Orange SPV C550

overall, i like this phone, it is an excellent mp3 player too

I've upgraded from a W800i and this Orange SPV C550 is a great deal better. Music quality is similar but the smartphone is a lot easier to use and allows you to rename tracks. Much more like it. This does so much more as its a Smartphone, Battery life is actually quite good, a lot better than the Symbian based Nokia. Compared to Symbian you can do more but its a lot more awkward to use. Why do you have to run separate apps for just about every task, contacts manager for calls and then a separate app to add a picture.

Biggest gripe is the keypad which is not in the Nokia's (6600) league. Too small and clicky texting takes some getting used to. Its not the best or worst keypad I've ever used. Average is fair.

Otherwise for the price of £72 with accessories and 512MB memory on ebay its a steal. I felt like I should have paid the owner £20 more for it!!! They're not that well known in the trade compared to Nokia's and as such, people won't pay much for them!! They do everything a Nokia will with less radiation and more features. Why pay more when you can get these for this price?

Overall the Orange SPV C550 is a good solid mobile phone with a truly wonderful screen, good stereo sound, decent camera and a large 512mb storage card for music. Supplied PC software is easy to install and use, no problems at all downloading music using Windows Media Player sync. However, there are some flaws to be aware of...Firstly, a standby time of only about 60 hours with minimal usage as opposed to claims of up to 250 in the handbook; not very impressive when compared to most phones these days. The individual keys are not flat so any serious texting is a nightmare and very frustrating; amazing it went to production like that. To use any standard headphones you need to use the supplied adaptor which seems a bit daft as they could have simply used the larger jack input. The charger socket/headphone cover flap on bottom of phone isn't removable and gets in the way when open (which is quite often if you listen to music a lot). Still, I do prefer it to the Sony Ericsson 800i Walkman phone which is truly awful.