Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Sony Ericsson W580i slider




When it comes to Sony Ericsson phones, US users are often out of luck. US carriers don’t offer many SE phones which means we have to pay very high prices for import models. But once in a while, AT&T picks up a new Sony Ericsson model and this time it’s the W580i. The new Sony Ericsson Walkman W580i comes with the usual set of strong music tools including Disc2Phone, Track ID, FM radio and much more; plus built-in Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support. In addition to strong music features and a good 2 megapixel camera, the W580i also comes with great gaming capabilities, a 2” bright display and a Memory Stick Micro M2 slot. 

The Sony Ericsson W580i slider is a quad band GSM world phone that’s offered by AT&T in the US and has EDGE for data. Sony Ericsson also sells an unlock version in Sonystyle stores and online. There are some variations in the packaging and software bundles between the to units and we cover both versions in this review. The unlocked Sony Ericsson currently comes in two colors: Style White and Urban Grey and is priced at $299.99 unlocked. The AT&T version currently comes in Style White and Boulevard Black colors and is priced at $79.99 with 2-year contract.

Specification:

Display: 262,144 color TFT screen. Screen size diag: 2”. Resolution: 240x320 pixels. 

Battery: Sony Ericsson standard BST-38 Li-Polymer rechargeable battery (3.6v). 930mAh capacity. Battery is user replaceable. Claimed talk time is 9 hours and standby time is 370 hours. Claimed music playback time is 20 hours. 

Performance: 12 MB internal memory, undisclosed CPU. 

Size: 3.89 x 1.85 x 0.55 inches. Weight: 3.3 ounces.  

Phone: GSM quad band world phone supporting the 850/900/1800/1900MHz bands. EDGE and GPRS for data.

Camera: 2.0 MP camera with 4x digital zoom. Also records video clips with audio. Picture sizes include 2 megapixel, 1 megapixel and VGA and videos have MMS size video and long video modes. 

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and a Sony Ericsson's proprietary Fast port stereo headset connector. Supports polyphonic ringtones, MIDI and MP3/ACC audio. Mega Bass software included to boost the bass. Supports MPEG4 video with Media Player bundled on the phone. Vibrating alerts supported.

Networking: Bluetooth v2.0.

Software: Sony Ericsson OS. Bundled applications include Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Messaging (supports SMS, MMS and email), HTML browser, Walkman media player and Image Gallery. Also included are two JAVA games (on Sony Ericsson version only), MusicDJ, VideoDJ, PhotoDJ Sound recorder and calculator applications. The desktop companion CD includes PC Suite software for syncing with Windows PCs, File Manager, Image Editor and Adobe Photoshop Album 3.0 Starter Edition.

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