♪♫ ☎My pretty Ericsson☎ ♪♫ (Sony Ericsson W580i)

Member Name: burtybookworm

Product:	Sony Ericsson W580i
Date:	29/11/08 (327 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Music feature is a massive plus, easy to use, attractive looking

Disadvantages: A few design faults could be improved on, see review

The last three mobile phones I have had have been Sony Ericssons. A couple of years ago, I would have gone for the Nokias every time - they look pretty and I knew the functions on it were pretty good. However, two years ago I ended up with a rather chunky looking black Sony ericsson, it was a bit of a boys phone but I wanted a phone that had a decent music feature and at the time (and its probably still true now) the Sony Ericsson was the best option.
So two years on, I've opted for the Sony Ericsson once again, but only because I finally found one that actually looked attractive, so now I have a phone that ticks all the boxes!

Looks & Features
============
I am not going to list all the features here - I don't think its really necessary, if you have had a mobile phone before you will know the main features that mobiles have such as alarms, calandar, WAP, Bluetooth, ringtones etc, and this phone is no exception. I will mention the more interesting of its features. Just to mention this phone has a fitness application with a pedometer - but I can't really comment on this as I haven't used it - yet!

This phone is available in other colours but I have chosen a very girly pink - mainly as I have mentioned, my last two have been quite "blokey" and black and I fancied a change! The phone is a slide phone, the numbered buttons are available for use once you slide the phone up whilst the scroll/play/clear/back buttons are on the front under a nice sized screen.

This phone is also a lovely handy size - it made a great change from the length and thickness of my last phone, the K810i . The size is 99x 47 x 14mm. Its also great because if you are reading messages, answering a call, and doing pretty much anything other than dialling a number or typing a text as you can keep it at its miniature size and do not need to slide the phone up. A small thing, but I quite like that feature, it makes it nice and neat!

As I usually cycle to work, I like having my music on my phone to stop the need of having a separate MP3 player, and it means that I can hear calls coming through and answer them immediately without having to get off my bike and rifle through my backpack. With this, I have everything in one place. So the music feature on a mobile is the biggest draw for me. I wasn't disappointed with this phone as like previous Ericssons, it has an excellent music feature. Like the other models, the W580i is a walkman phone and like the model before it, comes with the software to upload all your favourite tracks. Which isn't difficult to do at all. An added bonus with this phone over my last one is the "shake and shuffle" function which allows you to change tracks with just a flick of the wrist!

Also important in my phone is a radio function which this has. However, my negative of this is that it took me a long time to find out how to connect to the radio - to find your music tracks on this phone is very easy, but connecting to the radio was not so simple, and it took me quick look through the manual to find out where abouts I could find this!

Negatives & My overall thoughts
=======================
I have had this phone for a week now and overall I am not let down by this model. It has all that I wanted in a mobile, a decent (ish) camera at 2.0 mega pixels (my last phone was 3.2 so the camera quality, inevitably is not as good, but then I don't really want my mobile for taking top quality photos anyway so I am not too bothered!) It has a girly looking look - you can also change the colour of the lights which also appeals to my girly side! Its sleek and easy to fit in my pocket (whereas my last phone just looked ridiculous and also inched its way out of my jeans, sometimes I felt like I had bought a mobile from back in the 1980's it was so bulky!) and I can have all my music in one place without the need to buy an MP3 player and take up more room in my pockets when its not necessary.

The drawbacks are few but there are a few flaws that seemed to have been overlooked in the making. I had difficulty in putting the sim card in to the back of the phone. On this model, it is located inside the battery cover and its awkward to put in. Worse than this, its VERY difficult to take it out. I attempted this once and it took me a good 10 minutes to assert the right pressure for the sim card to be released. This is awkward, and I did think I would have to send the phone back within the first couple of hours but with a lot of fiddling about and trying to use tweezers to grab at it, I finally managed to get it out (and then put it back in again later, hopefully I won't have any need to take it out again anytime soon!)

This isn't the only problem with the back of the phone. The back cover also has a silly design and the battery cover is hard to take on and off. At the back of the phone at the bottom, its is slightly curved upwards which means unlike most Ericssons you cannot simply slide the phone back on and off, you have to try and insert it at an angle (or at least that's what I did!) and try and push it in to place without snapping the back altogether. Taking the cover off the phone is just as difficult, every time I tried to push and slide it off, all I managed to do was to slide the phone open and not get anywhere with the back cover because of the slight curve at the bottom. The instruction booklet was not help at all, so I turned to trusty Google to see if there were any answers. I wasn't too surprised to see that a lot of people also had the same problem. There is a knack to it however, but this design could definitely be improved on.

My only other issue (except from the struggle to find the radio function!) is getting used to the buttons, although this is purely because they aren't what I am used to. On my old Ericsson, the buttons were raised so it was easy to press. These buttons are not only a bit hard to get to because they are flat and set into the recess of the slide phone, but are also quite small. Quite often I've pressed the wrong button by mistake - and I don't have fat fingers! I have got used to this over the last week though and it is no longer an issue.

I also think that eventually I will have a problem with the earphones. I personally love the earphones that are given with the phone (these ones are white rather than black) because the earbuds fit inside my ear. However, because I have these in when Im cycling and the phone sits in my pocket, I often find that after a couple of months the sound goes in one ear. I think this probably has to do with the fact that to the wire gets bent and the connection is lost, so no doubt that is my fault for the way it sits in my pocket rather than a design fault!

Overall, I think this is an excellent phone if you are after a phone that plays your favourite tunes. Of course there are more fancy models on the market, but I will always stick to Ericssons like these - they have easy to use functions, a clear screen and most of all, excellent music features. Despite the few problems I mentioned, this is the best Ericsson I have had so far - the one problem I had with my Ericssons before was that I found them quite ugly, bulky looking phones. This one has changed my mind!

Summary: It suits my needs perfectly and I have finally found a pretty Ericsson!

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Sound quality:
Variety of features: