Motorola C550

This Motorola C550 is a "micky mouse" mobile phone that is cheaply made and falls apart. The battery does not locate securely and presses against the back cover forcing it off at any opportunity. The finish on the keys and body wears off really quickly.

The camera and screen are both poor - I stopped using the camera completely after about a month.

The display resolution is awful however you set it.

Battery life is below average.

The polyphonics are weedy.

Nothing to be proud about - I wasted my money on this phone

I have had the Motorola C550 mobile phone for 11 months, and it's a great phone. Let me be the first to say that I have tried everything on this phone! I used a Sony cable, and hooked it up to my PC with the use of mobile phone tools. I downloaded P2KMan, which allowed me to transfer pictures from my C550 to my PC, and boy it was out of this world from what I saw on my small screen. I used it mainly on the internet (WAP), which I used to design a website using the phone.

The audio is good, and it has polyphonic ringtones, AMR [voice tone], It's OK for a dual-band, has great internet, which is fast and easy (WAP) x HTML. It doesn't have bluetooth, but it does have MMS. DATA - CSD, GPRS, and fax. The display is 4K, which is OK, not the best imaging with a 640 x 480 pixel VGA camera. Messaging is by MMS, EMS and SMS, and memory is 2.8MB plus 500kb for Java, which is something no one ever tells us.

All in all, if you want to buy this phone, then BUY IT, and as a Camera phone it is OK!

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.

I've had the Motorola C550 about a year and a half and I hate it, I've only kept it so long because I can't afford to get a new one (I wanted a new one about a week after buying it).

I got this phone because it appered to be really good value for money for a camera phone, only to discover that the screen is so tiny and the picture quality so bad it may as well not have a camera, and I gave up trying to take photos on it after a few weeks. The menus are quite complicated and the manual so boring that I never actually bothered to read it, and whatever I set it on (ringtones etc) it always goes back to how it was setup when I bought it.

I've never known a phone that takes so long to send a simple text message (you have to press ok or select etc what feels like about 20 times before finally getting to the send message option) and I have not yet been able to connect it to the internet as I normally give up after about 15 minutes of the screen saying connecting.

The only good point is that it is very hardwearing I've dropped it lots of times (to be honest a couple of times I've actually thrown it on the ground in a deliberate attempt to break it) and it still works fine and has barely a scratch, not sure if this is a good thing though as if it broke I would have a excuse to buy a new phone.

I purchased Motorola C550 in February 2004 in Bangalore (INDIA), from last one month it is not working and I mean it is completely dead. When I went to service centre (Bangalore, India) they said it cannot be repaired. What a wonderful serivce from Motorola. This is worst mobile which I have & also Motorola does not give good service to customer. I suggest people not to purchase any mobile from Motorola.

The Motorola C550 is a good camera phone but after 3 months it was annoying I wished I spent more money and went for the Sony Ericsson T610 which I then moved to but the T630 came out so I got that as the T610 was discontinued. Don't get the C550.

My uncle gave to me a Motorola C550 as a gift since I lost my Siemens MC60. The colour is good and everything but when it comes to taking photo's with the built camera the quality is really poor. Next point, most phones now has a stop watch but this phone doesn't and the WAP connection is really slow!! I HATED THIS PHONE AND AM GLAD THAT THIS PHONE DIED!! Only had it for 4 months and had it serviced 3 times already the key pads don't work properly!

I bought a Motorola C550 a few months ago when I was getting tired of my old Nokia. After searching around a bit, it seemed to be the best value camera phone I could find. One of my friends had also recently recieved it as a gift, and recommended it to me. I think it's a great phone to buy if you want:

-Value for money

-A compact phone

-A phone that looks good and performs well

The camera is great, with a zoom function and loads of lighting and colouring options. My only complaint would be the screen size, to make viewing pictures easier.

So, here goes:

Plusses: The Motorola C550 is lightweight, small, has lots of features, good camera picture quality, lots! of customisation (you can choose which buttons you see in your menu, lots of shortcut settings, auto empty outbox setting etc...), choose theme colours...

Cons: It has ugly sounding sounds, sometimes they are too silent. Screen is really small so the letters are also, contrast is way worse than my old black-white screen Nokia. user interface is not well thought out. too many buttons to press that are too small also. On average I press 1/3rd less buttons on a Nokia. To get pictures from your mobile to your pc I had to buy Mobile Phone Tools for 29 euro! only to discover that it doesn't do that, only file syncing... . I now use p2kman and a cheap USB-cable to do that part. Really bad way of doing that! Obvious they want to get more of your money! Now I'm stuck with it...

Here is a detailed list of the Motorola C550 mobile phones specs:

Integrated Digital VGA Camera

Integrated Polyphonic Speaker

New Audio Sound Engine

Games with Vibration

Downloadable polyphonics, screensavers and wallpapers

User Customisable Menu and Shortcuts

Alarm Clock with Snooze Functionality

Calculator and Currency Convertor

Date and Clock

Datebook with Reminder Alerts

Call Management Features

Caller Group Profiling (Ringer & Icon)

Phone Book: 100 entries on phone plus SIM card

Time and Date Stamp

Voice-activated Dialling

EMS 5.0

SMS Chat one-to-one

Mobile Concatenation

Predictive Text (iTap )

Quick Messages: 10 user-definable

Group SMS

MMS

Dual-band (900/1800 MHz)

Battery: Li-Ion 750 mAh

Standby Time (hours): Up to 230

Talk Time (mins): Up to 320

GPRS (1 up/4 down)

WAP Browser version 1.2.1

Colour: Silver with Turquoise Bezel

Dimensions (h x w x d - mm): 98 x 43 x 19

Weight (g): 94

Backlight Colour: White

4096 CSTN Colour Display

4 Lines of Text and 1 Line of Icons