After a 6 month with a Sony Ericsson W550i, a excellent phone but a tad bulky to my liking (Read my review in the corresponding section), I decided to go for a compact but with somewhat good features comparable to W550i. I looked at Sony Ericsson K510i, Z530i, Nokia 6125, Samsung X640 and Sony Ericsson Z550i. After my initial hesitation to buy a clamshell I decided to go for one and Z550i at a price of Rs. 8, 500/- seems to fit the bill very nicely.
Now some of my obeservations on its various features.
Build & Looks : Finishing similar to K700i and weighing at 89g its a stylish phone and the hinge and build quality is excellent. The external screen is monochrome with useful details about network, battery, Message / Call indicators, Time etc.
Call & Reception : I have never had any problems with my previous Sony Ericssons and this is the case with Z550i too. Reception and speaker volume is clear and loud. And there is also a speakerphone option. One nifty feature is that during calls you can go to main menu and even send sms in the background. The battery lasts for 3 days at the max with 4 hours talk time.
Messaging : The User interface is very intuitive with customizable shortcuts. Messaging like SMS / MMS is a breeze. E-Mails can be sent / received through the inbuilt mail client with a GPRS connection
Multimedia : Camera @ 1.3 Mpx seems not as good as the W550i or the K510i. But I think a future firmware upgrade will fix this problem. And the ringtones are tad softer compared to my previous W550i. Otherwise the media player is excellent for hearing music in MP3, AAC, M4A formats and viewing videos in 3GP, MP4 format. And here there is no full screen video playback & MegaBass which was present in W550i. But this can be used a multimedia device because Memory Stick micro upto 1GB can be added to the existing 20 MB internal memory.There is also FM Radio which can be used with the given Stereo headset.
Connectivity : Infrared is absent but Bluetooth, USB option is present and pairing with any device is very easy. For browsing GPRS is present and a in built HTML Netfront browser is good. But Opera mini is more capable alternative to the inbuilt browser. There is a application whereby users can see RSS feeds.
Games / Apps : There are inbuilt 3D java games and there are many more java games in the net to kill your time. And in the productivity department even though this is not a smartphone there are apps like World Clock, Unit Converter, E-Book reader, Instant Messengers (which can run in the background).
For fun there is a face warp application, Music DJ, PhotoDJ and Video DJ to edit music, photos , videos respectively.
At the current price I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND this phone to anyone looking for a stylish, compact and feature packed device.
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