The k550i phone is a great small feature-packed phone. The camera on the phone takes excellent pictures, suitable for making 4x6 prints. The phone has a panorama mode that allows you to stitch together 2 or 3 images with a very good stitch guide. Also, there is a nice image editor built into the phone that can do auto-levels, contrast, brightness, and a bunch of other nice tools. You can see many full size pictures by visiting flickr and searching on "k550i". The MP3 player works great ... sound quality is excellent, though volume is soft and some may find the max volume is too low. You will want to get a micro memory stick if you want more than a few songs. I like how the included headphones double as a handsfree set and transition from music to phone back to music effortlessly. I found creating a few playlists very intuitive and easy. Battery life is very good, even with lots of music/radio playing and picture taking. The radio features trackID, which takes a sample of the song you are listening to and looks up the artist, song title, and album ... actually have found it very useful(requires data plan). The web browser is a good WAP browser for basic use ... I like that you can change to landscape screen orientation browsing.OK, now for the annoyances: When the flash is turned on, the LED lights stay lit constantly, and they are very bright ... human targets usually complain. I was surprised that digital zoom for the camera is only allowed at VGA resolution, and not at 1MP. There is a workaround ... after taking a 2MP picture, you can zoom in on it and save the visible area to a new picture. I take pictures and immediately send them to flickr ... the phone presents a nag screen warning that the file is large, which cannot be turned off. The "take picture" button is a two-step button like most cameras, with a focus step then a snap step, but the second step takes a hard press causing you to shake the camera and get a blurry picture. Instead, I use the center joystick button on the face of the phone, which focuses and immediately takes a picture. Sending a picture as an email immediately after taking it requires some kooky steps: (press joystick in, select "view", zoom out one step, then select More->Send As->Email).
Despite the flaws, I am very happy with the phone considering the price and features.
* very compact design, almost too small for my big hands, but over time one gets used to its dimensions, AND enjoys the small design. Fits into the front pocket of my jeans! The center button (the one which looks like a 5-way) and its surrounding ring (this ring has the four directions) feel very sturdy, they seem to be made of actual metal. The ring has four tiny dots of light, where four arrows could be, signaling each one direction, and look very cool when they glow along with the keypad, in dark environments.
* I just changed to the K550 from my previous nokia 6820, which has an expandable flip qwerty keyboard, and missed the nokia keyboard at the beginning. However, the predictive text interface is almost perfect (read con's) and I almost do not miss the keyboard anymore. Predictive text also allows you to create your own dictionary entries (this is more or less a common feature of cellphones) and allows you to enter your dictionary to maintain it: edit or delete entries (this is very uncommon and useful!). The predictive text has several modes one of which turns on "national characters". when I sometime type a message in spanish, comes handy since it allows the use of spanish accents.
* very large memory for contacts, and the fields used in contacts are very compatible with outlook, which means you will not lose data when synchronising your contacts into your PC. When I synchronised with outlook from the 6820, the mapping of fields was different, so one got lost or misplaced information in the process.
* at 2 MPixels, very good definition for a camera that is always with you, for that spontaneous snapshot.
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the con's
* the chrome finish of the center ring is starting to wear off after only three months of use! the entire surface of the ring, starting with its perimeter, is wearing thin and leaking blue light. looks cheap and old, too bad for a set this expensive.
* The "national character" feature behaves strangely, in the sense that when I turn it on, it changes the message length limit from 160 down to 60 characters, for no good reason. And when you turn it off, the limit is still there, you would have to start a new message from scratch for the limit to be 160 again. Also whe you turn teh feature off, the phone "forgets" the words one has created with spanish characters, literally hiding a portion of your custom dictionary. I dont think of these as design flaws but more as software bugs, but they are real, limiting and annoying.
* the light of the camera, two very bright and white LEDs, is good as a lamp to fing your way walking through a dark place, but is a terrible, almost useless flash for taking pictures in the dark, which is what it's suposed to be. The camera works well only under good natural light or decent room lighting. Not worthy of the cybershot name.I had a Sony S710a which I unlocked when I was in Prague, but it was not a quad phone and I had problems when I travel some countries like Turkey and Poland. So I decided to purchase a small quad phone which is AT&T compatible. With K550i I found the phone I was looking for. It is doing everything S710a was capable of and more much more. The reception quality is very good. I always have more bars than my S710a at the very same places. The Gmail client, Google Maps client and Opera Mini version 4 (great browser for a mobile phone) works flawlessly can't run Yahoo GO (it display the wierd message of not available memory, even I have 67Mb on the phone) but who cares. With AT&T unlimited media package, I can surf the internet, use Jajah for VOIP international phone calls and more. Picture quality of the 2MP camera is very good, have a 2GB miniSD card and have no problem with spacing. Have not used the radio too much but it is there if you want to listen your favorite FM station and it requires carrying the plugin cable/head phones. The commercially available or free application for the phone are numbered. But I have been using it as a router to the internet via bluetooth and my Microsoft Vista Dell XPS 1330 laptop because AT&T unlimited package on the cell phone plan (only 20$ per month), it is an excellent way of using your laptop anywhere. I am also planning to purchase the new Nokia N810 web tablet next year and use K550i as router as I do with my laptop. With Nokia 810 and K550i, you don't need no iPhone. The combo will do everything I need (including Skype video calls ;) The phone is very stylish and light I am very happy with it after 6 months and I highly recommend it to anyone. I hope this proves useful.
RegardsThe SonyEricsson K550i is a fantastic phone, great camera and has a great form factor.
The only thing that may be questionable is the key size. The camera is awesome and unlike some SonyEricsson models, the camera lens stays closed at all times!Nice Phone. I bought it unlocked to use with cingular (now AT&T). used sonyericssons for a while now, starting with t68i, t610, t637, w600i, w810i & now k550i. I have to agree with one of the other reviewers that the reception if slightly less compared to, say w810i. In office where I'd always get 5 bars, now I get 4 bars. But that doesn't bother me much.
There was a continuing problem with the "4" key not working sometimes but that seems to have been resolved by sonyerisson via their new firmware update. Make sure you update the phone, either over the air or by connecting to a computer. It upgrades JAVA, the camera software version & this annoying "4" issue.
Overall I like this phone & hope that SE will move towards making all their phones 14mm slim. On a similar note don't forget to check out W580i as well if you are looking at this phone.
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