Sony Ericsson W550i Review

Overall Rating

Great screen, resolution, colour, sharpness.
Great sound quality via decent headphones
Superb games built-in
Awesome Sony-Ericsson UI, fully customisable
Options for everything you can think of
The coolest looking phone available at the moment

The rotating design is slightly strange at first
Buttons to answer call etc below the screen may be a little small
Supplied headphones are poor

I love the Sony Ericsson W550i! I couldn't wait for it to come out on a decent network (only on o2 and Vodafone currently - urgh) so I bought it SIM free. £219 from Carphonewarehouse - Cheap as chips! What can I say? I love it to bits. The best phone I've ever used. Now where to start...

Well, it's a Walkman branded phone so it's logical I start with how good it does playing music. Plugging in the bundled Sony-E headphones I initially thought "Eww. That is poor". However, chucking them out the window and plugging in my Sennheiser MX500's soon allayed any fears - the quality is very good indeed! It took a manual adjustment to the equalizer settings but in comparison with the excellent quality of my iRiver iHP-120 it is in my opinion, (unbelievably) almost on par. The bass handling appears a little bit tighter on the W550i as well. Amazing! I haven't tested this for any length of time though; so don't take my word for it.

The music playing software does not have the largest set of options for customising the way it handles music, and is limited to mp3 at the moment, but for a phone it's superb. It plays MP3VBR correctly too, and handles ID tags well. A small downside for any music nerds reading is the presence of background hiss when the music engine is switched on and no song is playing, but this hasn't bothered me really. I have yet to hear any interference from the built in mobile antenna (bleep bleepity bleep - you know the noise) which always seems to affect speakers.

The built in mini-speakers (3 of them) aren't too bad, but for music listening they don't come anywhere near replacing headphones or a decent set of proper speakers. The volume does go very loud - albeit tinny.

The biggest downside to the phone's music-ability is the lack of an expansion port for more memory (and hence more music), but I was fully aware of this fact before buying. As mentioned above I have a 20GB iHP-120 player, and this I felt is a great small player for taking places the iHP-120 won't go. All in all, 256mb ain't bad for built in memory - it will fit around 100 128kbit VBR mp3's depending on song length, which is great for me, although most of my collection is in ogg vorbis format so it is a slight pain having to re-rip a select few songs in mp3 (iHP-120 does gapless ogg playback with Rockbox!). Music transfer is simple via USB or bluetooth. You don't need to install the included Sony software either - it just appears as a removable disk when plugged in via USB.

I haven't really used the radio much, but the brief time I did it performed well. It is the only Walkman phone with RDS too (apparently), so that is a plus. A small downside is the fact you must have the handsfree headphone adapter plugged in to act as the antenna.

Overall music handling and playing is top notch. Now onto the other important facet of the W550i Gaming.

Most people are probably wondering what the gaming is like, seeing as the design allows horizontal play with two buttons above the screen. Well I can happily confirm it is superb. And the games you get bundled - Gauntlet, Worms3d, Snowboarding are all excellent. Remember the phone supports vibrating feedback too.

Gauntlet was one of my fave games in my younger arcade going years, and it is reproduced faithfully here. I haven't tried multiplayer bluetooth play yet (no one else I know has seen one of these babies, let alone owns one) but I can imagine it will be a great laugh.

Snowboarding is a 3D type scroller, a bit like a poor-man's Shaun Palmer, but is very good for a mobile phone. Not my favourite, but very playable nonetheless.

My favourite game by far is Worms3D. Those that have played any of the early Worms games on PC, Playstation etc will know what to expect. This is a slightly cut down version you control a four worm team, the phone, or a second human player controls the other team. You create buildings to fire different weapons from, ranging from banana bombs to old grannies, and napalm strikes. The graphics are great, and it is as addictive as ever - I've been playing it every spare moment (i.e. spending a lot more time in the studio toilets - ooer!) I'm on level 9 at the moment, and have only got a small amount of weapons and buildings unlocked, so there must be a fair few levels to get through. Individual games can last a very long time and so Sony-E's next innovation comes in very handy...

The ability to minimise applications Smartphones and PDA's have been doing it since the year dot, and for the first time I have seen a normal phone capable of it (I imagine any other latest Sony-E models can too like the W800, K750 etc). It's about time. This comes in very handy, so that you can continue playing your games later. You can also use the phone locking spring-switch to effectively freeze whatever you are currently doing. Closing the phone does not exit to the main screen either. Very good thinking Sony-E.

As for the other main phone features:

The camera and vid-camera quality is decent as far as I've bothered using them. I don't really take much notice of these features because I own a digital SLR (Canon 350D) and a decent Video Camera too. At the moment phones can't replace the real thing, but the day they will is probably coming sooner rather than later. Every pro-review of the W550i I read before purchasing seemed to be more than happy with the quality of these though so you'd expect them to be on par any of the other current phones.

Call clarity is brilliant I have to admit, with noticeably better sound quality than my old Samsung D500. You even get a good amount of Bass in people's voices. Something I've never heard on ANY phone before, mobile or otherwise. When you ring up a company and you get the hold music - you can hear bass... wow. Signal quality appears very good with my T-Mobile SIM with no problems encountered so far.

The phone utilises the latest version of Themes which is also on the W800 - so compatible themes will work on both. Themes 4.1 has been enhanced quite a bit since my last Sony-E phone (T610) with a whole lot of customisation options. There are thousands freely available on the internet (try visiting www.myw800.com), or you can easily make your own with software downloaded from the internet (may also be on the bundled CD - I haven't bothered looking yet).

Texting is easier than ever with the latest Sony-E enhancements. A lot of small but well thought-out enhancements have been introduced since my T610 days (and far better than Samsungs poor texting interface). The main keypad is good, with easy to press keys (even for my huge hands).

Handling the phone is a little strange at first because of the rotating design, and more often than not you will open the phone upside down in the early days, but when you get used to it, this is not a problem. The buttons beneath the screen are smaller than average found on other Sony-E phones, but no great shakes. I got used to them quickly enough.

Ringtones are LOUD! So loud in fact, friends have for the first time complained (note that every one I know has their own mobile, so as you can imagine ringtones are going off all the time The W550 blows them all away). They also do a pretty good job even in a club environment. No chance of you missing a call anymore.

A minor downside is the plug the phone uses for the adapter/USB/handsfree kit (they all use the same plug-port). It is quite large, and appears a little susceptible to the pins being damaged so care needs to be taken when transporting the different cables for example in a bag full of other bits and pieces. I imagine this is the same for the W800 and K750 too. Shame they couldn't have made a more compact port. This also means that you can only use one of the aforementioned plugs at a time.

The phone also comes with interchangeable front and back fascia covers. A set of smooth creamy white covers are included with the phone to compliment the lovely orange 'silk' covers. Much better than the chav-like covers of the W800 in my opinion.

Finally, two major plus points for me - The phone also has handsfree loudspeaker operation, and voice dialling - something every phone selling' website puts a cross against - and something that almost put me off buying the phone. Get it right you muppets!!

In addition, there are many many more features I care not mention for now, as this review has gone on long enough so time to wrap this up

Overall a truly great phone that I think will become a classic (like the old Nokia 501 banana-phone). Thoroughly recommended. Anyone who tells you it's a kids phone - they need to think again.

Thanks for reading.

Members' Comments onGoonerz4eva's Review

• Smudge97 on 13th Nov 2005

  I am currently on a Vodafone contract that has lasted 18 months. My phone is a sharp gx10i (a brick basically). My contract ends next month and I was stressing about what phone I should get, until now! I discovered the Sony Ericsson w500i and I am looking forward to the end of my contract. This review has really helped make up my mind. Swivel phones are way cooler than flippy phones. Can't wait to show it off to my friends. Thank you to whoever wrote that review and are you sure you can change the covers?

• tcole10 on 17th Jan 2006

  Brilliant review, helped me make my mind up.
  Just bought it and YES what an outstanding phone.
  
  Thanks.