Sony Ericsson W580i Walkman (AT&T)

I love Sony Ericsson Phones. They have so many features on them that are actually useful. Plus they're durable as all hell. I had my w810i for years and kicked it around, dropped it, smacked it into walls and yet it kept playing. They're not overly bulky but I definately think they can work on that. The W580i slide mechanism is pretty nice. Although it does feel a bit awkward to use it. I wonder if that's why they made it this weird curved shape for better grip?

Anyway, some very minor things I don't like about this phone are the inability to set an mp3 as a ringtone. I found that they only way I can do this is to get an mp3 editor and keep the file under 600kb . So you can only have a small snip of a song instead of the whole thing. The problem with this is if you want a lot of ringtones, they're all stored in the same places with your regular mp3's so if you have the walkman function playing on "Play all", it will play the ringtones as well. That's annoying. They really need to let you manage the files from the phone and not just on the computer. Plus if you try and put files on this phone without the supplied software, it screws up the phone. Pretty darn annoying.

Another thing that is kind of strange about the phone is the charging connection pretty much sucks. If you don't have it on just right, it doesn't charge. You're stuck fiddling with it until it says "Charging" then you have to put it down delicately to not lose that connection, being careful not to look at it crosseyed or breathe on it wrong because it may jiggle lose and not charge. Yes I've missed work because I thought my phone was charging and it ended up dying mid night. My alarm clock is my phone so it's kind of annoying.

Other than this the only complaint I can make is the lack of phone holsters that you can get for this phone that let you open the phone with the holster still attached. If you're any form of a texter, it gets annoying to constantly be removing the phone from it's holster to reply. This is mostly due to the odd shape of this phone. If you have or have seen the phone you'll know what I'm talking about. I've heard complaints of how close together the buttons are for texting but i don't seem to have any problems with that whatsoever. One thing though is that the 1 2 3 buttons are pretty close to the top of the phone where it meets the sliding mechanism and it leaves the top buttons a little hard to push. I could see this being a problem for some of you guys that have the massive sausage fingers.

Other than these extremely small things I have to complain about, the phone works well. Maybe not as good reception as my w810i but nothing to complain about. They definately improved volume when talking on this phone over the w810i. This phone rings a bit louder as well which is great for all of us deaf people. I think the vibration function on this phone is weaker than previous Sony Ericsson phones in my past. But that's pretty much it. If you want a multimedia phone that you can take pictures, videos, play music, games, schedule things on your calenders and a ton of other random things (Like the built in pedometer which told me I walked 22 thousand steps at work which said is the equivalent of a 10.3 miles covered and gives calories burned!) This phone is quite amazing.