BenQ-Siemens E61 mofi review

There is just under 2MB of memory built in, and support for a miniSD card, which lives underneath the battery. You get a 512MB card with the phone. You don't get any data synchronisation software, but connect it to your PC using the provided data cable and you can choose to work in 'mass storage' mode -- the miniSD card appears on your computer as a standard drive and you can copy and paste not just music but photos and other files too. You can also play back music files from the handset on a PC, which is a neat way of sharing sounds with friends.

The camera has its ups and downs. There's no video mode, and stills are shot at a maximum resolution of just 640x480. There are presets for different shooting conditions and types of subject: people, landscape, sunny, sunset, night, snow and text as well as an auto setting, and some effects: grey, sepia, mosaic, tile, negative, draft, watercolour, embossed, engraved and sketch. Both the wait while new settings are saved and the time lag between pressing the centre of the navigation button and a shot actually being taken is interminable -- you won't get many candid quick-fire shots with this handset.

You can get to full Web sites via the browser, but we aren't sure why you'd want to, given the low-resolution screen and GPRS-speed data connection. Stick to WAP sites, of which there are now plenty that are useful, and which we found, not surprisingly, to load faster and be easier to get around on the screen.

Probably the cardinal sin for the E61 is the absence of Bluetooth. There's no infrared either, incidentally.

Performance
When it came to voice calls, we'd have liked more in the volume department, but the E61 handled itself well enough. Music playback is average rather than outstanding, but we could live with it. The camera, on the other hand, is truly disappointing in pretty much every way. If you want more than just pics to view on a handset you should look elsewhere.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Kate Macefield