Nokia 6555 Cell Phone

Cons: Flimsy construction, fragile, slippery plastic housing hard to grasp

Summary: We got these phones with our AT&T (ex-Cingular) GSM account in December 2007 ( 2 phones.) While they have great voice quality and good performance, they are in my opinion about as robust as a canary. The plastic shell is soft, too slippery and thin. Dropping it or accidentally sitting on it when it's in your pocket will likely result in a cracked and broken LCD display either on the back side or interior screen. The menus are arranged to direct you into pay-extra services when first opened, such as AT&T's music downloader, instead of something more obvious and useful such as the address book. The "push to talk" button (should really be "push for extra charges") is too close to the earpiece volume control buttons for me and easy to hit by accident. One of our 6555's comes up with "SIM card not initialized" regularly for no reason and has to be turned off and re-booted to clear this. I use the phone about an hour a day and it requires charging every other day for 2.5 hours, which is better than my previous phone. The charger jack is on the side instead of the bottom, making it awkward to use the phone while the charger is in use. In my opinion, this is another example of the latest 3G phone with too many features you don't need and will never use (unless you are a trendy high school kid.) A minor inconvenience is that the backlights on the keyboard, and the screen, don't stay lit long enough. Pause while dialing a number manually and everything will go dark until the next key is pressed, which is awkward in the dark. The display is a decent size and bright (so far) and the menu button easy to use. I haven't used the camera, so can't comment on it. All in all, I am satisfied with this phone, which is what AT&T is presently giving you here when you initiate service with a contract, however I am constantly worried about accidentally breaking it, which I never was with any other phone.