With all the press on the iPhone there are still a few nice little handsets out on the market. The W580i Walkman phone available through Rogers from Sony Ericsson doesn’t shuffle, but it does shake.
The W580i is a sleek stylish slider style unit, that’s, a Walkman, a camera, an organizer, a mini gaming console and a pedometer – yes, a pedometer- oh and I forgot, a phone.
As a Walkman music player, it keeps the Sony tradition by keeping the incredible sound that Sony stands for with the comfort fitting ear buds offering decent music experience. It has all the standard features you’d expect in a music player, including the ability to create play lists. It supports not only mp3 files but the higher quality AAC files as well. It also has a built-in FM radio with RDS capability that can display the tune you are listening to.
The Disc2Phone management software, allows you to easily get music to and from your W580i via the high speed USB interface.
Shake Control
One unique feature, Shake Control allows you to select the next track in your playlist or one at random by holding down the “Walkman” key and simply flicking your wrist. Hmm – sounds like it got its inspiration from the Nintendo Wii. It also has a music recognition feature, TrackID, which will return the song identification, using the Gracenote Database. Have the unit “listen” or record a few seconds and it will identify track. It’s great if you want to find out the name of a song you’re hearing.
Like many of today’s handsets, it has a built-in 2-megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom. Photos were decent, even at 1600 x1200, the highest resolution, although images were hit and miss under low light conditions. There is no flash or auto-focus, which would have a nice complement to a unit as full-featured as this. The interface design does makes it easy to send your snapshots with MMS – picture messaging. It supports video streaming and can record video at 176x144 and 128x96 which you can send to friends and family.
Phone quality sound is superb and the speakerphone is respectable. The 2” TFT display is sharp and crisp capable of displaying 240x320 pixels and 262,000 colours. The funky light effects, and the ability to customize the “skin” or theme of the display, which will most certainly appeal to the young at heart, complement the display. It also has a built-in web browser and RSS feed capability.
Fitness Trainer
Phones can certainly have health benefits. Oh really, you say? The W580i has a built-in pedometer and fitness trainer application. It can measure steps; keep track of how much time you walk or run, your speed and how many calories you burnt and more. You can personalize it by entering your own information like weight, age etc. I guess since you’re wearing it anyway, you might as well track yourself. And truth be told, some of us, yes me, could certainly take a page from this book.
Overall, I found the unit easy to navigate, although I did have to refer to the manual to locate the power button that, by the way, is located on the top of the phone. Also, being a slider unit, and being used to a flip model, it took me a little while to get used to maneuvering with one hand. That aside, there is a lot of practical power built-in to this little handset and it’s fun to use.
The W580i is also plane friendly allowing you to set it to Flight Mode, which turns off transmission functions, yet still allows you to use all its other features.
It ships in 2 colours, Urban Grey or Style White. It has about 12MB of useable memory and comes with a removable 512 MB Sony Memory Stick Micro (upgradeable to 2MB) and selling for $149 with a 3-year plan from Rogers. For more info and detailed specifications visit www.sonyericsson.ca.
