Samsung i550/i550w review: Low-key all-in-one

Getting organized with Samsung i550

Organizing applications come by the dozen in Symbian handsets. Those are also very practical and usually quite user-friendly.

The Samsung i550 calendar has three different types of view - monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for scheduling - Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Each event has its own unique fields and some allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

Calendar month view • setting up an event

The mobile office applications are also reasonably well covered. The preinstalled applications are able to open Word and Excel files trouble-free. There is also a PDF reader in the package. However the Samsung i550 lack support for editing documents. If you are to need this feature you will have to purchase the full version of the office application.

.doc .xls and .pdf files are handled problem-free by Samsung i550

Here are some of the other included organizing and time-management applications: a very capable unit converter and a decent calculator, as well as a Notes application. There is of course also a convenient voice recorder. As we mentioned the recording length is now up to an hour.

The Calculator and Converter applications are really nice • Voice records are no longer limited to a miserly minute

Finally, we come to the Samsung i550 alarm. You can set up a virtually unlimited number of alarms on your handset. Furthermore, each of these can have its own name, activation day and repeat pattern. You can also adjust the snooze time. In addition the clock offers to show you the time in any time zone of the world.

The alarm slots are virtually unlimited in number • Additional time zones can be displayed

Beta GPS

The final noteworthy feature of Samsung i550 is the built-in GPS receiver. The chip is not the most sensitive we have seen and needs quite a lot of time to get a satellite lock. Tall buildings around are making the situation even worse. There might be improvements but we doubt it they will be revolutionary.

Samsung officially claims the i550 is supposed to come complete with Google Maps preinstalled. Well, our beta unit certainly didn't. Not that it makes any difference, as Google maps are free to download and installing them only takes a minute. Still, we would've liked it if Navigon had the task of developing a dedicated software solution for the i550 as they did for Samsung G810 and Samsung i780. Else, users will have the option of third party navigation software.

Final words

Samsung i550 is a very capable device by all means. It blends a great bunch of features with the power of Symbian and the S60 user interface. The combination works out quite well and the result is a phone of great potential.

Although still not widely available, Samsung i550 can be found at about 390$. This is the Wi-Fi version we are talking about and it does sound a great deal to us. We guess the handset will be able to steal quite a few customers from Nokia Symbian devices.

"...Samsung i550 is a very capable device by all means. It blends a great bunch of features with the power of Symbian and the S60 user interface. The combination works out quite well and the result is a phone of great potential..."

Of course, Samsung i550 does have its annoying flaws here and there. We have tried our best to point them out, so users can decide if they are that much of a bother to them. Our guess is that once they've spent some time getting used to the i550 (mainly the selection keys layout and the trackball response) owners won't regret their purchase.