The slick little slider with the disco lights is the last slider on AT&T's lineup. Is this music phone you'll want to give a shake, or should you skip it?
Review summary of the Sony Ericsson W580i:
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 If our review score seems lower than our enthusiasm, our scoring takes into account amenities we've come to expect on a modern music phone, like music streaming or access to a music store, or at least some DRM-controlled content. While the W580i may lack these features, it is still a polished phone, and by that we mean that every feature, like the pedometer and scheduling apps, looks good, is useful and functions without flaw. The Walkman player is second to none, and the alert features, most of which involve music and flashing lights, complement the lighthearted nature of the phone nicely. It may not have scored highly, but the Sony Ericsson W580i left us feeling good about the solid slider, and for music phone shoppers that should count for a lot. Release: September 2007. Price: $80.
Pros: Good calling. Fun alerts. Best-in-class music player. Cool gimmicks don't detract from a solid phone.
Cons: Few messaging presets. Stiff, small keys. Disappointing camera. No 3G connectivity or advanced music features.
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Full Sony Ericsson W580i Review:
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Design - Good
Though the Walkman button layout has become familiar, with the W580i we were dismayed to find dinky keys on the keypad, jammed together in the center with room around the edges that could have been used for better spacing. Sony Ericsson's design team is not without its fan base, but we haven't been too fond of the last few S/E phones we've reviewed in terms of their design. Though the phones look sleek and cool, we've had serious issues with the buttons being too small, or placed too closely together.
Still, the phone is the best-looking slider on AT&T's network. In fact, at press time, it is the only slider on AT&T, so it won't have to compete with the dainty Samsung sliders found elsewhere.
The most catching feature of the W580i is its customizable ringing lights. Basically LEDs that flash in various color combinations, it’s a gimmicky feature that we haven't seen since the Motorola V600, though we're not sure why. We liked the ringlights, as well as the phone's slick interface, especially the very cool, animated themes that Sony Ericsson includes. These showed beautifully on the phone's 2-inch, QVGA screen, which was rich and colorful.
Calling - Very good
We're not ashamed to say that our favorite calling feature on the W580i was the plethora of alert options. You can be notified of a call through combinations of videos, music, flashing lights and vibration. Your mother can be purple and green lights while your spouse is a Green Day video. We had fun assigning tones to our contacts, and that's a fun we thought ourselves too jaded to have again. Thankfully, the phone also makes calls that sound good. A little digitized, and we would have liked more aural feedback on our end, but overall quality was good, and reception was a strong five bars in our Lower Manhattan office. The speakerphone could have been louder, which would have also made it more useful to the music player, but we had no problems with Bluetooth or conference calling, both of which worked as expected. We would have preferred speaker-independent voice dialing to the voice tagging on the W580i, but we'll take any hands-free dialing we can get. The contact list also left us happy, with plenty of fields for home and work addresses, multiple numbers and e-mail addresses, and plenty of options for rings and lights.
Messaging - Mediocre
Sony Ericsson seems to like its phones to pick a specialty, and the W580i specializes in music. Messaging fans, and for that matter cameraphone fans, should probably look elsewhere. Though the messaging experience feels polished and complete, like every feature on the phone, it just doesn't include the presets we need to have a stress-free messaging experience. Everything requires setup, and while we expected to do some legwork to get e-mail up and running, we were surprised that MMS wasn't preset, and that sending pictures and messages by e-mail required so much work. Text messagers who prefer SMS will do fine, but instant messaging users are out of luck, as the phone includes no preloaded app for IM.
Music - Very good
For the moment, we're going to forget the fact that AT&T music, the feature that lets you use your PlaysForSure Yahoo Music and Napster tracks on your AT&T phone, is absent from the Walkman phone. It's AT&T's loss, for sure. We'll also forgive the absence of a music store, or any streaming music options, since we don't usually find these satisfactory, anyway. Perhaps the W580i suffers for lacking these features, but the Walkman music player is still, hands down, the best music player on any phone, barring perhaps the Apple iPhone, though that point is debatable.
The Sony Ericsson Walkman player, now in version 2, is sleek, easy to use, yet packed with features. Navigation is a snap, and creating playlists is as easy as checking boxes. The player packs preset EQs, which will appeal especially to bass-heads, as well as good repeat and shuffle settings. We ignored the Sony Ericsson Disc2Phone software since we were testing the phone with an Apple Powerbook. The phone showed up as a mass storage device, and once we had copied our unprotected files, they showed up in the Walkman player, ID tags and all. We even liked Shake Control, a music-skipping feature tied to the accelerometer and pedometer in the phone. Basically, you shake the phone to change tracks. Because you also have to hold down a button to use the shake, we're not sure it was a useful feature, but it is a fun gimmick, and when you have such a solid foundation, gimmicks are indeed fun. Stereo Bluetooth worked with the player without a hitch, and the signal to our headset seemed strong.
Odds and ends
Though the phone comes loaded with a Web browser, it only has access to AT&T's EDGE network. The Web browser was fairly quick, and loaded our homepage smoothly, though some images came out looking blocky, with obvious compression artifacts visible. The phone's camera was especially disappointing, considering the excellent lenses we've found on Sony Ericsson phones in the past. The 2-megapixel shooter takes pics that look very noisy, with imperfect colors and poor lighting. Though auto focus, or even an LED flash, would have been nice, the phone at least includes a wealth of editing options, including auto-levels and red-eye reduction. Also, we would have liked the panorama feature much more if the lens had been of a higher quality.
Price and availability
The Sony Ericsson W580i is available from AT&T Wireless for $80 with a contract. A mail-in rebate of $50 is available, when signing up for a qualifying plan. The W580i is also available as a prepaid phone for $180.
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