Customer Reviews

Siemens 4015 Gigaset 2.4 GHz DSS Expandable Cordless Phone (Silver)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

I purchased the Siemens 4015 Gigaset for my parents to use in their home. My 71 yr. old mother programmed this phone simply by following the step-by-step process that is very clearly shown in the manual. To anyone with an average level of intuition, you can program this system without even using the manual.

Voice quality is excellent and there is no noticeable static when using the handset around the house. Outside of the house the phone begins to break up a little at about 150'.

The intercom feature is ideal for my parents because they can carry the handsets throughout the house (or outside in the yard) and always be able to call the other for assistance without having to yell for help. It's also nice to be able to use standard AA batteries in an emergency..

Having no controls for the answering machine at the base is no issue. It's no different than using voice mail from your phone company, and having message access from the couch is great in my opinion. There is a speaker in the base station too, and as long as you set the volume at maximum, it works fine. You can use the speaker to screen calls or to listen to messages.

This system is about $100 less than the Panasonic and every bit as good. I also looked at VTech, but for the same $$ I elected to go with Siemens for the quality of construction.

My only gripe is that I don't care for selection of melody-ringers that come with the phone. Only 1 of the 10 melodies is tolerable.

And, for the reviewer that complained that there is no paging for lost handsets, look at the bottom of the base station. There is a button there for exactly that purpose.

I love this phone system! Buy it with confidence.

Very sleek little phone.

The handset is very light-weight, almost too light. The AA NiCads used by the handset allow you to use regular AAs in an emergency. It also has a cell phone style headset jack for hands-free.

It has no ring tones that don't sound ultra-modern, so if you are looking for a traditional ring, this isn't the phone.

I have two gipes: The advertised call screening from the handset is not available (confirmed with Siemens tech support); and there is no mute function available.

All 4000-series handsets are the same. So in hindsight, I probably should have purchased the 4215 to get the extra features and add another handset later.

After seeing the mix of reviews on this product and the other brands of cordless phones/answering machines as well, I took the plunge and went for the 4015 and an extra handset.

The negative reviews sounded to me to be environmental problems. I do not live in a dense urban area, I do not have a home computer network and I do not run the microwave oven much. My phone does "click" when the microwave is running, but I have a few solutions to dealing with that: don't turn on the microwave when the phone is in use, don't turn on the phone when the microwave is in use, take the phone out of the kitchen if it is imperative that they both be used at once, or simply listen to the click for a few minutes. It's not that bad. For me.

Reception throughout the house has been wonderful and I can wander in the backyard with no loss of sound quality.

Cons: The ring tones are really stupid. I remember when phones actually had bells in them. Now it sounds like there are cell phones ringing throughout the house. The base has no provision to mount on the wall. Since there are no controls on the base, why clog up counter space? The handset menus are not great, but after four brands of cell phones, none of them were really great either. One other bad thing: the handset doesn't have a cord. My wife still wanders around the house with it and leaves it hidden.

Pros: It's a phone. It works - people can call me, I can call them, they can leave messages. I use it as a consumer product, not as a business tool. I don't have a huge house or a large estate so reception has not been a problem. The base is nice and small, much smaller than our previous analog answering machine. I like the feature of having all of the controls in the handset rather than on the base.

Other: I bought an additional handset and had a bugger of a time getting the handset to register to the 4015 base. I called Siemens customer care and they helped me out. The spare handset must be placed in the 4015 base once, not just it's own cradle (doh!)in order for it to be recognized.

We have had the 2415 Siemens phone system with 4 handsets for 22 months. This is the single-line predecessor of the 4000 series. Except for some speech breakup at about 150 feet away from the base unit, it has worked well until last week. At that time, the handset that was on the base unit would unpredictably go into search mode and be unable to find the base unit so that we could not answer the phone. The remote units had some breakup but usually worked OK until the were brought near the base unit. They would then also go into search mode and be functionless. I made three calls to Siemens support in the last 24 hours, and after doing numerous base unit resets, re-registering of handsets, the problem is unchanged. Siemens will not accept the base unit for repair (I'd be hapy to pay for it) and suggested that I buy a refurbished unit at their website but they don't have the same unit available. They said that they do not have any authorized repair services in the USA. There is NO support for the units after the warranty period (1 year) has expired. One is then left with a [money] phone system which doesn't work and can not be repaired nor applied toward the purchase of a newer system. I hope someone at Siemens is monitoring these reviews, because no one should buy a Siemens phone until the company has repair support for one of its phone systems that has become defective after the limited warranty has expired. I think that [money] per year is too much to pay for a home phone.

I really, really wanted to like and keep this phone. It was interesting to note how many of the reviews were split into either rave reviews, or embarassingly poor reviews of this phone. I'd hoped that environmental issues contributed to the most commonly cited complaint -- that the Seimens phone lacked the voice clarity of the phone it was replacing. But sadly, after owning the phone for two days, and making half a dozen calls on it, everyone I spoke to thought I was using a voice distortion device, or speaking from within a echo chamber. I could hear them quite clearly, but there must have been some problem with the microphone on my handheld unit. I was not using this phone while using the microwave, I do not (yet) have a wireless network. I did Read The Manual (RTFM), and still, I couldn't think of any other cause

Seimens has fantastic customer service, available 7 days a week, and they suggested I reset the phone to its default settings. They also said that if this didn't work, it was most likely a hardware problem, and I should simply return the phone. It didn't work, and for the price I paid for this phone, I expect a lot of bells and whistles, but not at the expense of the essential function of a telephone: clear voice communication.

Other minor issues: the ring tones are annoying and only Melody 3 can pass for a familiar phone sound. If you like all kinds of digitized classical snippets or movie soundtrack songs on your cell phone, you won't mind. But I hate those.

The supplied belt clip conforms to the curves of the phone, making it impossible to actually use as a belt clip. Who designed that? Probably someone with a very different kind of belt than I have.

The phone is very compact, but doesn't fit very well in the hand for extended conversations. After a while, your hand cramps from trying to hold the phone, and then you wish the belt clip actually worked as a belt clip, instead of some strange rear despoiler for the phone, which reminds me of a silver VW Passat.

If space saving design is part of this phone's main appeal, then why can't the phone be wall mounted? The FAQ actually addresses this question, with language someone along the lines of "the phone is sufficiently compact -- wall mounting is not needed." Great, thanks. While the phone and base station aren't very big, there's no cord management system, so you have a beautiful looking phone sitting on your counter or desk, and ugly cables protruding out.

So one major gripe and several minor ones are enough for me to return the phone. If you're considering purchasing this phone, Seimens does have great customer service, and an over-engineered product. I don't doubt other reviewers who love this phone, mine probably was a bad one. I returned it, and looked for a phone with similar features. At BestBuy, the closest phone was the Panasonic KX-TG2227S for about the same price. It's a little bigger, it has external antenae, but it does everything the Seimens phone does (Caller ID, Digital Answering Machine, Headset Jack) and more: it's wall mountable, comfortable to hold and actually doesn't look all that bad. Being a bit paranoid after my first [$$$] phone experience, I asked the first person who called us who the connection was, and she said, it was great. Crystal clear. Why was I asking?

Whew.

I think we're keeping this phone.

Siemens do not offer repair support in the US on any of their phones once the one year warranty is up. I was willing to pay and send it wherever but no luck there. If your phone system goes wrong, you are on your own! All they do is suggest you buy a reconditioned unit from them.
Until they sort this out, I would recommend not buying their phones. I speak from experience after having suffered their uncaring Customer Care dept.

Recently purchased this phone along with an additional matching handset. It may seem a little intimidating at first with all of it's options, but the instruction manual is easy to follow (there is also a "cheat sheet" provided) and the phone is easy to set up. It takes up so little space and everything is controlled on the handset. It really looks great (everyone who sees it compliments it!) and all functions appear to work well so far (clarity is excellent)....I've done research on all the phone brands (Uniden, Panasonic, VTech, etc etc) and after reviewing all the models out there, I would highly recommend this Siemens phone and the additional handset to compliment it!

This is an amazing, though misunderstood phone. It is a WDCT (World Digital Cordless Telecommunications) phone, a varient of DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications). DECT is illegal in the United States and Canada, as well as several other places because it uses a band at about 1.9GHz licensed to PCS in North America (the equivilent is 1.8GHz licensed to GSM in most of the rest of the world, but our military uses that band for undisclosed purposes). It still features most of the capabilities of "true" DECT phones, including amazing sound quality and features. It has a great display (though only one line for Caller ID:( ), Upto 3 handsets (not as many as most DECT and WDCT phones however), alphanumeric phonebook, keyback lock, backlit screen, 10 ringtones, high quality answering machine, alarm clock - everything! It is basically the same phone as the very popular Siemens Gigaset 4015 Classic DECT available in other countries (I'd really like the Comfort version, smaller, more expensive, more features - but they haven't made a WDCT version of it yet and the 4215 was way too expensive). Sound quality is amazing, and security - well I can't make guarantees, but I feel safer than with any other cordless because of the WDCT system. Range is good, though non-WDCT phones can offer better range (for example, while an analog phone can get staticy - the digital WDCT is all or nothing, so you hit a signal cut off point). Overall, you won't be unhappy with this phone! Oh, the batteries are a downside (NiCd), but thankfully they're AA and it can charge NiMH - so REALLY nice NiMH Rayovac's that will give you an incredible battery life... The NiCd isn't limited to this phone - for some reason most phones are NiCd, and most aren't as easy (if it's even possible) to replace with NiMH.

Upon purchasing this phone, I had very high expectations regarding its quality. As it was made by a prestigious firm and utilized technology that was then state-of-the-art, one might easily understand why.
The phone not only under-delivered relative to my expectations, it also failed to meet the standards that define a telephone (i.e. providing communications between two parties).
From day one (out-of-the-box) people to whom I spoke with using the phone could not hear me. They complained of distortion as well as intermittent muting. Perhaps this was due to other appliances that operate at the 2.4Ghz frequency. Not being a particularly tech-savvy individual, I have little patience for this type of excuse. My feeling is, if a firm puts out a product...are you ready for this?...it should work under normal circumstances. What domicile these days is without a microwave (a device that I understand may cause interference)? Design the phone so that it works around the appliances. If we can put a man on the moon using less computer power than is contained in the average PDA, designing a 2.4Ghz phone that works should not only not be impossible, it should be easy.
Think of this, lets say that Boeing made a new airplane...and it had revolutionary fuel efficiency. But, it didn't fly when it is raining. Would any airline lease or buy that plane? Would any traveler get on the plane? Would Boeing realse the plane? No.
Just the same (although involving less danger) is Siemens designing a phone that cannot work under relatively normal circumatances. But Siemens released it.

After about 2 months, the battery stopped working. In my opinion a cordless phone battery is not something that should need bi-monthly replacement. Never-the-less I called Siemens and requested a new phone. Siemens sent one. Identical results.
I will not call Siemens again to ask for a new phone. I am simply buying a phone made by another firm.
I recommend to anyone reading this review...do the same...buy a phone made by another firm.

Last year I purchased the Siemens 2420 model and started encountering static problems so bad I could not use the supplementary handset. The base unit still worked fine on the 2040 unit. I wanted to upgrade so last week I purchased the 4015 model. I encountered the same problem after a few days of use. I think it is the wireless network in my house but when I shut down the network the problem still exists. I personally liked the new 4015 model better than the 2420 model. The feel of the handset is better and the features are easier to configure. Since the problem still exists, I returned the phone today and i'm still looking for a solution. I may have to go back to a 900mhz unit.