Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6639 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony Ericsson
• Model: W580i
• Released on: 2007-07-24

Manufacturer's Description
The W580i is a sleek, slim, streetstyle slider phone - and a portable music device too. Tempting to touch, designed to impress;In the W580i kit, you get a stereo headset and everything you need to get your music from your computer to your phone. Connect, choose and transfer;It's all in your moves. With Shake control, you select a song from your playlist randomly at the flick of your wrist;When you're out and about, you can have your favorite music with you wherever you go. And your picture library and favorite Web sites. W580i is for active people

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Great Phone But You Pay For Extras!
It is a slider phone, instead of a flip, so I can have it open on my car's dash and it's slim to fit in any pocket. The buttons are small, but we are all used to that by now. Sure it also has the obligatory camera and video, but it is 2.0 mega-pixels which is better than most. It provides support for "PictBridge technology" so you can print your photos without the need of a PC, but again, 2.0 mega-pixels is good for the internet, built not great for printing out.

It is a Walkman that shuffles the songs with just a shake of your wrist. With the "TrackID" service, you just identify any song that you can hear by just recording a bit of the song (using the microphone, like at `Starbucks'). This features costs $3.99/month!!! Later, you can send the file for recognition. It gives you the name, artist and album right to your phone. That's cool.

You have FM radio access and a slot for extra memory for songs, pics, video, etc. The ear buds are actually good quality and are attached along with a microphone (for hands free or finding that bit of song). It has all your high-speed mobile internet access, web browser, email, messaging, Java support needs and plenty of the basic games and is "Bluetooth" compatible. You need to buy UNLIMITED DATA USAGE from your server which can be about $20-$40/month!

If you like listening to music while working out, the integrated motion sensor counts your steps, your calories and monitors your running speed, distance and time. Your workout results are stored in your phone so you can monitor your progress. This is free, thankfully.

There is even a calendar, place for notes, an alarm, a calculator, stopwatch and timer! There are plenty of good free ring tones and more you can buy on-line. There's more you can BUY!

But what I like best is this phone has one of the cleanest, clearest and brightest (adjustable for night) screens available. Great phone, but the extras will cost you!

Why The Bad Press?
The sony ericsson w580i is a brilliant phone, the shake control is a really clever idea, it has amazingly good sound especially as it only as small speakers, it feels solid, the battery life is reasonable but could be better. Why are people saying the camera is rubbish? I mean, you can choose how many megapixels you use when you take a photo, the outlines are funny and look good. The trackID feature is very clever, it takes a recording of a song you hear on the radio, and tells you what the song is called, who it's by, and what album it's on. So why all the bad press???? It's a brilliant phone.

It Is Usable, But Not Great
This phone is aesthetically nice, I have this in the pink, and functionally it performs fairly well. I bought this as an 'upgrade' to the w800i, but aside from the fact that it is a slimmer design, it does not offer much more interest than that.

The camera is of the same picture quality, with the additional ability to record for longer video sections than the w800i. The downside of the camera is that it needs a much steadier hand in order to produce a good image.

The battery life is reasonable, but again, nothing to get excited about.

It has a 'neat' little function which allows you to shuffle the songs on the walkman, but only if you take the phone out of your pocket, press the walkman button and shake it. By the time you have hassled around with that you may just as well have switched the song through the normal route. I also advise you adding a phone charm before trying this function that way if you almost drop the phone, whilst shaking it around, you can wind the charm round your fingers so as not to end up with a broken phone.

It contains some games, but you have only about a minute of each before being prompted to actually download the full version - presumably for an additional cost.

The software of the phone is adequate but not particularly fast, and I feel that with time it will start to freeze, leaving the user with two options - either try and upgrade the software through your computer, or return the phone for a new model.

The button layout is cute, and you get little side lights appear whilst you have the flip open, but the buttons are probably too tightly packed for any men to use easily, unless they have delicate little hands. My husband definitely could not use it easily.

Overall, what I am trying to say is yes - it is a phone, yes it works, yes it has some extra functions - but NO, it is not a great phone, merely an adequate one.