K550i - Great features for the price. Review on Sony Ericsson K550i

I bought my Sony Ericsson K550i in Sep 2007 for around 9K. I had researched about much phones on the net and from friends before deciding on this phone. The features on this phone were too many for the price at that time.

The phone has IR, bluetooth, A2DP(for pairing bluetooth wireless headsets), 2 MP auto focus camera with LED flash light that can be used independent of the camera application(like a torch), ability to install Java applications, good and fast user interface, M2 memory card slot, multi tasking(has a short cut key to switch between currently running applications which is quite cool), GSM-GPRS-EDGE network(quad band), MusicDJ, VideoDJ & PhotoDJ applications on phone, can be used as remote control with bluetooth to control presentations or control the desktop on a computer, music player, supports mostly used audio extensions like wav, mp3/4, aac, aiff, amr, wma, mid, etc.

I preferred a Sony Ericsson phone over Nokia and other brands due to the reliability of it. The user interface is as easy or even more easier as Nokia phones. The display of the menu itself is rich and colorful unlike Nokia phones which doesn't appeal with it's colors for the menu. The pixel counts for K550i is 176X220 and for Nokia 6233(my brother has it) is 320X240 QVGA. I compared both phones menu and saw that the Sony was better pleasing with colors and richness of the icons and the animations.

Even when I compared installing certain Java applications on my phone as well as in the 6233, I saw that almost all applications could be easily installed on the K550 where as most applications couldn't be installed on the 6233. The photos on the Sony were also far more natural and contrasting than the 6233. But for the video department, the 6233 is miles ahead of K550i. Video on the K550i sucks-only 15 fps and 176X144 resolution where as we have VGA with 30 fps on 6233.

The sound quality of the external speaker is also somewhat weak on the K550. It is not worthy to compare this phone with the sound quality/strength of the stereo speakers on the 6233. But the sound on the supplied stereo headset was ok. The music player on phone has almost all required features like playlists, EQ, shuffle/repeat, etc. The supplied headset lasted only little more than an year. I bought a walkman headset HPM-70 from ebay for around 250 Rs and the sound quality on it is superb. The call quality was good, the phone looks good in reception/transmitting signals.

Another thing which was important in deciding for this phone was that it didn't hang at all or even restart by itself. Even when the memory card was almost full, the phone performed as fast as it was previously. This might be due to the onboard 64 MB memory. We can see everywhere that Nokia phones have a mind of their own to restart themselves whenever the urge comes. Even the 5800 Express Music of my friend restarts every now and then.

The FM Radio reception was good even when sitting deep inside my office building. The SMS/MMS/email inbox capacity is huge and independent of the SIM card. More than 1000 phone numbers can be stored and we can import/export the contacts from/to a computer which is a good thing to retrieve contacts if our sim/phone is lost.

The negative things about the phone are: it has a higher SAR(Specific Absorption Rate or in other words the microwave radiation emitted/received) compared to other phones. I could feel some strong electro-magnetic waves cramming on my forehead when I use my phone without a headet for long. I prefer to use the headset as it is more safe, not just for this phone but all others too. The keys are a bit small for my big fingers and it took some time getting used to it. I would not recommend this phone for big time texters as it willl cramp your fingers if you text on it for long.

Regarding the 2MP camera, the outdoor shots are all great. Even macro shots were superb. Indoor shots were too grainy and dark. I would recommend conventional digital cameras for serious photo shooting rather than shooting with a phone. I prefer to take my Canon A720 IS for serious photo shoots.

Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with this phone as I am able to overcome the negatives without much effort. I would be depressed if my phone was lost, as I depend very very much on it for my reminders, calculations, dictionary, bible, listening to music, Airtel recharge(using mchek), train ticket booking(using ngpay), java games, etc other than my calls and messages/emails. The phone cost has dropped to around 6.5-7K and would be a good buy. But there are many many choices out there if you are unhappy with this allrounder phone.