The Sony Ericsson W550i measures 97 x 47 x 23mm and tips the scales at a celebrity fat club weight of 120 grams, its fair to say its a little porky or chubby but not as obese as the S700i. The quad band W550 supports worldwide networks and also boasts edge data connectivity allowing use of GPRS enabled networks to pick up email, surf the web and to download audio tracks for its Walkman features.

The design of the W550i is a mixture of the bigger w800i and also the S700i, it is a pivoting phone with the keyboard appearing from under the  screen with a swivel motion. This reveals the numeric keypad, while the main navigational buttons live under the screen on the upper surface. The screen looks good given its 176 x 220 pixel resolution and 262k colours, its the same screen used in both the K750i and W800i and works well in this model. Navigation is painless and those used to Sony's now perfected user interface will not be disappointed by the few tweaks, like the ability to see if a folder contains new messages when at the top level.

The W550i does sport a camera, this one a 1.3 mega pixel one which although it has auto focus, its not a patch on the excellent one on the K750. Apart from the drop in resolution it also struggles in low light and we don't mean near darkness, an overcast day will defeat it.

That said Sony Ericsson don't pitch the W550i as a camera phone, this is part of the mobile Walkman range and this the smaller brother of the W800i offers value for money compared to its bigger sibling. The same Walkman software sits on the W550 and it makes accessing your media a synch cataloguing artist, albums and tracks then serving them up through an excellent interface. All of your MP3 tracks are stored on the inbuilt 256mb memory which is room for around 100 tracks in MP3 or Apples ACC or Microsoft's WMA (even with DRM), however we found why the W550i is more cost effective. Sony have decided not to provide an external data slot, so no MMC, memory stick or SD card which means the maximum music you can carry is the 256mb internal memory and in one stroke they have crippled the W550i and made it about as useful as the Moto E1 iTunes phone.

This is a real shame as the USB fill up method and supplied CD ripping software (disc to phone) work remarkably well and we just love the hardware buttons to access your tunes quickly and without the need to wade through software menus. The audio quality of the W550i is also pretty good, perhaps not up to the quality of the Sony Walkmans like the NWA3000 or for that matter the iPod Nano, but not far behind. The combination of the W550i's hardware and the supplied earphones make for a nice clear sound with crisp if not voluptuous bass, but more than acceptable for a phone and in our opinion better than the iTunes phone from Motorola.  There is an FM radio should you exhaust your 100 tracks but that feels like poor compensation for the lack of a memory stick!

Once again Sony Ericsson aim for the foot with their marketing pistol as the W550i has no 3.5mm jack, so should you want to use your own headphones (like our Shure E2c's) then you have to use a rather bulky dongle which connects to the phone and provides the 3.5mm jack.

Battery life may be a big worry when you start to wonder what the effect will be of using the W550i in Walkman mode, our first test leaving the walkman playing songs on a loop killed the phone in just under 16 hours. Then a more realistic test of a few calls, moderate use of the walkman (equivalent to 2 hours a day) meant the phone lasted around 2 days before needing a top-up. Not quite the 7 day standby quoted by Sony or the 8 hours talk time.

A few nice touches include some rather smart games to play, MMS and SMS plus a quiet useable email client, Also if the rather striking orange cover is too garish for you then its reassuring to know that there are a few other snap on covers to swap with.

We can report that the phone features work a treat with excellent RF performance meaning hardly any dropped calls and good reception in even marginal signal areas, the phonebook is as good as the rest of the SE range, with quick dials, Bluetooth for hands free and even infrared.

Sadly by this point we'd made our minds up and all the nice touches and the chunky yet reassuring feel of the W550i in our mitts wasn't enough to make up for the fact that we had a good sounding easy to use MP3 player that has less storage than an ant's bum bag. Clearly Sony have to differentiate their products but there is little point crippling products!

If you are happy with just 256mb of memory or are prepared to use the USB 2.0 connection to fill up your W550i then the Sony Ericsson W550i does make an excellent phone, but if like us you have a bit fore than 100 MP3's then you'll always wish you'd gone for the W800i.

More Sony Ericsson Reviews

Published - 22/01/2006

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