Review: Sony Ericsson Z550i

Standby Screen

Main Menu

Profile Select

User Interface

The UI in the Z550i is just a slightly updated version of the UI used in the K750i and W810i. They share the same fonts design and size, instead of the smoother style found on the newer K610i and K800i.

The menu looks essentially the same as on all other Sony Ericsson phones, with a 3x4 grid of icons, which are all animated nicely. It still makes use of the combined tabbed/list interface we've seen for a while, but now it is used in more places and in more ways. Such is the case with the File Manager where the tabs now allow you to access files located anywhere - be it the internal memory or the memory card. It is all very intuitive and user-friendly while remaining very pleasing to the eye.

Pressing the Shortcut key pops up the Activity menu, which displays the latest missed calls or newly arrived messages, applications running in the background, your favorite shortcuts, and a list of internet bookmarks. Other than assigning four applications to the directional keys of the d-pad, you can also program more shortcuts in the Activity menu. This is one of the most important functions in making the Sony Ericsson UI so easy to use.

Sony Ericsson Z550i

Sony Ericsson Z550i

Sony Ericsson Z550i

Phone Functionality

The Z550i gave me no problems when it came to voice calls. Using the phone on the GSM 1800MHz network worked well and I experienced no dropped calls or poor reception.

The contacts system supports a multi-character search for finding records, which makes it easier to wade through your sea of contacts. It allows you to store multiple numbers and email addresses in each contact, as well as a URL, note, birthday, picture, or street address. The Z550i can also store a maximum of 1000 contact records containing up to a total of 2500 phone numbers. Speed dials can be assigned to contacts, and are accessed by entering the associated number key and hitting the call/send key from the standby screen. The Z550i's voice dialing system is tag based, meaning that a separate voice tag has to be recorded for each phone number. This system isn't as elegant as the speaker independent methods used by many competing brands and I found it annoying.

The Z550i has a fairly comprehensive profiles system. Each of the seven profiles can have its own settings for answer mode (any key, normal, auto-answer), and can be configured to accept calls from anybody, from only people on a list, or from nobody. You can also have calls automatically forwarded to a particular number when a specific profile is active. The new message alert can be configured to play any tone or MP3 of your choosing, but the same tone is used by all profiles. I like the way each profile has an icon to inform the user which profile the phone is currently using. This icon also appears on the external display, which is an excellent feature since you wouldn't want to miss any calls in case you forgot to turn off Silent mode.

Battery life is another area where the Z550i excels. The phone lasted about 4 days before having to be recharged, with roughly 30 minutes of calls each day and quite a lot of SMS messaging, taking pictures, and GPRS usage. However, using Bluetooth frequently brought that duration down to about 2 days. When left on standby, the phone's battery usually lasted up to a week.

 

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