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LG 550  Fusic User Review

Phoneseasy.com has received the following cell phone review via email. The user wants to stay anonymous, but still share his experience about a new LG 550 Fusic Cell Phone.

Well, I had the money and the desire, and bought a new LG 550 (Fusic). After using it for a while now, I decided to write a review about this phone. Each item will be rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best and 1 being the worst.

The box includes the phone, an 1000mAh LiPoly battery, USB cable, 64mb TransFlash card, SD adapter, 2.5mm stereo headsets, and 4 face plates.


First Impression
My first impression of the device was, "Oh darn it, this phone is light as hell". Forget what the scales or anyone else says, when you hold this phone in your hand, it feels like there is almost nothing there. I also like the way it looks. It is very thin, compared to the Samsung A920 cell phone or a Sanyo 7500/9000 model. The short, stubby antenna does not bother at all. It is actually usefule and nice to have when grabbing the phone to pull it out of the pouch. The phone feels solid and good when you hold it in your hands, and against your ear. Its not as wide as an A900, and is a little smaller in overall length.

My Rating: 9/10

Sound Impression
The phone comes equipped with an external speaker. The normal earpiece sounds good, not muffled, or bassy, but at times sounds to weak or too low in volume in your ear. The volume needs to be increased when in public areas. The external speaker works Ok when playing MP3s or when using it for sharing a phone conversation with others.

Rating: 6/10

Bluetooth
Not much to say here. It works great and connects easily to Bluetooth handsets or my laptop.

Rating: 9/10

Music/Media Player
The media player on this phone surpasses every other MM phone I have used so far. It supports random playback, repeat individual songs, and all the songs are in one folder. It also implements an equalizer, which is a first thing around on music phones at this time.
The LG 550 supports microSD cards, and a 64mb card is included with the new phone. We were able to try larger cards (512MB and 1GB) and they worked flawlessly. The features and functionality of the Media Player are well above average.

Rating: 9/10

Physical Appearence
The phone itself is smaller then the A900, both in height and width, but is a notch thicker. It is tinner than the A920 though. The control keys on the external side of the flip are not touch sensitive and need a little more pressure to be used. This is good so that the phone does not get activated when carried around in your pocket. The keypad is backlit and works great in low light situations. The inside keypad itself is very well lit, with blue indiglo lighting, which lights up the entire key, vs. lighting up just the numbers as other phones sometimes do.The device has external keys on the side of the cell phone for camera activation, and volume control. This phone also has a button to activate the voice command functionality. Overall the phone is very lightweight.

Rating: 10/10

Battery Life
The LG 550 uses a new kind of LiPolymer battery, which offers slightly longer battery life, and has less weight than average batteries.
The rated battery life on the standard battery is 4.5 hours talk time, but in daily life it comes closer to about 3 or 3.5 hours. The standby time is pretty good and I was able to achieve 72 hours of standby time easily.

Rating: 7/10

Camera
The phonecomes with a 1.3 mega-pixel camera and can take pictures of 1280x960 resolution. The camera quality is good, with great colors, and a very quick exposure time. Nice to have - the camera offers Black and White, Sepia, and Negative color tones, along with easy to use Brightness and White Balance control features. It is also equipped with a 5 and 10 second self-timer.

Rating: 6/10

Screen
The external LCD is very nice, well-lit, and displays colors well. It suffers a little bit in bright sunshine situations, but gets the job done. The internal LCD could be of better quality. It is a little surprising for this type of phone that they did not use a better one.

Rating: 6/10

Messaging
The T9 implementation on this cell phone is great. The device learns new words, and offers auto-complete functionality. If you are a very fast typing person, you might have to adjust a little bit if you want to use the auto-complete feature as it adds a little lag to the procedure. For normal users this should not matter.

Rating: 10/10

Web Browser
The LG 550 comes with an Obigo browser, which is a change from the standard LG Openwave browser. Since the device is EVDO enabled, the browser speed performance is awesome.

Rating: 9/10

Misc. Features
The phone has some cool little features, such as a music composer, which allows you to create your own ringtones and save them on the phone. It also includes the standard LG tip calculator, which is great to have around. The alarm clock offers 3 individual alarms, plus a quick alarm feature

Rating: 9/10

Overall Rating
Overall, I would rate this device a 8 of 10. The offered features and functionality are above average and most people will probably never be able to use them all. The small design and usability are the big advantages of this phone. Well worth switching in my opion.