Sony Ericsson W580i Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Alfredo Padilla Published on September 24, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (12.82)
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 1.56 | 12.82 |
| Helio Fin | 3.98 | 5.03 |
| Razr2 V9m (Sprint) | 11.78 | 1.70 |
| Samsung Upstage | 6.54 | 3.06 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 2.04 | 9.80 |
| Samsung Blast | 2.61 | 7.66 |
Dedicated Music Controls (4.0)
The W580i's volume keys control music volume, and there is a dedicated Walkman button on the front of the phone that takes you to the music player. There are no other control keys, but this isn't an issue on the W580i because it launches the music player so quickly.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (7.8)
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The W580i does not support direct downloads of songs to your phone over the air. This is mostly due to the lack of support for this feature from AT&T. They are adding an online music store soon, but it isn't currently supported in the W580i.
Streaming (0.0)
The W580i did not support any of the streaming audio services we tried, including streaming MP3, WMA, or Real Audio. The Walkman player has a section for online channels, but none were loaded. The MobiRadio application was also included on the handset, and it comes with a seven-day free trial, but after that you are charged $8.99 per month for the service. We only award points free streaming audio support, so the W580i does not receive any points here.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The W580i does not include any software to download or organize your podcasts.
Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The W580i can be used with the included USB cable to easily move music on and off of the device. It is recognized by computers as a mass storage device, and you can either drag and drop your files or use software like Windows Media Player to easily synchronize playlists and music over to the phone. Many phones support this feature, but few ship with the USB cable necessary to support it like the W580i does. You can also download Disc2Phone, Sony Ericsson's software for managing synchronization here.
Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The W580i supports WMA, MP3, and AAC audio files. It also supports Microsoft's DRM protected music using PlaysForSure technology, so you can use it with music purchased from stores like Napster or Yahoo! Music. It doesn't support music purchased from the iTunes store.
Music Interruption (9.0)
The W580i handles calls during music playback very well. The music is immediately paused when the ringtone starts and resumes from the same spot when the call ends. We wish the music would fade out and in like on some phones, but otherwise were very happy with the functionality here.
Video
Video Software Access (5.85)
To see how easy it is to get a video playing on the W580i we timed how long it took to go from phone closed until a video played back. We repeated this test five times and took the average for our score. The W580i took an average of 3.42 seconds to get a video playing. This is a good score, but not great. It's much faster than the Razr2 or Upstage, but slower than the Blast and Chocolate and only slightly faster than the Fin. To watch a video on the W580i, go into the My Stuff section of the menu and choose videos from the list. Thankfully, pushing left on the d-pad while on the home screen takes you directly to My Stuff. Without this shortcut it takes a couple of seconds longer to get a video playing. | Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 3.42 | 5.85 |
| Helio Fin | 4.20 | 4.76 |
| Razr2 V9m (Sprint) | 11.8 | 1.69 |
| Samsung Upstage | 10.92 | 1.83 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 2.71 | 7.38 |
| Samsung Blast | 2.69 | 7.43 |
Video Controls (2.0)
The video player on the W580i is very simple. Basically, all you can do is play or stop a video. While a video is playing the left soft key is assigned to stop and the volume keys control volume, but that's about it.
Video Software & Organization (3.0)
Organizing videos on the W580i is fairly simple. Enter the video area of "My Stuff," where you are presented with a 3 x 3 grid of thumbnails. This is fairly standard for a regular phone, where videos are often organized as part of the album software. The W580i has a few little extras that raise it above the typical phone, though. First of all there's a search function. Using multi-tap, just spell out the title of a video and the program will jump right to it. Second, you can create your own folders, so even though playlists and categories aren't supported you do have the ability to slightly organize your videos. You can also sort your videos by things like name, date, type, or size, another feature you don't often see. You can also change the view between four presets, which aside from the 3 x 3 thumbnail view also gives you the option to view a 2 x 2 thumbnail, simple list, or thumbnail list. All these options are minor extras, but put together they create a slightly better experience than we've seen on most regular phones like the Razr2 and LG Chocolate VX8550. It's still very simple software, however, with no support for more advanced features like ratings.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
The W580i thankfully comes with a USB cable that allows you to connect the device to the computer and have it recognized as a mass storage device. This means you can use Windows Media Player to easily synchronize content with the phone. You can also download software from Sony Ericsson to automate this process a little more.
Video Formats (1.5)
Unlike most phones we review, the W580i did not support any of our 3GP encoded test files. It did handle our MP4 files fairly well, but had some trouble with our H264-encoded MP4 files. It was able to play some with problems and was completely unable to player others. We were rather disappointed by the dearth of support for video formats on the W580i.
Video DRM (0.0)
The W580i does not support any video DRM formats.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
We were happy to see the W580i was able to play back even our highest encoded test MP4 file without any hitches or problems, even in Full Screen mode.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The W580i does not support any direct video download services.
Video Streaming unscored
Because mobile video streaming standards are so disparate we do not score this section. We do, however, test out a few services to see if they work with the phone. The W580i was able to play streaming 3GP video from YouTube's mobile site, but was unable to play video from zoovision or windowsmedia.com.
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