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Nokia 6555 Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Alfredo Padilla Published on February 29, 2008 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

Summary
The Nokia 6555's organizational features are solid for a regular phone, but they won't replace a PDA or smart phone. You also won't be able to synchronize with a computer out of the box.

Synchronization Ease of Use (0.0)
The Nokia 6555 does not ship with any software to synchronize data with a computer, nor does it ship with a USB cable to connect the phone to a computer. As such it will receive a zero.

Alerts (4.0)
You can set alerts on the Nokia 6555 for calendar appointments and tasks. With either type you have the option to choose between a silent alert, in which there is no sound but the screen flashes, and a tone, where the phone sounds an alarm. You can set the alert to go off at any time you wish, which is nice flexibility you don't see from all smart phones, much less a regular phone like the Nokia 6555. When an alert sounds you will see the exterior screen flash with information about your appointment/task. When you open the phone up you are given the option of dismissing the alert or viewing the item that it is alerting you about. There are no snooze options. We like the flexibility provided by the alert scheduling options, but wish there was some kind of snooze option.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The Nokia 6555 doesn't support synchronization of your PIM data over the air

Address Book

Adding Contacts (5.77)
It took us an average of 17.88 seconds to add a new contact to the Nokia 6555. This is a decent time, but not the fastest we've seen. You can see from the table below that the Nokia 6555 is faster than the Samsung SLM, W580i, and N75, but slower than the LG Venus and Razr2 V8. Typically flip phones are slower because it takes time to open the phone up, but so is the Razr2 V8, and the Venus is a slider, which also takes time to open up. That said, the Nokia 6555 should perform just fine for most people. For this test we use five different contact names and phone numbers, timing how long it takes to go from phone closed until we have added each one. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia 6555	17.34	5.77
Samsung SLM	19.02	5.26
LG Venus	14.38	6.95
Sony Ericsson W580i	22.74	4.40
Razr2 V8	13.33	7.50
Nokia N75	22.84	4.38

Looking/Sorting/Search (1.5)
The Nokia 6555 supports groups, but its implementation is a little different than most phones we've seen. Instead of having a separate interface to view your groups and then see what contacts are included, groups are included right in your contact list. When you select a group you are then taken to a list of the group members. All contacts and groups are sorted alphabetically by first name with no other option. The search functionality on the Nokia 6555 is rather poor. There's no support for predictive search, so to search for Sarah, for example, you have to multi-tap the whole name instead of just typing 7,2,7,4, which is how it would be spelled using T9. Also annoying is that you can't search for last names, just first. This is similar to the limitations we see on Nokia Series 60 devices like the N75. Overall, we didn't find the sorting and searching options on the Nokia 6555 to be very impressive.

Fields (4.6)
When you create a new contact on the Nokia 6555 you are given a very simple set of fields: first name, last name, and phone number. Most users who just want the basics will appreciate this simplified interface. For those who want more options, don't despair, because under the left soft key menu you'll find an option to "add detail," which gives you a list of 13 additional fields, including notes, addresses, birthday, and e-mail addresses. You can add multiple fields for many of these - for example you can add up to four additional phone numbers and five e-mail addresses for a total of 23 available fields. This is good for a regular phone, but is nowhere near the dozens of fields smart phones like the Nokia N75 have.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.0)
Like most phones, you can easily assign contacts to speed dials on the Nokia 6555. It also has a speaker-independent voice dialing system that attempts to recognize the name of a contact without you having to train the phone. This system worked reasonably well in our test, recognizing four of our five test contacts, which have diverse names. To access the voice dialing system you simply hold down the right soft key on the home screen.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (6.55)
Adding a new calendar item to the Nokia 6555 is pretty speedy, taking us an average of 15.26 seconds. This is the time it takes to go from phone closed until you have a new lunch appointment for the following day with a reminder 15 minutes before. You can see from the table below that the Nokia 6555 compares well on this test to our other handsets. Only the W580i did better on this test, but the difference wasn't huge. The Nokia 6555 was much faster than the SLM, Venus, or Nokia N75. The Nokia 6555 isn't as fast as some smart phones with a QWERTY keyboard, but for a regular phone it's plenty fast. That being said, you will find the calendar a little buried in the menu system on the 6555. You have to go to the Main menu, My Stuff, Tools, and then Calendar. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia 6555	15.26	6.55
Samsung SLM	21.90	4.57
LG Venus	18.87	5.30
Sony Ericsson W580i	14.04	7.12
Razr2 V8	15.28	6.54
Nokia N75	19.20	5.21

Calendar Views (4.3)
The Nokia 6555 offers three different calendar views. The first and default view when you open the calendar application is the monthly view. Here you see the current month with the current day outlined by a box and days you have appointments bolded. Unlike many calendar views where this is all the information you might get, the Nokia 6555 improves matters by giving you a list of all appointments on a selected date in a box at the bottom of the screen. This means you can quickly get an overview of your appointments, an excellent feature.


We're glad to see this feature was carried over into the weekly view. Like most week views, you get a grid with days along the top and hours on the left. Appointments are blocked out in the hours they are scheduled for, and when you have any block in a given day selected you see a list of all the appointments for that day at the bottom of the screen.


Finally, there is a the daily view. Here you see a simple list of all your appointments with time, title, and appointment type indicated. This is a bit redundant given how good the Monthly and Daily views are, unless you have a lot of appointments on a given day. It does show you the location of an appointment, but it would have also been nice to get indicators for recurring appointments or those with alerts, as well. That being said, it's little worse than the daily view on most regular phones, and the excellent weekly and monthly views more than make up for this. Although you can create different appointment types like reminder, meeting, call, or birthday, you can't filter or sort your appointments by these categories in any of the views.

Fields (7.0)
When you create a new appointment on the Nokia 6555 your first option is to choose the appointment type. Your options are Reminder, Meeting, Call, Birthday, and Memo. There are some subtle differences in the fields for each, for example with a Birthday you are prompted to enter the date and year of the birthday, while with a call you are prompted for the number you want to call. We'll stick with the more pedestrian Meeting options for the sake of this section, however.

When creating a new meeting you can enter a title, location, start and end time, alert, and recurrence pattern. The alarm can be set for any time and date you want before the meeting actually occurs, which provides you with excellent flexibility. By default an alert is set for 15 minutes before the start time you enter. Recurrence options are also a nice feature and are actually quite advanced. You can choose from Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly recurrence and create your own complex patterns, like a meeting that occurs on certain days of the week, or every three weeks. This is significantly better than what we see on even some smart phones.

We are missing some fields we would have liked, however. For example all-day events, categories, and notes would have been nice. But these aside, we're quite impressed with the fields available on the Nokia 6555.

To Do/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (6.23)
It took us an average of 16.04 seconds to add a new task to the Nokia 6555 reminding us to get groceries the following day. This is a decent, but not overly impressive time. You can see from the table below that it's comparable to the W580i, faster than the SLM, but slower than the N75 or Razr2 V8. As with calendar appointments, you'll have to dig into the menu system to get to the task program. This isn't a smart phone and they don't make these sort of organizational tools easy to get to. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia 6555	16.04	6.23
Samsung SLM	20.70	4.83
LG Venus	n/a - no tasks	0.00
Sony Ericsson W580i	16.56	6.04
Razr2 V8	14.74	6.78
Nokia N75	14.36	6.96

To Do/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (3.5)
Tasks on the Nokia 6555 cannot be categorized, but you can prioritize them. By default the tasks are sorted by priority, but you can also change this to sort by due date by choosing the option under the left soft key menu.

Fields (5.0)
Your range of fields when you create a new task on the Nokia 6555 are pretty basic. You can enter a title, due date, priority, and alert. The alert can be set to go off at any time that you wish, which offers some nice flexibility. We do wish, however, that some more advanced fields like categories, recurrence, and notes were available.

Notes

Adding Notes (3.08)
It took us an average of 16.22 seconds to add a new note to the Nokia 6555. This time is about average for a phone without a QWERTY keyboard. You can see from the table below that it sits right around the middle of our comparison handsets, with a few doing worse and a few better. As with other organizational features you'll have to dig into the menu system to launch the notes application. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Nokia 6555	16.22	3.08
Samsung SLM	22.80	2.19
LG Venus	18.86	2.65
Sony Ericsson W580i	12.00	4.17
Razr2 V8	13.66	3.66
Nokia N75	15.52	3.22

Note Interface (2.0)
The notes interface on the Nokia 6555 is very simple. You have a list of your notes that you navigate using up and down on the d-pad. Pressing in on the center select key opens the currently selected note. The left soft key opens a menu where you can access functions like creating a new note, deleting notes, or sending them. When a note is opened the screen is used to type out a note, while the left soft key menu allows you to access clipboard functions, delete the note, or send it. There is no support for categorizing notes, filtering your views, or searching through your notes.

Note Formatting (1.0)
The Nokia 6555's notes program does not support formatting features like bold, italics, underline, changing font size/type, or adding media items to your notes. You can access a copy/paste function, but that's about it.

Voice Memo (3.0)

The voice memo system in the Nokia 6555 is also very simple. When you open it up you can record a note, limited to one minute. Once a voice note is recorded it is saved to the audio folder. To access that folder you need to open up the left soft key menu and choose the appropriate option. We don't particularly like voice memo programs where you can't access your notes easily from within the program. We also wish once you had recorded a voice note you could then do things with it directly, like send it via MMS, rather than having to switch to the audio folder.

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