Nokia 6555 Review

Introduction:

Mobile phones have grown from just talking devices to multipurpose devices that we rely on in our daily lives. We now even have niche models that are geared towards one specific role above all others making it just a little difficult for us to pick out that perfect phone. So, what has Nokia done with the 6555? Well, they made it that jack of all trades. They didn’t make it in some weird crazy shape or have a keyboard geared to users who message but for the mass population. So, can this little multipurpose device still thrive when there are so many niche devices? Well, let’s take a look.

Design:

Looking at the 6555, you notice that it’s a very elegant clamshell phone. It’s all black with silver border found in key locations. Nokia went for a structure that’s very simple and this can be seen inside and out. Located on the outside are the 128 x 160 secondary display, 1.3 megapixel camera, volume rocker, push-to-talk (PTT) button, charger slot, and 2.5mm headphone jack.





Once opened, this simple design continues as everything has been crammed into the keypad portion but that’s not to say that it’s small. In fact, the keypad is very comfortable to use and the buttons are large enough so that you don’t find yourself pressing two at a time and there is enough feedback to know that they’ve been pressed.



The top is dominated by a 2 inch TFT display with a resolution of 240 x 320 which gives very lively and vivid colors and gave us no issues seeing the screen in bright environments.

It may be fat and heavy, at 99.6 x 44.3 x 19.6 mm and 97g, compared to today’s slim models, but the 6555 is still comfortable to hold.



Sadly, with every good design, there has got to be at least one flaw and here, there are already two. Firstly, the volume rocker is located on the top portion of the 6555, just as the first RAZR, which may not seem as a big deal until you’re talking and want to change the volume. Secondly, the microSD slot is found underneath the battery which means no swapping your card on the go.

Interface:

The 6555 runs on Series 40 software with active standby. All of the regular information, signal strength, time, data, battery life, and carrier, is found at the top bar of the home screen. Options, menu and music are all found at the bottom and accessed by the left and right soft touch key and the center button. The shortcuts associated with the D-pad can be displayed on the home screen and they manage not clutter up the screen when activated.

All the icons in the main menu are arranged in a 3x4 grid and they even have little animations. In case a grid isn’t in your taste, you have the option to change it to a grid with details or a tabbed view. To further suit your needs, each option can be moved to a desired place. The menu itself is very well laid out as are the options found within the categories no guessing on where something is and apart from the games and applications, there is no delay in when selecting something.

Phonebook:

The phonebook is actually quite an ordinary one. There’s really nothing special about it but Nokia does have a different layout to it where instead of just having all of your information listed, details such as address or job title can be added to your liking. Our only gripe with this is that each detail has to be added separately just adding to the amount of time it takes to complete the entry.



There are a total of 1000 contacts that can be saved to the phone and the search function doesn’t just show the person that is being search but instead only shows the entries with the exact match to what’s been typed into it.

Organizer:

The organizer consists of the following: alarm clock, calendar, to-do list, notes, calculator, timer, stopwatch, converter, and world clock.
The alarm clock is a pretty basic one and only allows you to add one alarm. At least there are enough fields to get you up and ready for the day: alarm time, repeat, alarm tone, and snooze time.



Within the calendar, a reminder, meeting, call birthday, or memo can be made. Sadly, there is only a month and week few and it would be nice to see an agenda or day listing.

The calculator offers some scientific functions which are rare to see on phones within its class. Still, if you need to do a lot of calculating, it’s best to carry around a real calculator.

Normally, the conversion portion would be skipped but what’s special here is that your own conversion can be set so that if there’s a trip to another country that’s not listed, the rate can be added and there’s no need to stress.

The rest of the items are very basic and will not be discussed.

Messaging:

Messaging can be done by SMS, MMS, email, and audio messages. T9 is there to help you text much faster and is pretty reliable. There are plenty of emails clients already preloaded, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, AIM, Windows Live Mail, AT&T Yahoo!, BellSouth, Comcast, Earthlink, Juno, Mindspring, and NetZero, with the 6555 to help get you on and check your email.

Connectivity:

The 6555 is a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900) headset with dual-band UMTS (850/1900) 3G support and this allows you to take it on your travels all over the world but don’t expect the same internet speeds outside of the US as 3G won’t be offered by AT&T there. Well, it seems that almost every phone out there nowadays has Bluetooth and there is no exception here.

It has Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP so that you can listen to music in stereo and if you don’t own a PC with Bluetooth or a dongle for one, just use a microUSB cable to connect to the PC.

Internet:

Surfing the internet is possible thanks to the WAP 2.0/xHTML browser but it won’t get you to all of your sites. For us, we were able to view sites as www.phonearena.com and www.youtube.com in WAP but when checking out www.myspace.com, the browser refused. With sites that we were able to visit, there were spots where the text happened to overlap and no fix could be found for this.



Camera:

A 1.3 megapixel camera is supplied here and while it’s and entry level device, photo quality was adequate, and some of them came out very nice for the resolution, just don’t expect marvelous results. Night photos came out very grainy but at least the day photos are much nicer. It only took about 1½ seconds for the camera to load once the button was pressed and it was even quick at taking pictures. The display shows you the number of picture that can be taken, mode, resolution, zoom level and quality. The camera resolution ranges all the way from 120 x 160 to 1024 x 1280 and can have a quality of basic, normal, or high.



Multimedia:

What handset nowadays would be complete without even a basic media player? The one found here is just that, a basic media player which allows the playback of MP3, AAC, eACC+, and WMA audio as well as 3GPP, H.263 and MPEG-4 video formats. There is an equalizer but don’t expect a Bose type experience when it’s changed.

We weren’t supplied with any headphones but we were able to test the loudspeaker and let us tell you that it does not disappoint. There was distortion when the volume was turned up all the way. On the lowest volume, it still manages to be very loud so if you’re in a crowded place, make sure to grab some headphones.

Software:

The 6555 support Java MIDP 2.0 so you can download plenty of applications if you are not pleased with the preloaded ones, which are a few games that are mostly just trials.

Performance:

The 6555 was very quick to our commands and barely gave us a problem. The website and email were the only problems that we ran into while testing . When checking emails with attachments, about 3 out of 20 emails locked up the phone. The attachments were all picture files, very small too, and this happened at different times.

Reception has been one of Nokia’s strong points and it follows here. There were times where we were in basements but still able to continue our conversations, which is quite remarkable as most phones lost signal there all together.

Sound quality wasn’t as great on the other hand. Most of the time, both parties heard each other just fine, the voices came through clearly and it almost seemed as if they were right next to you, but when it came down to handset to handset talking, the person on the other hand sounded distant and distorted. It happened only occasionally and you could still make out what they’re saying with a little bit of focus. After trying to put the call on hold, change the volume, and even switch to a Bluetooth headset, the only solution was to call the person back.

Volume was up to the task as we had no trouble hearing the conversation. Even the ringer was load so long as it’s not going off in a very loud environment.

Well, all of this would be worthless if the battery couldn’t keep up so how well does it perform? From a full charge on a GSM network, we got 7 hours compared to Nokia’s rating of 5 hours. If you’re on a UMTS network, expect a lot less as it’s rated for only 3 hours and 15 minutes. In our tests, we kept traveling between GSM and UMTS networks and found that the battery lasted for a long time. The standby time is rated for 300 hours so even light to moderate users shouldn’t have to worry.

Conclusion:

So, is the 6555 a great multipurpose phone at the end? Well, yes. Okay, so it may not get any awards or attract you from that iPhone or BlackBerry but that’s not what its goal is. The 6555 is there to get you through the day and still provide you with plenty of features in case you find yourself without say your MP3 player, internet connection, or camera. When you consider its price low price, the deal seems that much better.