Motorola C550 Review

Overall Rating

Tiny size
Very lightweight
Looks good (I always get comments)
Does it's job very well
For the price, has some great features

The battery does go flat quite quickly (have to recharge every second day)

For goodness sake look at the reviews o the Motorola C550 mobile phone!! I wonder why it is that if people love something they carry on happily, but as soon as something is wrong they're on the net blasting about how BAD everything is!
If you want a phone that has net access, instant response, permanent signal strength, a big screen, billboard quality photos, one that will make your coffee and pick up your dry cleaning... Get a BlackBerry and a personal assistant!

It is basically a toy phone, the phrase 'you get what you pay for' wasn't just made up because it sounded catchy!
That being said, I think it's a great little phone! Last time I checked, phones were for making calls on. All those other features are useful, but for the price of this phone they're really just token additions anyway. I need a phone so I can contact people and have them be able to do the same to me in return. It actually has a surprising amount of features, which people would find if they took the time to play with their phone instead of writing it off after a few weeks...

No, the camera doesn't take the same quality pictures as your 15 megapixel Nikon, but it does take them, quite clearly too in natural light, I've never had a problem. No it doesn't take pictures in the dark???!!! Oh wait, it's a PHONE... If you want one that has better features, you actually have to spend some money! Or you could just get a camera, an invention specifically designed for the purpose of taking photos.
Someone complained about you having to press a lot of buttons to send a text message... I've always thought that was a great feature! Clearly that whiner has never dashed off a message, hit "send" and thought 'oh no, wrong person!'
I love the way you are forced to double check the number, and honestly, after using it for a few weeks you're so used to it, it takes a second, that person obviously had not taken the time to get used to the phone.
Someone also complained about the manual being 'boring', and then wondering why they couldn't use their phone. Are you kidding me?? How, exactly, is someone supposed to make an instruction manual exciting?! (If you ever come across one be sure to let me know.) I haven't read the thing either!! Does anyone?? But rather than blaming the phone, I did what most people have to do when they have something new and don't want to read the instructions - I WORKED IT OUT FOR MYSELF!!! Try it sometime, you'll surprise yourself.

Now to the points of this phone... The size and price were key factors when I was shopping. I was sick of spending money on phones that I would lose, break or get sick of, and wanted one that was cheap but didn't look it.
This one stood out miles above the rest, because for the same price as some other very ordinary, gray/green or blue tone screened old phones, it had a colour screen, a polyphonic ringtones, a camera, and GPRS/WAP, and it was absolutely TINY in size and weight.

The menu is easy to use once you've played around with it. I had a Nokia before, so it was frustrating at first, but now I can use my friends' Motorola's without any problem, and I never could before.
Of course you can't compare the menu's ease of use to a completely different brand of phone, how silly if you do! Whatever one you're used to will seem the easiest, obviously. So I can understand if someone has had a different phone before and finds the menu on this confusing, but that doesn't mean the phone is bad, it just means they're not accustomed to how it works.

The screen size is only an issue if you're looking at pictures. It's on the small side, but not like it's minuscule and you're squinting through a magnifying glass to read it. Being a colour screen too, it's very clear, I've never found the size to be an issue.

Someone mentioned that it seems to slow down when they're in the messages section, and wondered if all the phones were like that - well as far as I can tell, they are.
That, apart from the fairly short battery life, is probably the only thing that I'd want to change. The message inbox holds about 18 messages, and it's almost like it gets bogged down by data, it can be very slow when you're trying to read messages. But then again, considering that 'very slow' is only a few seconds, it's really not that bad. Because we're used to the world where if you push a button it happens instantly, when something takes longer than 1/4 of a second we get frustrated and push more buttons, thus slowing things down even more.

In all, a great phone if you want something that makes calls and sends messages, with a few more fun and better-looking additions than other phones in this price range.

Love it.