Facebook handsets are the latest phones to hit a market aimed at the younger mobile phone user – HTC has just released two phones with Facebook at their core (the ChaCha and the Salsa) – and now Vodafone has jumped on the bandwagon with its 555 Blue.

Looking a little like the ChaCha with its white and silver body, the phone has enough weight behind it to avoid feeling like a toy. Some may think it looks a bit childish compared to other handsets with their black bodies, but considering its target market we don’t think that’s an issue. It’s a tiny 12mm deep, so will easily slip into a jeans pocket. 

Social networking

Switch on the handset for the first time and you’ll be guided through the setup procedure, including Facebook login and importing your SIM contacts. Facebook friends and SIM contacts are merged, and your contacts’ images will then be teamed up with their details.

The handset is supposed to refresh your Facebook news feed automatically, but we often found ourselves doing this manually (although profile pages were updated when we opened them). But do be aware that it is slow – painfully slow. If you’re looking through Facebook it’s reasonably fast, but if you’re planning on downloading anything be prepared to wait.

Key points

Typing can take a bit of getting used to, as the physical keypad has the keys set close together, but we soon found ourselves inputting at our usual speed. There is a volume rocker and five soft keys; one of these is also used as a scroll pad. To fire up the camera there is a physical key on the keyboard.

Basic features such as emailing, calling and texting are simple enough to use – those physical soft keys are to thank for this. The 555 Blue has nice curved corners, which means it fits nicely in the hand if you’re phoning someone, and the speaker is loud enough too.

Back to basics

Don’t expect anything more than basic operation from the handset, though. While it offers Facebook integration, there’s nothing fancy about it – you can do simple tasks such as updating status and pictures. And as we said, calling and texting is made simple. But don’t be looking for video support or Facebook Places integration.

Going slow

It’s easy enough to upload an image – take a picture, head into the upload menu and you’re done. If you want to upload video you’re out of luck. You can record video but you won’t be able to upload it – if it’s small enough you could email it, but that’s not likely.

Downloading is sluggish thanks to the 200MHz chip, so you won’t be able to have a quick flick though the picture album – also you’ll have to exit the feed and go into the Opera Mini Browser to scroll through your images, which is rather annoying.

Screen test

We also found the screen a bit of a letdown – it measures 2.4 inches and means that your albums appear as tiddly thumbnails when you crawl through friends’ photos.

The winning points of the 555 Blue are probably contacts integration and chat capabilities, while the hardware stars are its microSD slot and LED flash for the snapper. There’s little else to make a big deal about – especially as it’s so slow when using Facebook.

Our conclusion

If you want little else from your handset but to text, call and check out your friends’ status updates, the Vodafone 555 Blue is a good choice of phone  but if you’re after anything more, you’ll need to look elsewhere.