Siemens M65

Discontinued
18th March 2004

The Siemens M65 is aimed at those people who enjoy outdoors activities and need a phone that's a little tougher than normal.

The M65 features a large 132x176 pixel display in 65,000 colours and has a built-in VGA camera. There's Java support, but no Bluetooth.

The M65 is pitched at a strange market segment, defined by the Nokia 5000-series, and with a flagship of the long-awaited Nokia 5140, but the M65 is much better in specification terms.

It's designed to be water, shock and dust resistant (but not proof) which will give the usually fragile electronics some protection. There's a funky set of orange rubbery covers to protect vital components when not in use.. a simple idea that no-one else uses. It comes a metal protection frame and rubbery casing too.. we guess you can't drive a truck into it, but it's the sort of reassuring feeling you might get from driving a Volvo.

There's an optional "Bike-o-meter" function in the phone that means you can plug it in to your bicycle for telemetry and navigation information. We can't make up our mind if this is a gimmick or useful innovation. There's a range of action and sports games too.

At first glance this seems to be aimed at rubber fetishists and sports jocks, but actually the M65 is a pretty well specified phone compared to most of the competition. Yes, Bluetooth and a megapixel camera would be nice, but the specification isn't bad and we feel that the M65 will probably be reasonably popular in the market as a whole, simply because of its reassuring toughness, decent screen and stylish but understated looks.