Sony Ericsson W580i Cell Phone Review - Audio Quality
For any phone, the most important feature is the quality of the audio sent and received during a phone call. If it fails in this most basic respect any additional features will likely be overlooked. So, we test phone's audio performance using industry standard professional equipment and software. To simulate the human head, torso, and ear we use a head and torso simulator (HATS), and to analyze the quality of the audio we use
SoundCheck, a high-end electroacoustic analysis package. For more information on our testing methods check out
this article on how we test.
Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.65)
The chart above shows the frequency response of sound received by the W580i during a call. This is a measure of how people on the other end of the call sound to you. The blue line represents the W580i's performance, while the red lines are the limits against which we test. The ideal phone would track right down the middle of our limits, and you can see above the W580i does not do this. Instead what we see is a trough right in the middle of the frequency range and a large peak right above it. What this means is that the midrange frequencies of the human voice will be suppressed, while the higher frequencies will be exaggerated. This means voices may sound rather thin and reedy, so the W580i gets a pretty low score in this test. It gets the lowest score among our comparison phones except for the Razr2, which did slightly worse.
| Cell Phone |
Sony Ericsson W580i |
Helio Fin (on Helio) |
Razr2 V9m (Sprint) (on Sprint) |
| Score |
7.65 |
9.33 |
7.48 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view) |
 |
 |
 |
Sound Send Frequency Response (6.17)
In this test we measure the quality of sound sent by the W580i. This is how you will sound to the person on the other end of the call. The chart above again tracks the W580i's performance with a blue line, while the two red lines identify the limits we test against. As you can see the W580i performed reasonably well across most frequencies, with only minor deviations from the limits. It fell off very quickly at the end, however. This means high voices may sound clipped. This deviation had a serious negative impact on the W580i's score.
| Cell Phone |
Sony Ericsson W580i |
Helio Fin (on Helio) |
Razr2 V9m (Sprint) (on Sprint) |
| Score |
6.17 |
8.25 |
7.16 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view) |
 |
 |
 |
Handset Side Tone (9.23)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that is piped back into your ear during a call. This is meant to allow you to judge how loud you are talking. If this is too low you will speak louder to compensate, with the opposite true if side tone is too high. The W580i's average side tone was 18.77 decibels, which is right around the 18 decibels we test against. Side tone is right where we want it.
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