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The camera is probably the lowlight of this phone, though. With a maximum resolution of just 1.3-megapixels, no flash and few software features this, more than any other feature, marks the Z555i out as lower end.

The coloured dish photographed as usual under normal household lighting has reasonable colour reproduction though its background is not as white as it should be. The chair shows good uniformity of colour.

The flower shows up one of the lens' main weaknesses. I was quite close to the subject and the focus is off, highlighting that its minimum focusing distance is longer than other cameraphones I've tested. The flower is more crimson than the camera suggests, too. On the whole, though, for a 1.3-megapixel lens, results were OK. Just don't expect to do much beyond blogging from the handset or MMS-ing.

Music playback is, of course, catered for, though the player's features are basic. On board memory is small at only 12MB so you will need a Memory Stick Micro if you have any intention of storing and playing a decent number of tunes. And Sony Ericsson pulls off its usual proprietary headset connector trick. This being a budget handset the headset provided is one piece, offering no easy route to using your own 3.5mm cans.

But if you do play music the battery life should please. It gave me eight hours and 17 minutes of music from a full charge which is quite respectable for a budget phone. The loudspeaker isn't overly loud, but that might please fellow train travellers and it isn't so quiet as to be irritating.

Other software on this phone forms a pretty respectable bunch. Apart from what's already been alluded to, software includes a calendar, tasks manager, notes tool, timer, stopwatch, calculator, RSS reader, sound recorder and Sony Ericsson's MusicDJ.

Verdict

The features on board are reasonable for a budget handset, and even the poor resolution camera did itself fairly proud. Battery life was not too bad, either. The handset design doesn't appeal, though.

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