Vodafone 553 deals & review

The 553 from Vodafone is a nice touchscreen handset with a QWERTY slide-out keyboard for excellent messaging and email usability. The 2.8" TFT screen comes with 256k colours and resistive touchscreen technology. Despite having a fancy touch sensitive screen and sliding keyboard the 553 still manages to place itself within the affordable handset range. In fact it is one of the most affordable phones to come with these features included.

The Vodafone 553 does not come with 3G or Wi-Fi and this may in part explain how Vodafone have managed to keep the price so low. For some this may be considered a hindrance when it comes with web surfing, but the 553 does still have access to GPRS and EDGE and comes with the very desirable Opera Mini web browser included. This supports WAP, HTML and xHTML content as well as Java.

You are provided with access to Facebook and Twitter, as well as having instant messaging clients like GTalk, ICQ and Yahoo Messenger supported out of the box. There is also great support for email and this is where the QWERTY keyboard comes in handy. Tapping out an email, or even just an SMS/MMS message, is much easier with this keyboard than with a traditional numerical pad.

For entertainment the 553 comes with a music and video player to help you kill time, as well as an FM radio so that you can tune into the latest hits as they are released. The 553 also supports a number of games to distract you while you are bored or on the bus. MP3 ringtones are supported, and the 553 supports up to 8GB of microSD cards. Additional connectivity features include USB and Bluetooth.

It is nice to see a sliding keyboard phone with full touchscreen finally make its way into the budget market. The 553 is not crammed with all the latest features and apps like the latest smartphones but still has enough to offer on its own. Unfortunately the low price does mean that you are not provided with 3G or Wi-Fi, which is the biggest let down for this phone.