The Sony Ericsson K800i Cyber-shot branded mobile was Bond's phone of choice in Casino Royale, and it certainly played its part in putting Sony Ericsson's Cyber-shot brand on the mobile map.

Broadening its appeal to reach a more mass-market audience was therefore always on the cards, and the camera-toting manufacturer duly obliged with the recent launch of the Cyber-shot-branded K550i at the same time as the K800i upgrade, the K810i.

The handset is lightweight which means the user can carry it where ever they go which weighs 85 grams in total. The K550i is slim at only 14mm in depth & compact with a height of 102mm & a width of 46mm. The handset feels good to hold in a single hand & has a solid but compact feel to it. The handset comes in a jet black coloured casing & a pearl white colour which comes with a smooth finish. The K550i is a imaging & camera focused mobile phone which is easy & fun to use.

The phone comes with a beautiful 262k colour TFT type screen which has a high screen resolution. The screen makes the perfect tool for viewing all those colourful photos the user will be taking with this mobile phone. The phone comes with colourful animated wallpapers & the user can download more wallpapers or screensavers to suit their style. The user can even use their personal photos as a screensaver or wallpaper.

The camera is simply the best in its class. It's a 2 megapixel camera with a photo light and digital zoom, that includes the autofocus feature first found in the K800i. Instead of a fixed focus camera, with autofocus you can ensure that the subject of your photo is firmly in focus, leading to noticeably sharper images. With Sony being a world leader in digital camera technology, it's no surprise to learn that the K550i takes the best photos of any mid-range camera that we've reviewed to date. In fact it beats many phones that cost a lot more. The K550i features "picture blogging" - take a picture and send it straight to your own image blog for friends and family to view. There's also a good quality video camera.

The K550i has a standard Li-ion battery but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to get almost a full 6 hours of battery life. The indicator was empty but I still managed to squeeze about 15 minutes of usage out of the phone. It lasted me for 2 days on a single charge. And lets just say my usage was not minimal. From talking pictures to using the internet and even listening to a little music and making calls here and there.

Sony Ericsson K550 supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV, WMA, M4A and MIDI file formats. The Music player is nothing special and looks just as your regular Sony Ericsson Walkman player used in the W-series of the Swedish manufacturer. The only difference is that it doesn’t feature the MegaBass equalizer preset. Since Sony Ericsson K550 supports multi-tasking, it can be set to run in background. Sound is nice – given you use the player with a nice headset of course.

The video player of K550 is basic and offers almost no special options. It can play videos in fullscreen landscape mode.

The FM radio has a memory for 20 preset stations and supports RDS.

A very welcome feature is the generous amount of internal memory (64 Mbytes - enough for about a dozen songs) and the support for a Memory Stick Micro™ card, available in sizes up to 2 Gbytes. As with the Walkman phones, the K550i is equipped with two useful music features: TrackID™ & PlayNow™. TrackID lets you record a few seconds of a song, and then get the track, artist and album information sent directly to your phone. PlayNow is a service for downloading music and games to your phone (you have to pay for these.)

The phone comes with quad band technology which provides the user with Worldwide network coverage dependant on network operator. The K550i is a mobile Internet phone which allows the user to enjoy browsing the Internet & manage their email effectively on their mobile phone. The user can sign up to receive RSS feeds which provides the user with up to the minute news & other informative content from selected blogs & websites. The Bluetooth® technology allows the user to connect their K550i to any compatible Bluetooth® devices & enjoy a wireless connection between devices. The phone also supports USB, infra red & fast port connectivity. The phone comes with EDGE technology which provides fast speed data transfer & downloads which are approximately three times faster than GPRS transfers.