Pretty solid mobile phone. Review on Siemens C35i

I ditched a quirky Ericcson mobile for this Siemens C35i. I wasn't intending to buy this model--the main feature I was looking for was vibration--but the salespeople at the store I went to convinced me it was worth the extra money. And although I had my suspicions that I may have fell prey to heavy-handed marketing, after using the phone, I'm convinced.

I'm using it in a One2One pay-as-you-go set-up. And of all the phones I've had--and I'm on phone four because of them being stolen or broken or just annoying--this is by far the best. The reception is very good. The phone is light. The vibration feature works well. The phone lasts a good while without needing charging. Even the power cord is well-constructed, as I'm not worried that I'll break off the end every time I plug it in.

Not that the phone is perfect. I'm disappointed with the ring tone selection, and you can't download Nokia ones, although you can program your own. When you text message, the default option is predictive text, which for me is a lot more trouble than it is worth (however, it's not that hard to turn off the feature). Not a huge fan of the built-in games, but that's no reason to buy or not buy a phone.

You may have noticed that I haven't commented much on the WAP feature. That's for a reason--I think WAP generally is a waste of time. Say you're on a bus--it might be fun to get caught up on some news or sport or whatever, but the costs are so high that it's not really worth it, and a person certainly doesn't need the info that WAP provides. The time it would come in handy is if abroad, but then, the WAP would cost a fortune, as you're dialing back to the U.K. to get onto (a very slow) Internet. Anyway, the WAP works fine, but after testing it out, I don't have any real use for it.

Bottom line--good phone, particularly at recent prices. It's worth picking up.