The Z555a's megapixel camera shoots photos in three sizes (1 megapixel, standard VGA, and QVGA). Other options include two quality settings, three color effects, a night mode, white-balance and brightness adjustments, a multishot option, a self-timer, a 4x digital zoom (unusable at the highest resolution), and four shutter sounds (however, there's no a silent option). Photo quality was acceptable. Colors looked natural but the lighting was dim and smaller objects were blurry. Like the W380a, the Z555a has a video player but it lacks a video recorder.
As previously mentioned, the Z555a has a gesture controls feature, which allows you to control the phone by waving your hand. When you receive a call, a tiny light will shine just below the camera lens. By waving your hand in front of the light, you can silence the ring and send the call straight to voicemail. Also, you can silence an alarm in the same manner. In reality, the idea is better than the execution. Each time we tried using the gesture control we had to wave our hand over the sensor a couple of times. It didn't turn us off to the experience, but we were hoping for something a bit more effective.
You can personalize the W380a with a variety of color themes, wallpaper, and screensavers. If the options included on the phone aren't enough, you can purchase more with the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser. You also can download more ringtones or create your own using the MusicDJ application. FotoQuestFishing and JewelQuest2 are the Java (J2ME) games included, but you can buy more. There's also an Accuweather application for getting your local forecast.
Performance
We tested the triband (GSM 850/1800/1900) Sony Ericsson Z555a in San Francisco using AT&T service. Call quality was quite decent in most regards. Voices sounded natural and the volume level is louder than the W380a. Also, we had no trouble getting a signal and we encountered no interference or static. Our only complaint was that during some calls you could hear a slight hiss in the background. It wasn't particularly bothersome, though.
On their end callers said we sounded fine. They could hear us well and they didn't report any distortion. They could tell we were using a cell phone, which is not unusual, and only a few callers reported that the phone picked up some background noise. Automated calling systems could understand us as long as we were in a quiet location.
Speakerphone performance was unimpressive. The output from the speaker was weak and voices sounded tinny. On our end, we had to speak very close to the phone in order to be heard.
We also noticed that the Z55a's menus were rather slow. There was a slight lag for a second or two when we were navigating through menus. That may not sound like a big deal, but it's noticeable just the same.
The Z555a has a rated battery life of 7 hours talk time and 12.5 days standby time. Our test revealed a talk time of 10 hours and 11 minutes. According to FCC radiation tests, the Z555a has a digital SAR rating of 0.67 watt per kilogram.
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