Siemens CV65 mobile phone

Siemens CV65 is a tri-band cameraphone, which therefore makes it suitable for global roaming on 5 continents. This is a candy bar styled model with a smoothly rounded shape, and it is a phone offered exclusively by Vodafone as a variant of the C65. Siemens have targeted this phone at the budget end of the market, and it is now one of the cheapest cameraphones currently available.

Siemens CV65Considering that this is a relatively inexpensive phone, the CV65 still provides its users with a lot of features, and it gives the impression of being good value for money by offering many of the facilities that are found in the more expensive models. Among the features included are GPRS and WAP technology, MMS multimedia messaging, a digital voice recorder, speakerphone for hands-free conversations, Java™ enabled, preloaded games, and a selection of polyphonic ringtones. There is also an aircraft mode to make the phone safe when it is taken on flights.

The display in this phone is a C-STN passive matrix type of LCD screen with a resolution of 130 x 130 pixels. Although this is not a particularly large or high definition screen by today’s standards, it is still capable of displaying 65,536 different colours, and up to 7 lines of text. The display presents the user with the choices available in the phone’s icon-driven menu system, and it also acts as the screen for playing the on-board games that are supplied with the phone.

An integrated camera is fitted into the CV65, although this is unfortunately a fairly low resolution CIF standard device (352 x 288 pixels), which while it may be good enough for some quick shots, it is well below the megapixel cameras now coming onto the market. However, it should be remembered that this is a budget phone, and a CIF quality photograph is good enough to send as part of a MMS message, although it will soon look grainy if you try to enlarge it on a PC or as a print. The camera lens is fitted into the rear cover, and a mirror and timer are also provided to assist with the taking of self-portraits.

Several worthwhile camera features are included to help the user, such as the 3x digital zoom, and an editor, which enables you to crop your pictures to size, as well as giving you the ability to add frames, clipart and text to your photographs. There is also an adjustable exposure level for the photos, and the means to set the white light balance to overcome any background light colour (for example, to compensate for the light colour differences between indoors and outdoors). If you intend to take pictures in poor light conditions, then a plug in flashgun is available as an optional accessory (the IFL-600), which is a proper flash tube device with automatic exposure, and it is also designed to reduce red-eye.

The CV65 is capable of sending and receiving multimedia messaging, and each MMS message may contain a combination of a text, a picture and a sound. As pictures and sounds can take up more memory in the phone, it is satisfying to see that a good-sized memory capacity of around 10 MB has been provided for users, which should make it possible to store a reasonable amount of pictures, ringtones, messages, Java applications, and personal data.

For those who like to personalise their phones, the CV65 has the possibility of being customised by changing the wallpapers, screensavers, and ringtones, and there is also the extra feature of being able to change the outer covers, by purchasing different Siemens’ CLIPit™ shells. A Download Assistant is provided to help take you through the downloading process, making it easier when you wish to download new content to the phone, e.g. ringtones, logos, games, etc. It is also an easy matter to assign pictures to particular callers, so that you can identify your contacts from their photos when they call you.

The CV65 has Java™ capability, which enables it to run any of the Java games and applications that you might wish to use. There are 4 games preloaded in the phone: Stack Attack Advanced, Bubble Booster, Wappo Junior, and a game called Photopet. This last game is based on the Japanese Tamagotchi idea, which means that you can keep a virtual pet in your mobile phone, and in order to keep it active and alive you must perform various functions, such as feeding it with colour photographs you take with the camera. New content for the phone may be obtained via the Vodafone live! portal.

With its integrated GPRS technology the CV65 can give you a faster data transfer with the networks, and this provides the added benefit of an “always on” connection. Data rates of up to 53.6 kbps are possible. The WAP 2.0 browser also allows the user to gain quick and easy access to the mobile Internet, and there are now many WAP sites that supply useful information and services to mobile phone users while they travel about, such services cover diverse subjects like news, sports, weather, traffic, entertainment, and business facilities.

A choice of connectivity options is available in the CV65. The phone has an infrared port, so that you can link up with other compatible IrDA devices, or alternatively there is a wired option to directly link the phone to a PC, or other device, using a data cable to join up to the mini USB connector. Once a connection is established to another device, then it is possible to exchange photos and sounds, and also to synchronise your phonebook or calendar entries with, say, your home PC. This phone supports synchronisation using Microsoft Outlook™, and it will perform remote synchronisation via SyncML. You can also exchange vCard business cards with this phone.

There are several useful organiser facilities available in the CV65, including a calendar, world clock, alarms, tasks, notes, calculator, unit converter (including currency), stopwatch, countdown timer, and a 1,000 contact phonebook is also provided. This phone includes the other standard features of T9™ predictive text input and a vibration alert.

Siemens CV65 mobile phone specification

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Last updated 30th January 2008, 14:39 GMT