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Siemens weighs in with quarter-pounder for 3G at CeBIT

It's not shipping till September, and it's a big baby at over four ounces, but it does have a two megapixel camera AND a GPS navigator. It's the Siemens UMTS SXG75 phone.

"Siemens SXG75 – the complete communications device with GPS navigation, UMTS and music functionalities," is the way the press release puts it.

What the press release doesn't emphasise is the 4.7 ounce weight. That, believe it or not, is even heavier than Nokia's lump, the 6630 "imaging smartphone" - a phone which will certainly distort your fleece pockets. Just to put it into perspective, the giant "mini-PC phone" - the Nokia 9300 - weighs 167 g compared to the 6630's 127 g - the Siemens is 134 g.

It needs that weight for a battery, because there's a lot of gear inside it.

It looks like users will have to make a choice about whether to use internal storage for photos or music. The built-in 64 (optional 128) meg memory isn't going to keep the typical MP3 fan going more than an hour or so; the option to plug in extra ram in MMC format looks good until you remember that two megapixel camera.

The rest of the phone announcements from Siemens at the CeBIT show in Hannover look to be just phones - with the exception of the waterproof one, which turns out not to be waterproof after all: the Siemens new outdoor mobile phone – the M75.

"This high-tech phone in a robust shell is built for even the most active lifestyles. It is fully shock, dust and splash-water-resistant even though this stylish companion is equipped with such gadgets as a 1.3 mega pixel camera and an MP3 player" says the company.