and pairing with other Bluetooth devices is quick and effortless.

Sending multimedia files is also a bit convoluted. For instance, Send is the top choice on three different screens, although choosing an image or a recipient's address is what you're trying to accomplish. Once you hit "Send" to actually send, full-size pictures or 15 fps QCIF video clips get transmitted within an efficient 30 seconds.

It takes just two hours to fully charge the battery, which will supply 5 hours of talk and 10 days of standby time. That's pretty good endurance for a value-priced handset.

The large screen is sweet, and we like that Siemens piles on the features. Tweaking the logic of the interface and integrating slightly larger keys would make this phone one of the great cell values. As is, it's merely very good.