Packed with lots of useful functions and applications, the Samsung SGH i550w has a lot to offer business users

The i550w looks elegant as it is mostly black in colour and the simple look should appeal to most professionals.

However, the i550w is rather large and chunky for a modern mobile phone considering that phones have really shrunk in size in recent years.

The phone has a huge 2.5in QVGA LCD screen which dominates the front panel of the phone.

The screen provides plenty of room to view pictures, videos, browse the Web and even write long text messages.

The i550w’s unique trackball replaces the standard directional pad as the navigational tool. Navigation is done by rolling the trackball as you would with a trackball mouse.

I found the trackball a little cumbersome to use as it isn’t as precise as a directional pad.

This made it frustrating to navigate from one end of the screen to the other, say, when browsing the Web.

Phone functionality

As a mobile phone, the i550w performs relatively well with great call quality and decent text messaging capabilities.

Surprisngly, text messaging was comfortable on the phone despite the tiny keypad.

I also liked how the Cancel key is located away from the navigation buttons so there is little chance of accidentally closing the text messaging function.

The phone’s call quality is pretty decent and even the loudspeaker function is loud and clear enough to be heard. However, I was disappointed with the phones’s battery life, as I could barely get two days of usage on a single charge even with minimal use.

Feature-packed

The highlight of the i550w is its Symbian operating system, and features such as WiFi, HSDPA and GPS.

If you have used a Symbian based mobile phone before, the i550w will be familiar to you.

Speaking of applications, the i550w comes pre-installed with applications that can view Word and Excel files. Plus, there’s also a PDF reader so you can pretty much read all types of documents.

Moving on, I found the Symbian web browser easy to use but the clunky trackball made it difficult to navigate or scroll the page.

On the plus side, the large screen makes it easy to browse webpages and is great for reading text.

One cool feature the i550w has is its NAVFone GPS that turns the phone into a useful navigational tool.

I liked the fact that the phone was able to bring up the entire map of KL and quickly search for popular destinations by road or landmark.

All it takes to use the application is that you must set a destination and you are all set to go. However, despite having a large screen, the map was difficult to make out, as the roads appear really tiny.

But it is not so bad as the GPS has voice navigation that tells you the directions you should take.

Also, the GPS has trouble locking on to your position if you are in a place with a lot of tall buildings.

All in all, it is not a substitute for a standalone GPS but it still can come in handy.

Multimedia functions

The 3-megapixel camera is good enough for day-to-day candid shots though it performs terribly in low light.

Overall, the picture quality was good although some shots turned out under exposed.

Aside from taking pictures, the camera can also record videos at a rate of 15fps (frames per second) and stores them in 3GP format.

I found the videos to be of decent quality with enough detail to make out what is going on. In terms of music playback, the interface of the music player is dull and is in serious need of a make over but sound quality was still decent.

The player is fairly basic and lacks customisation options such as equalisers, but it gets the job done nonetheless.

Conclusion

Overall, the Samsung SGH-i550w is a good business phone that packs features most professionals would want — a good web browser, 3G and WiFi connectivity, and software for reading all types of documents.

While the i550w does many things right, several things mar its otherwise good performance.

The trackball that replaces the regular directional pad does not really perform as well as expected. Instead of making the navigation of GPS application and web browser easier, it makes it even trickier.

Also, the GPS has trouble triangulating your position when you are surrounded by buildings. But the phone also has a lot of plus points such as the ability to play DivX video files, a good camera and a large screen.

The i550w is a jack-of-all-trades and even though it doesn’t really shine in any one area, it is still a very good phone as it is feature-packed.

Pros: Nifty multimedia functions; GPS and its easy search function; has WiFi and HSDPA

Cons: Trackball is clunky; GPS easily blocked by buildings; short battery life.