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The honour of the first reader to publish an article is Christopher Murray. Enjoy...;)

Here is a quick summary of my thoughts on the Siemens Gigaset SL560/SL565:

Mute

There is no mute feature. I can't stress enough how important mute is. This means this phone is almost useless in a business environment or anyone in a telephone conference. Sometimes there is just a lot of noise in your environment and you must mute, or you want to have a private conversation. But this phone can't do it. I'm aware you can put someone on hold but this is not useful, I want to hear the conversation but not transmit.
I would expect you can fix this with a firmware update. The voice dial button (the “face” that's is speaking) would probably be sensible as it seems unused during a call – so I can quickly mute/unmute by pushing it during a call (ideally a one-touch solution like that rather than a multiple click menu option).

(I think this should be top priority)

Software / Address books

The old MPM software does not work well with this phone (makes a mess of contacts), but I think everyone knows that. I was looking forward to Quicksync but found it disappointing, it is too basic for non trivial setups. If you have multiple handsets with different phonebook requirements the program does not help since I can only sync from one address book (and it’s not the global address book, e.g. from Exchange server). Typically, I have a global set of contacts that I want in all handsets (major customer numbers, office numbers, etc) but then each handset may have some additional private contacts so that “Home” on one handset can be different to another but all handsets have the global numbers. I want to be able to edit the contacts about to be sent to the handsets on my PC (rather than send them directly with an Outlook sync tool) because Quicksync makes some decisions I don’t agree with (name conversion and substitution). For example, it replaces many characters with “_”, for example “Dave & Jean” (in Outlook) becomes “Dave _Jean” which looks bad. We should have control over that substitution, e.g. ‘&’ à ‘+’, and have the ability to edit the end results before we distribute them to the handsets. There is not a good mapping of the contact's fields in the phone and Outlook. One of the most annoying things is I cannot specify how the phone should display names. I am not going to change Outlook contacts just to try make them look nice on the phone. For example, I cannot see a way to show me "first name, last name" rather than "last name, first name" on the handset. This is very annoying because the search only matches first characters – it is a prefix match, not a true search. If it was a true search, I could search for "chris" and find "chris,murray" or "murray,chris" and I would be happy. Currently, if I search for "chr..." I don't find "murray,chris" which is due to how the phone imports the data. You need to fix this – add a new option to display the names in either format. Additionally, an option to make the search scan for a substring, not a prefix would also solve the issue. You could also offer groupings in the phonebook, for example: Customers->Cust1,Cust2,..., Family->Chris,Nikki,Mum,Dad. It gets tedious to use the current book when the entries are long and groups would help, especially because the search is not substring.

I used five SL56 handsets. The software does not make it easy to program multiple address books and it becomes a manageability problem. What I really want (and I suspect most people with multiple handsets), is the software to allow me to define common numbers for all handsets, then specify some for specific handsets (optional), then send this data to all phones without having to plug all handsets in. My old Philips Zenia phones could do this relatively easily (at least the global book). Your handsets should have a "global" and also a "private" phone book. If someone adds to the global, everyone sees it (it is stored on the SL565 base). Local ones are private to the handsets. This is logical and fits with the way most people work – you can have global business contacts but some private ones for each person (like "Home").

Voice tags - these work nice and fast, but there is a serious flaw. You can have only one per contact. This is terrible if I sync with Outlook and my contact has more than 1 telephone number (work, home,mobile). The voice dialler always dials the top number. We need to be able to define a voice tag for any number in a single contact so I can say things like "Mum mobile", "Mum home", or, we could use one tag but it should prompt me onscreen if the contact has multiple numbers and I would click which one to dial at that time. I realise I can make separate contacts but that is a hack and doesn't work if you sync with Outlook because you typically create one contact for all that person’s numbers – it's a phone issue. I end up dialing the wrong people too often because the tag picks the wrong number and it makes the voice dial useless for contacts with more than one number. It’s a shame because the voice dialing recognition is very fast compared to other products.

The calendar that does not sync with Outlook (or anything)? Since the phone obviously has a calendar and alarms, you should be able to sync this information from your PC (Outlook) into all or some handsets – otherwise its pointless and just doesn't get used. The PC software is letting down the phone here I think.

I think you need to invest time in decent phonebook editing software for these phones if they are to be successful. Ideally, I would like to see an application where all my registered handsets are listed on screen. I can click on one and expand it to view the global and private address books. I can import contacts from the Outlook address books into all handsets address books, i.e. effectively populate the global address book, or I can import or edit directly into the private address book of one or more handsets. I can define the mappings of characters the phone does not support so that conversions from Outlook names are down the way I want. I can define which names in Outlook I don’t want (like the Filter option now) and this filter is saved so I don’t have to keep defining it (Quicksync does this ok). When I’m ready, I can distribute the changes to the handset(s) or pull the current phonebooks into the application. I can import/distribute calendar/task events (which populates the handsets calendars and sets alarms as required). I can also upload my images and ringtones but that’s already covered by Quicksync now.

Siemsens DCA-510 (SL56 data cable)

While Quicksync supports Vista, the Siemens DCA-510 (serial cable for SL56) still doesn't work on Vista. Not everyone has Bluetooth on their computer, but they do have the DCA-510 and want to use it with Quicksync. However, DCA-510 does not work under Vista so it cannot be done. You need to release a Vista driver for the DCA-510. I just bought my DCA-510 and was not warned that it would not work on Vista.

M34 USB

I tried the SL565 with an M34. Skype works reasonably well but the menus are rather poor (simple) and unclear (using “*” to simulate state). Again, it's a shame not to exploit the SL56 nice colour screen. Look at the Philips VOIP8411B for a nice simple menu using familiar Skype icons. The SL56 has a colour screen but doesn't seem to exploit it – the black+white text menus look old in comparison. There is also one annoying Skype problem – when a call comes in via skype and I don't answer it, nothing happens, it rings forever. Ideally, the SL565 would be able to take a message like a normal voice call.

Stock reports, weather, ... – the advert for the SL565 said I could receive stock reports, weather information and more on the SL56 handsets. I see nothing about this in the documentation or software. I was really hoping this worked as I wanted stock alerts on my handsets (I also wanted my upcoming Outlook appointments/task alerts to appear on the phone). Please explain how to do the stock alerts etc.

Ideally, you would make the API to use the handsets from the computer available to 3rd parties or public domain, so we can write software for them. I know this is possible; I’ve seen some stuff about "OPCAP" on the German Siemens website but cannot find any good information in English. I suspect that with the proper software API from Siemens it would be possible for me (and others) to write software to display menus/info on the handsets and control things using the handset. This has massive potential and I know the phone/base is capable of this but you need to make this information/API available to others.

Other drawbacks/comments

If I'm on a call and the handset battery is low, I put the handset on the charging station so I don't get cut off my call. But the phone disconnects the current call as soon as you put it on the charging station. This is not good, what am I supposed to do if I'm on a call and low on battery?

"Rings before answer" – more flexibility is required. I cannot set (say) 15 seconds before answerphone answers. After 10 seconds my only option is 20 seconds. This is too long. In the UK it is important to be able to set this to approximately 15 seconds so that its long enough for someone to get to the phone to answer, but not too long – this is important to stop the British Telecom voicemail system (Call Minder) answering before the SL565. Currently, if I pick 10 seconds its too short a time for me to answer. If I pick 20, its too long and BT voicemail answers instead of SL565. With my Philips I can set it to about 15 seconds which means Call Minder will only ever take calls where I was on the phone and a second call came in. A simple firmware update should allow me to enter the number of seconds manually, not pick from the crude choices. This is quite high priority in UK.

The call-by-call button seems wasted for people who do not use that feature. I would like to be able to program that button to another feature.

Considering the potential of the colour display, the menus and screens are really poor and basic. Your competitors colour menus look much more professional (Philips, Panasonic). I'm sure you could improve this with a new "skin" in firmware. The menus should use better graphics and icons, and be better organised. I think the menus are not laid out well. Revamping the menu to be more attractive, colourful and logical would be time well spent.

Externally, the SL56 phone and base looks attractive and the quality is good. I feel this phone is seriously let down by poor software support - both the onboard menus and the accompanying Windows software.

I also think you should make available the API for programming the phone so that people can develop software for it. If I understand OPCAP correctly, I think it's possible to display menus from PCs/other devices and the handset interact – this has superb potential but you need to document this openly so we can all benefit. I know I’d start writing some software today if I had the information!

(Text written by: Christopher Murray)