Sony Ericsson W580i review

Sony Ericsson W580i Review

Reviewed by: Andrew Lim

Reviewed on: 18 September 2007

Music can be stored on up to a 2GB Memory Stick Micro card that will hold around 500 songs, but you only get a 512MB card in the box, which holds about 125 songs. If you want to carry around more music you'll need to buy a bigger card.

We weren't overly impressed wth the W580i's keypad, but it is usable

A new feature that hasn't been seen on a Walkman phone before is a built-in pedometer that can be set to count your steps while walking and running, and also lets you know how far you've travelled and your average speed.

At first it seems like a strange addition, particularly because the pedometer is turned on by default and starts counting your steps as soon as you start walking. However, it ends up being quite useful for anyone who enjoys walking and running and wants to track their progress.

Another strange feature we didn't totally understand is the ability to shuffle music by holding down the Walkman key and shaking the W580i. We're not sure why you can't just press a button to shuffle tracks.

As for the rest of the phone, it's pretty much business as usual. There's a Web browser, Java games, calendar and a 2-megapixel camera that doesn't feature autofocus or a flash. Then again, this isn't a particularly expensive handset, so we wouldn't expect top-of-the-line camera features.

Performance
Audio quality during calls was good and we didn't notice any noticeable distortion or muffling during calls. The quality on speakerphone mode was equally good and relatively loud.

Audio quality from the Walkman Player was acceptable, although the bass sounded a little less deep than we would have liked and the high end wasn't as crisp as you might expect on a specialist music phone like this.