The Sony Ericsson W580i White is a member of the Walkman family. The handset was launched to carter to the younger audience with an active lifestyle. In a way, the model shares much with the Sony Ericsson W710i, and has roughly the same positioning and target demographic. However it differers in its styling and form factor. While the Sony Ericsson W710i is a clamshell device, the latest Sony Ericsson W580i sports a sleek sliding action. Apart from the white solution, other current offerings includes Urban Grey and Boulevard Black solutions.

Built wise, the Sony Ericsson W580i looks pretty much same as another new model of a different series – the Sony Ericsson S500i. However, the latter is primarily a fashion solution and features diminished capabilities – both music and otherwise, when compared to this latest addition to the Walkman series. Front fascia of the handset is dominated by its large TFT based screen that can produce more than 262k colours across 240 x 320 pixels. Sliding open the Sony Ericsson W580i White reveals four rows of numeric keys in iconic orange colour.

Being a music solution, media playback capabilities of the Sony Ericsson W580i White are immense. Powered by the latest Walkman media player v2.0, the device produces the best of sounds by current standards. All premium Walkman features like TrackID, TrueBass, Graphic Equalizer finds their respective places. The handset’s internal memory pool is mere 12 Mb which is far from sufficient for a music solution. The company therefore are shipping a 512 Mb external memory card free with a standard kit. Sound output could be through standard pair of headset supplied with the phone, wireless stereo Bluetooth headsets or even on the built in speakers.

Other major inclusion in the handset’s feature list is its 2.0 megapixel digital camera with video recording skills. Quad band GSM connectivity, HSCSD, GPRS, EDGE, WAP2.0/xHTML browser, Bluetooth, USB – the Sony Ericsson W580i White has many ways to connect that you ever thought was possible with such a petite device as this.

By: Samuel Herrick