I am back with a phone this week and this time it is one from Deutschland. The Siemens SL55, a well-designed "slider-phone", was introduced in India recently after some long-awaited success in Europe.

The SL55 is one among 30 phone models the world's fourth largest cellular phone maker in the last year -- that is, five phones every two months.

The SL55 was delivered to me last week and I was immediately impressed enough to slip in my SIM card and switch it on.

The SL55 has an appealing design that has rather intuitively included the keypad on a slider. The beauty of the slider is the ease with which it can be operated, reasonably-sized buttons on the keypad allowing for comfort and ease of use.

This phone is small, even by today's small-phone standards; its length is that of an average palm's fingers. It measures 81.6 by 44.5 millimetres, with a depth of just 22 millimetres and a weight of 79 grams.

The large colour display, which has a range of 4,096 colours (standard in most new phones), dominates the face of the handset. Even with the slider-keypad concealed, all menu items can still be accessed and controlled using the two call keys, soft keys and navikey. Not bad.

The user interface of the phone, unfortunately, is not as hot. While it is better than some of the older Siemens models I've used, the SL55 has still got a way to go to catch up with the Nokia -- or copycat Korean -- user interface.

One brownie point for Siemens though: it has integrated the T9 predictive text facility in text messages, which makes for easy keying when furiously typing in that SMS.

The voice quality on the phone is good, but I experienced some trouble with the radio reception of the phone.

When other phones in the room were catching radio signals from the nearest base station, the SL55, for some strange reason, was just not hooking up.

This could, of course, be a network issue but it puzzles me that the other phones around me were catching the signal all right.

The SL55 has a chunky set of features. It has an optional plug-in QuickPic camera that can be quite handy while taking pictures.

Using an extra attachment for taking pictures may not sound very bright, but it does make sense. Most camera phones with built-in lenses deliver poor quality pictures if they are not taken in sunlight or bright indoors.

Siemens seems to have worked around this with a camera attachment with a built-in flash. This sure drains the battery but is a useful gadget to have especially when you decide to take that anniversary picture at dinner in a fancy, but dim-lit restaurant.

The QuickPic attachment is really small -- about half the size of the SL55 -- and light. It slides into the omnibus port (the same for charging, hands free kit, GPRS cord) with ease.

Needless to say, the SL55 comes with an multimedia messaging option. Pictures of 160 x 120 or 640 x 480 pixels can be combined with sounds and text to create your very own personal multimedia message.

Polyphonic tones, logos and wallpapers that can be downloaded from the Siemens site complete the picture for the rich teenage user.

The SL55 is also a top end phone that packs in features for the travelling manager. It boasts of GPRS connectivity, which is very useful feature to have when your Internet service provider -- VSNL in my case -- decides to act difficult.

Appointments and contact data on the phone can be synchronised to a PC or laptop through the infrared port. The phone also offers hands-free talking, voice control and voice dialing, which can come in handy while driving or sweating it out on a Nautilus Tread Climber.

This phone, as you'd expect, does not come cheap. Depending on which state you buy it in, the SL55 will set you back between Rs 24,660 and Rs 27,480.

The QuickPic attachment is priced at an additional Rs 3,000. There are several phones offering the same features at around the Rs 20,000 price point, but I think this phone's design will see it faring well in India.

Josey Puliyenthuruthel works with content company perZuade. His views are personal and may not be endorsed by his employers, the company's investors, customers or vendors.

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