Life of A Phone Lover

Samsung i550w - User Interface

As I mentioned earlier, the i550w comes with a 2.6" 262k color display. However I realized that most phones would have a somewhat similar display except for the screen size. With adjustable brightness setting which you can easily locate under "display", I notice that the visuals is still excellent even if it's under direct sunlight. To know about photo quality, I'll talk about it at my later entry. So do stay tuned for it!

The i550w trackball navigation is sensitive enough for me to scroll while I'm browsing or searching the menu. Though I admit that I faced a slight difficulty when I started using it. Try adjusting the level of sensitivity, that will help.


Closer look at the trackball navigation and shortcuy keys

Moving on to the keypad which is a vital part of any phone. I personally think that after using my Nokia for quite some time, I have a bit of trouble with the keypad of the i550w at first. The keypad design of my Nokia are adjacent but the i550w has a small margin in between the keys. You get what I mean? For me, I prefer sms-ing than making calls on handphones (probably because I've had enough of talking on the phone in the office). Nevertheless, after a few days of constant contact with the keypad, I've gotten used to it and can now text quite fast with the "predictive text" on.

As you can see, there are a few more buttons beside the trackball navigation which are the 2 shortcut keys, menu, music player, GPS and bookmark(for browsing internet). Sometimes, when typing too fast, I have a tendency to pressed on the wrong button (either the GPS or the music player). Haha... Overall, I'm fairly satisfied with the keypad.

Now let's have a look at the menu. I find the Symbian S60 platform to be relatively user friendly as you can change the shortcut keys according to your preference. For example, I set messaging (on the left) and contact (on the right) as I text a lot. On the middle of the screen, you can also set a total of 6 applications for shortcut as well. If you prefer simple and tidy screen, you can choose to off the short cut. Here's the way how. Go to:

>Menu>Setting>Personalization>Standby Mode(On), (Off) the standby mode if you wish to hide the 6 short cut keys.

Details of the menu? No worries, I won't let you down. Just hang on a little while and I shall talk about it.

When you pressed the menu button, the icons are defaulted at a 4 x 3 grid (you may refer to my themes screenshot). Never mind if you don't like it, you have an option to switch it to a list (whereby you only scroll up and down). I personally prefer the menu shown in grid.

After 'exploring' the phone, I found that it only has 3 pre-installed themes. I love having a lot of themes on my phone so it won't look uninteresting. I changed themes according to my mood or every fortnight for my Nokia so I won't get bored looking at the same thing. I've installed a few themes for the i550w as well. Take a look...


iPhone wanna be


Blue Cascade Kata


Mickey (Walt Disney)


Dark Win


Avril Lavigne

These are some of the few themes that I've installed to the phone.

I'm leaving tomorrow for a holiday to Langkawi for 3 days. I'm looking forward to a relaxing vacation. I promise a surprise when I'm back. Do drop by. Till then...

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