Sony Ericsson W580 Black Views

General Goods

Sony Ericsson deserves a lot of credit for bringing music to cell phones. Though it was not the first company to develop the idea, its Walkman handsets have consistently combined a robust music player with admirable sound quality. And that was true a long time before the arrival of the ballyhooed Apple iPhone. Now the company has succeeded again with the Sony Ericsson W580i. Inside a sexy slider design are the usual high-end Walkman features, all of which deliver solid performance. The phone comes in white, black, and gray. We examined the gray model for this review but the features are the same on all models. AT

Design With a couple of exceptions, Sony Ericsson still hasn't fully embraced the slider phone trend. In fact, after the Sony Ericsson W850i, the W580i is only the second slider model from the company that we've reviewed. And fortunately, Sony Ericsson was more successful this time around. While the W850i was bulky and had unintuitive controls, the W580i improves on both fronts. We wouldn't be exaggerating if we were to say the W580i is one of the most eye-catching handsets we've seen all year. It has a sleek shape and compact dimensions (3.9 inches by 1.8 inches by 0.5 inch; 3.3 ounces) that make it easy to take on the go. The slider mechanism is well-constructed; we could open it with just one hand but it wasn't too loose. In the phone's Settings menu you can choose to end calls automatically when you close the phone.

Loading music on the phone is relatively easy. The needed USB cable and the Disc2Phone software are included, so you're saved the pain of shelling out more money for a music kit. The Sony Ericsson software can be a bit clunky, so we're glad that you can also drag and drop music from your PC to the W580i. Internal memory is capped at a low 12MB, so it's advised you use a Memory Stick Micro card. You also get the standard FM radio and a Music ID application for identifying likable tunes you can't name. There's a quirky Music Mate application that shows the correct finger position for various guitar chords and piano chords while playing the notes. You can even use the phone as a metronome.