Review: Nokia 3555 Flip Phone

Review: Nokia 3555 Flip Phone

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been fooling around with one of Nokia‘s more recent budget phones, the 3555. Inside: a mostly full review of this Series 40 quad-band flip.

And here it is, the 3555. A big thanks, as usual, to my friends at WOMWorld for providing me with the phone trial!

About

Chances are you haven’t heard much about the 3555, if at all. That’s because it’s one of those low-cost “affordable” handsets that fly under everyone’s radar. Yes, the T-Mobile-exclusive 3555 can’t hold a candle to any N-series phone, but for the price you do get a decently-featured flip phone.

Size and Weight

First off, the 3555 is a serious underweight in the world of cell phones. It’s a mere 93.9g or 3 ounces, and it doesn’t leave much of a footprint in your pocket. I might even have to say that it’s too light. It does have a rather plasticky type of feel to it – it’s missing that dense “heft” that you get with other phones – even phones like Nokia’s 6085 flip phone. And at 20.5mm, the 3555 is not a slim phone.

Exterior

The top part of the flip houses the external display, camera, and speaker. The outer display, for some reason, was rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise which results in having to manually turn the phone to read what’s on the screen. But the screen itself is clear and easy enough to read. Note that the front cover is not removable. Since the 3555 is a pseudo-successor/counterpart to the 6555, it features the “sexy-back” seamless look when fully opened. Basically this means the hinge is completely on the inside in contrast to the typical clamshell ugliness. It definitely gives the phone a different, classier look.

The Inside

Not a whole lot to say here. The 1.8″ main display won’t be winning any awards, but it does its job. The pixels are humongous though.

The keypad is completely devoid of any weirdness on Nokia’s part. The buttons are big, round and pretty equally accessible, and you shouldn’t be pushing the wrong buttons by accident.

Music

The 3555 sports a Music Player application as well as expandable memory which should appeal to general music fans. Most of it is standard fare, with the exception of the external mono speaker. The speaker is actually surprisingly decent. There are no dedicated music buttons, which is a little annoying when you’re playing music and then decide that you want to shove the music app into the background. If you do not have Active Standby enabled (default), there’s no easy way to get back into the Music Player. You’ll have to go through a number of menus and sub-menus to get there. Savvier phone users might figure out that you can create a shortcut, but it really should be a major menu option.

Camera

You be the judge. Important things to note: it’s VGA and that’s all that needs to be said.

Actually, no, there’s more that needs to be said. Pictures take an average of 4 seconds from the time you push the button to completion. On an interesting note, there’s actually an option to completely mute the camera shutter sound. I’d been under the impression that USA-based cell phones had to keep the shutter sound on no matter what. Stalkers rejoice I guess.

Interface

As mentioned before, the 3555 is a Series 40 device, which means large, ugly menu screens. The 3555 is no exception here. With Active Standy though, you can at least pretend that you’ve got a Series 60 phone.

Moving through menus is fairly quick and for the most part the user interface is pretty responsive.

The Box

The Nokia 3555 retail box comes with the following: phone, BL-5C battery, mono headset, charger, and manuals. You do not get a microSD card, microUSB cable or anything else, for that matter.

· The New Concept Packet Phone

· The new Samsung SCH-U940

· About Nokia 5320 XpressMusic

· LG KM380 Music Phone Introduced in China

· S-Series Mobile Concept