Vodafone 555 Blue review

For the Vodafone 555 Blue feature phone, media isn't a priority. Thoughtfully, Alcatel has thrown in a music player and FM radio, but other than that there's little going on.

The internal memory is a tiny 400MB, but a microSD slot has been provided for external memory of up to 16GB. The music player supports MP3 and WMA files that, with the additional memory from a microSD card, means that the Vodafone 555 Blue would be decent enough for a little listening on the go.

You're provided with a pair of moulded plastic earphones that, although uncomfortable, do give a decent enough sound even into the top ranges of volume, but wouldn't do for any extended periods of listening.

We tested them with the FM radio, which we found a little difficult to tune with the trackpad. It's also not possible to subtly follow a station's tuning when white noise starts creeping in.

The external speaker is surprisingly loud and gives a very balanced sound without too much bass. With the provided earphones the sound is somewhat muted and the bass distorts at the highest volumes (although these aren't too loud).

With our own, more comfortable, earphones, the connection left a little to be desired – producing muffled sounds unless the connector was hanging half-in, half-out of the jack.

Transferring music to the Vodafone 555 Blue is a bit of a hassle, as you have to do so via Bluetooth rather than just plugging in.

Once all devices are connected, start your computer's Bluetooth transferring software and pick the Vodafone 555 from the list of devices. Transferring large files can take a few minutes, but the downloaded files are immediately sieved through to the music player.

This means that there's less to sort, but there's actually no way to sort through files with formats not immediately recognised.

There's no building of playlists, but you can set the songs to shuffle and the music player will keep playing in the background while you browse Facebook. But be warned: this is one of the few things the Vodafone 555 Blue can do that will actually have an adverse affect on your battery life.