BenQ-Siemens EL71 review

Features
We've already used the word average to describe the EL71, but there is no getting away from saying it again. The camera, for example, shoots at resolutions up to 1.3 megapixels, and while it also manages video, the output is a little flat and lacks sharpness.

There is 16MB of built-in memory and you can augment this with microSD cards (they are also known as TransFlash). The EL71 will pick up music from anywhere on a card, which in theory makes hotswapping them in and out attractive. In practice, though, cards are housed under the battery cover and you need to remove the battery to get to the slot, so swapping is a bit painful.

The Web browser works surprisingly well, scaling pages to fit the width of the screen and resizing graphics so that they look appropriate and don't leech out into the horizontal ether that requires a lot of scrolling. Of course complex pages are delivered less effectively than simple ones, but browsing is not an unpleasant experience.

We were pleasantly surprised at the quality of music playback through the EL71's own speaker. Our review unit came without a headset, but we borrowed one from a BenQ-Siemens EF81 which uses the same proprietary side-mounted connector. At the highest volume there was a little distortion of sound, but we were impressed with what we heard nonetheless.

It is just such a shame that the headset connector is side mounted -- always an awkward location for those who carry their handset in a pocket -- and that it is proprietary. We're sure we could improve further on output quality with a better headset.

BenQ-Siemens provides the software you need to share contact and diary information with Outlook on your PC, but you will need to either make a Bluetooth connection or invest in a data cable to take advantage. The on-board organiser software runs to a note taker and voice recorder, and you also get unit conversion, alarm clocks, stopwatch and countdown timers. In addition it features a handy date calculator that will tell you how many days it is until a particular date, delivering the result in either years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes or seconds -- useful to irritate your friends by reminding them how long it is until your birthday.

Performance
The EL71 had no trouble maintaining a signal, and call quality was good. The camera quality we've already noted as slightly iffy, though if all you want to do is capture a few snaps for a quick look it does the job. Audio quality impressed a lot more but points are lost here because a headset isn't supplied.

Battery life is a let down. We did manage a couple of days between charges with minimal chat but you should plan for a daily power boost and should not consider this handset if you want a music player you can rely on to be ready when you want to use it.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Kate Macefield