The Sony Ericsson Z558i is flip phone that pays homage to the growing Chinese market. Just from looking at the cover and the pictures in the gallery folder, you will immediately notice how much this phone revolves around the Chinese culture. The pictures that are included are the 12 different zodiac signs—pig, horse, sheep, rat, snake, dragon, to name a few. Even the themes are very Asian. It is not as slim as the Motorola V3 but it is slimmer than most phones in the market today. It can be opened easily but the one thing that was hard to get used to was that it was slippery. 2 out of 5 times the phone would slip while I was trying to flip it open. On the outside, there is a small screen where signal availability, battery life and time are displayed.

This is also the first phone from Sony Ericsson to have a touch screen. The touch screen feature, though, is only available when writing notes, SMS messages and tasks. Although it is somewhat an interesting feature, I don’t see the point of having it when it is still easier to type the message through the keypad. The keypad is easy to use. You don’t have to press so hard (unlike other phones) for a letter to appear when you’re keying in the SMS message. Another thing that kept bothering me was how the power and the shortcut buttons were so close to the number buttons. Since the space button for any Sony Ericsson phone is the pound key, sometimes the power button is mistakenly pressed; same goes for the shortcut key. When it comes to messaging, the difference between this phone and my old one is that when sending a message, I cannot cancel and stop the sending. The "write new message" closes up once I send the message but I am not yet sure whether the message was sent out or not. When I receive a message and reply to it, an arrow pops out beside the original sender’s name; the same happens when I forward the message.

This phone can keep anyone entertained while waiting for someone. Just like other Sony Ericsson phones, it includes three games—Black deal, Puzzle Slider, and Quadra Pop. More games can be downloaded from Sony Ericsson’s official website. It can store up to 18 MB of songs, pictures or videos but it has a memory card slot that can expand the memory up to 1GB. There is a built-in 1.3 mega pixel camera that can zoom up to 4x in 160x120 size pictures. Pictures can be taken in 3 different sizes (1280x1024, 640x480 and 160x120), 4 different effects (black & white, negative, solarized, sepia) and 4 different shoot modes (normal, panorama, frames and burst). Brightness can also be adjusted. Last but not the least, it has an FM radio and a media player. Who can get bored with all these features to keep you amused?

This phone’s battery life is also long. I keep the radio open the whole night until morning but there is not much difference from the time I started using the radio. The games don’t take up much of the battery either. Contacts can be saved with several numbers and pictures that would appear when a message or call is received from that specific contact. Charging time is also short just like any other Sony Ericsson phone. Basically, there is nothing wrong with this phone. It is not as sophisticated as the others out there but it is functional and fit for any teenager.