Great little phone! (Sony Ericsson W550i)

Member Name: joeyer

Product:	Sony Ericsson W550i
Date:	19/01/09 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Compact, reliable

Disadvantages: Buttons may be too small for some people

I got this phone about 4 months ago second hand, and I have to say I was very impressed. Being the first Walkman phone released by Sony Ericsson I wasn't expecting much, but I was wrong. It's a tidy little phone; with the 180 degree twisting function in 2 directions makes it very stylish! All the files on this phone are transferred using the data cable for the pc, which is provided, or a blue tooth or infrared adapter for you pc.

Walkman

Starting off with the main factor of the phone, the Walkman! The Walkman on the w550i is very easy to use. The walkman features the option to create play lists of your favourite songs, view the tracks in alphabetical order or arrange the tracks by artist for separate viewings, say if you wanted to access a certain album. When playing the songs, you can choose whether to play your songs on shuffle or loop, or neither, but this is a standard feature on most mp3 players nowadays anyway. I was very surprised by the quality of the equalizer on this phone which lets you manually set the different values or choose preset options such as Sony's Mega Bass function which gives you a very nice sound, as well as the stereo widening option you can create the perfect sound that suits your ears. To listen to your music Sony provided a set of in ear headphones, which may be really annoying at first, your ears will get used to them and I have to say these are better then any other headphones I have tried before, the sound quality is perfect. The connected for the headphones into the phone is a bit annoying, as it has a habit of becoming disconnected which leads to your music playing through the built in speakers, which isn't a good thing if your on a train or something! But anyway, the connector allows you to use any pair of headphones you wish! Or, if you do not want to use headphones then you can play your music through the built in speakers, now the good thing about the speakers on this phone is one is on the back, and one on the side, unlike the latest Sony walkman phones, this has been done to create a more stereo effect when your playing your music.

Radio

The phone includes a radio which isn't too bad, it's a good quality radio, but the only thing which is annoying is the fact that you have to have the headphone adapter in as it acts as an aerial, which can't be helped I supposed, but other then that the radio is fine!

There is a huge selection of entertainment sections on this phone.

Camera

The camera is 1.3 megapixels, not amazing, but still good. You cna shoot pcitures in various modes and sizes which i think is very useful. There is a light available and night mode for pictures in the dark. When shooting videos the quality is about the same, when taking a picture the phone has to be shut though, which is irritating at first but doesn't bother you afterwards!

Wap

The wap on this phone isn't the best around, but I wouldn't say its rubbish. It is capable of displaying high quality images on the Internet and you can download videos and songs, which are of a good quality, to your phone at a reasonable speed. You can also store bookmarks which is helpful so you don't have to keep re-typing URL's which I know can take a while, and does get annoying on a mobile phone.

Games

Now this phone is unique with its game, you can turn the phone around and use it as a handheld games 'console', it even has extra buttons above the screen which are actually really good for game play. The games that come with the phone aren't very good, but the games that are available for download for the w550i are quite impressive, nothing up against a psp of course, but the game play and fun provided can keep you entertained for ages. Sony have also provided a link straight to their wap website so you can download games straight to your phone, which is helpful!

VideoDJ

Now this is great fun, I think most of the Sony phones have this but it's amazing. If you have a video on your phone then this enables you to delete any of the audio on that video and replace it with some other audio on your phone. This can either be a song file, which is fun for making your own music videos, or you can choose some of the preset audio files like "wild west" which is great fun if you have some spare time on your hands. You can also add text to your videos for annotation purposes or just for fun.

PhotoDJ

This is similar to the videoDJ except photos are used, you can create slideshows and add audio to them and text, again this is just for fun, not as good as the videoDJ as some of the photos can become a bit blurred when their put into the photoDJ but it's not too bad.

PlayNow

Here you can buy and download games for your phone, as well as ring tones. They're not too expensive, you could probably buy them cheaper form somewhere else, but downloading form play now guarantees that they'll work on your phone, so they will be compatible for sure.

Music Creator

In this little program you can create polyphonic songs and use them as ring tones, if your bored this can be a bit of a laugh to mess around with, but sounds are limited and can get a bit repetitive.

The phone has all the other usual features that most phones have too, like contacts, call organiser, and a file organiser to access all your files you have on your phone.

Overall this phones good, apart form the fact that you can't expand on the memory, so your only limited to 256mb but that doesn't bother me too much!
BUY IT!

Summary: Really reliable phone with loads of features

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