As the joint venture of BenQ Siemens continues to struggle to create a worldwide reputation, they have released the BenQ Siemens E61 in the hope that this will some how change the company’s fortunes over night, sadly this has not happened.  Recent financial worries have forced BenQ to retrench into familiar markets, with the hope of consolidating their financial situation and developing business when possible.  While the BenQ Siemens E61 has a stylish design, it has been in development for so long that a lot of the components are out of date with the modern day technology.  There is however some attraction to the more basic mobile user who may just be buying their first phone, or taking on a basic second phone.  The BenQ Siemens E61 is powered by a 840 mAh battery offering 215 hours standby time and over 3 hours of talk time.

The phone appears to be marketed towards the younger generation as the “Candy-Bar” design comes in silver and cream, as well as black and orange - colours which have historically been well received by the younger mobile phone user.  The dimensions of the phone are not too bad at 101 mm x 44 mm x 17 mm and weighing some 96 grams, allowing you to carry the phone or slip into a pocket with ease. There are a number of function keys on the outside of the case, one in particular is used to launch the music player, which is one of the main elements of the phone.  One concern is the fact that all side buttons are the same style, making it difficult to activate “blind”.

One the media side, the BenQ Siemens E61 offers a number of the services which we have all come to expect including a camera for still pictures and video clips.  The VGA camera offers a variety of pixel resolutions from 128 x 160 to 640 x 480, as well as a selection of simple special effects which you can use to enhance your photographs.  While the service is ok, the camera itself seems to have fallen behind the times, and is fairly basic.

On the music front, the BenQ Siemens E61 has an MP3 music option which was supposed to be one of the main selling points.  The MP3 player supports the MP3, AAC and AAC+ formats, with sufficient memory of 1GB available to retain a small selection of your favourite tunes.  Again, the music facility is basic and seems to have fallen behind the market when it was stuck in the development process.
All in all it has to be said that the BenQ Siemens E61 is unlikely to have a major impact on the fortunes of BenQ Siemens, although the phone will attract a number of users looking for a basic phone.   It is difficult to see where the company will go, as they further retrench to the Far East after closing down a number of their European operations.  It would seem that the BenQ Siemens joint venture will not be a major player in the market, and is set for a support role at best.