Product Reviews

Orange's SPV smartphone range finally came of age with the C500, marrying great design with usable controls. The C550 bears a marked similarity to its predecessor, although tweaks have been made, and it's a chunkier, taller and weightier phone than the C500.

The difference is marginal though, and the extra 7g heft can be overlooked thanks to a much-improved 1.3-megapixel camera and a slightly larger, brighter 240 x 320 pixel screen. Disappointingly, that's partnered with notably sluggish performance, and we found ourselves becoming far too familiar with the wait graphic - a definite step backwards.

The addition of the media player control buttons has also led to a keyboard re-jig, with the Home, Enter and Back keys unfortunately relegated to a tiny panel just under the screen. There's a reasonable joystick instead of the C500's larger joypad,

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and a more cramped number pad, which larger fingers will find occasionally frustrating.

But the case for using the C550 as a music player isn't terribly convincing: the keys only control the basic Windows Media Player 9, although Fireplayer and Orange's own Music Player are also onboard, and you'll be limited to the capacity of the miniSD card in the slot under the battery. Frustratingly, songs in one player don't automatically appear in the listings of another player, making it far less user-friendly than we'd expect.

Sound through the in-built speaker is impressively loud, if a bit tinny, but the headphones plug into a non-standard 2.5mm jack, ruling out using anything other than the otherwise reasonable bundled headphones. At least these feature a wired remote control, though.

Alongside the headphone jack, hidden unnecessarily under a limp rubber stopper, is the mini USB port for syncing with a PC. Bluetooth and infrared are also onboard, while a handy new quick-launch key on the side of the handset will activate the web browser.

This is still a decent smartphone, but the inelegant music playback facilities are a dubious trade-off for the more cramped controls and reduction in speed. Aside from the better camera, there's nothing really new inside, and no significant OS upgrades. As such, both new purchasers and existing SPV users may well want to stick with the C500 or wait for a more significant upgrade.