SONY ERICSSON W580i: A cool way to call

Go vegetarian, get a pet, laugh always, with all your heart, and love deeply, with all you are. Yup, these are the principles that I try to live my life by.

After all, we have only one life to live — and yes, life is what we make it, right?

And then there are the gadgets — cellphones, that is. The philosophy changes a bit when it comes to cellphones — these non-negotiable, indispensable everyday must-haves that help keep us whole, in touch with the world and those we love and keep us sane, too.

When it comes to gadgets, cellphones in particular, I live by these rules. If I could only have one, then I make sure that it is easy to use, plays the perfect ringtones, stores photos of my three canine companions and keeps me in touch with the fave of my life. And, yes again, there can only be one fave.

The Sony Ericsson W580i is one such lovable and fave companion. It’s just great how the W580i has made loving and using the Sony Ericsson cellphones so much easier.

The SE W580i is part of the Walkman line-up, and it must have been made for the younger (or at least) young-at-heart folk. You know, the folk who lead active lives and are music aficionados addicted to communication.

Let’s begin with the look and feel of the W580i.

This young-style phone, as the company’s designers say, has an urban design style. It comes in a choice of two colors — style white and urban gray. Both have visual appeal.

The W580i measures up at 99 x 47 x 14 mm and weighs 94 grams. The matt-spangled plastic cover is great. The W580i’s spines are painted in black. Due to the bottom end’s curvy lines, the fast port has been moved to the right-hand side, so plugging in a headset is now a breeze. This slider zips open and closes smoothly with its spring mechanism. Although there is no thumb rest, its role has been taken on by the protruding navigation button. 

The display shows up to 262K colors at 240 x 320 pixel resolution, which allows accommodating up to eight text and three service lines for most applications. And when browsing webpages, or handling e-mails or text messages, you can cram more lines into the display by decreasing the font size.

The Walkman button is on the front face, although it doesn’t act as a music key in contrast to the prior models. The Walkman-esque navigation key is comfortable and easy to use. The numeric keys are made of plastic and mounted in horizontal rows. Serving decoration purposes are the insets between the buttons, reminiscent of nail heads, which look pretty quaint and appeal to most users, without provoking any negative feelings.

It is great that all the buttons are lit in white, which is easy to see in any lighting. Powered by a 900 mAh Li-Pol battery, SE W850i provides up to 350 hours of standby time and up to nine hours of talk time. The handset comes equipped with about 18 MB of user-manageable memory, as well as an M2 512 MB memory card. You can always swap cards on the go, as long as they don’t exceed 2 GB in size.

Go ahead walk (man)

The W580i has the following to offer: two modes (walking and running), adjustable values of distance, time, upper and lower bounds of speed. Personal data include age, sex, weight, and height — basically everything that is essential to evaluate the amount of calories spent. While running or walking, the screen reflects all information you can only dream of — elapsed time, covered distance, current speed, and the user is also at liberty to learn more on calories burnt and average lap time. To begin a new cycle, all acquired data may just be reset.  

The settings seem to be enough for an ordinary man, although sportsmen aren’t likely to find something of great interest in them. Yet the greatest function is the ability to set up the measurements individually, this is the way it works: if you know the length of the distance you are going to run, you can adjust the settings minutely after covering it, so all evaluations and data will be even more precise.

The W580i keeps counting steps throughout the day (can be turned off) — while at the standby screen the display features. At midnight all data get reset automatically and the whole thing is restarted.

The most significant change they have made is the personal trainer application that makes your workouts a more interesting affair. It is an add-on to the default pedometer functionality, which analyzes all the data the latter collects. In fact you can check out statistics on your workouts, total time, number of workouts, calories burnt, distance traveled.

Lights on

The phone’s side-plates retain LEDs that can generate various combinations of light effects and differ both in terms of color and rhythm. When the W580i is flicked open, all this looks more appealing, but these effects can be seen with the device zipped closed as well. The keys on the front flap swap backlighting in a similar fashion. Though you can’t pick or set up these effects, you can enjoy only those coming pre-installed with the handset.

Another really cool feature is the quality of the emoticons — they have become cuter and loads more attractive. Now, how can one not like that?

Ahhh, to live life and love a lot, that’s what makes life just wonderful. But to make sure that we stay healthy and in touch frequently, that’s what the W580i is made for.

Go ahead, turn vegetarian, be healthy and get a W580i trainer, too.     – Kathy Moran