If we take a closer look at possible analogue devices of a given model in other segments, an interesting conclusion is about to surface. The first twin models issued by SE were K750i and W800i, the former primarily being a camera phone and the latter a music phone. Then SE dropped the new trend for a long period of time, the music Walkman and camera Cyber-shot product lines came to diverge as different series with emphasized priority features (during the era of K800i and W850i), but some time later symmetrically designed products were introduced into the series again. The two devices observed in this revies, the S500i and W580i may be considered twins in form factor, functionality and the majority of specs, the only principal difference comprising the market niche, positioning, colouring and materials and bundling. This makes little difference since the two are technically the same device but if we look back into history, the gap that separates these from later allegedly 'symmetrical' solutions is rather significant.

It's obvious that SonyEricsson W580i is a notable expansion to the music phone series, it's very likely to have been designed right after the W550i model, sharing in common a comparable market niche and functionality. W550i was approximately up to the same level with W580 when the latter hit the shelf - both on their respective release dates were mid-end, highly functional yet not outstanding models. W580i by no means can be called a simplified W850i, the latter had long held the leadining position in the Walkman series and as of now it's going to yield its position to a newer model. Looking into the recent past we would note that W550i never was popular on the mass market, the sales were rather low and the device soon was out of production and phased out. The reason for this is likely to have been the high price that could be compared with that of the top W800i model, and the not-so-popular form factor, swivel. W580i keeps a more traditional design, its form factor is slider, but the whole concept, functionality and basic features included, appears to be the same for both.

S500i is a turning point in SonyEricsson's newer design solutions, a slim image slider marketed largely towards female audiences, it appears to have no direct precursor. At the same time, both devices have so much in common that this likeness can not be ignored.

Besides a few differences on the feature list including some specific interface and control functions as well as the preinstalled software package, the two phones virtually present the same hardware solution, so the most part of review devoted to hardware specs and functionality will be the same for both. To give the potentional buyer a false impression of the two models being independently designed solutions, the manufacturer used different materials and colouring for the casing but that doesn't help mup to conceal the striking resemblance.

Design and build

SonyEricsson S500i and W580i are sliders, the dimensions are rather compact - some mere 99x47x14 and weighs only 94 g. The slimness only adds to the overall feel, slim sliders prevailing on the market since recently in this class.

The slight curving of the casing at the bottom part doesn't pose any practical inconvenience though it might seem otherwise. The small ledge of the casing hosts the speaker mic, this detail is no more than a picturesque element.

The slider mechanism is well-built, the two parts of the phone slide smoothly but most copies of the two models have a distinct backlash. There's a noticeable gap between the parts and the slider rails are clearly visible as well. That doesn't make the construction unreliable but neither it does any credit to SE designers and looks cheap in comparison with Samsung sliders that have almost no play between parts. The build quality is critical for the top phone models and especially for those positioned as image ones.

The quality of materials also contributes to the general bad impression on this front. The white and gray color variants of SE W580i has an above average quality, but the yellow one fails to meet the requirements to fit its market niche and positioning. However this vice is common among other major brands as well.

The plastic used in S500i has a homogenous surface with a matte dim gloss in the yellow variant or glossy black in the black variant. The latter appears to have a richer colour though it also more exposed to grease and fingerprints. Besides the officially released yellow and greenish black variants the S500i has also purple and cream white incarnations that will presumably be officially announced later. No other color solutions is known to exist for W580i but if SE release a black variant that will be quite expected.
Both models screech if squeezed in the hand, the culprit appears to be the battery cover. No separate holder like in W910i is provided.

Briefly speaking of W910i it's interesting to note that the new flagship of the Walkman series utilizes some of the existing design elements of W580i/S500i but sports a way more appealing design and an incomparable build and material quality. More details on the novelty gadget will come in a future review.

The controls layout is quite typical of any slider, a modestly sized display is neighboured by the navigation block, it looks slightly different for each of the two models, but on the whole the arrangement of control elements is very similar. The large navigation button is easy to handle, in W580i it has a full chrome coating. The play and winding symbols are written on it. The quality of coating does not raise any suspicion, but it might degrade over long periods of time. The polyphonic speaker is located below the navigation button; the dots on the plastic that we see in S500 is just some sort of eye candy. Such location of the speaker doesn't give any reasons for objection, the sound volume is high enough in most situations.

The controls include a standard set of keys common to most SE phones: two context button the Back and Delete keys, the Active Menu and Browser/Player buttons. The two navigation buttons are equally uncomfortable for both devices. In S500i it's thin chrome-coated bands, in W580 those are combined with the rest of the keys and look like two-position half-round buttons with rather loq feedback. Ergonomics is rather a personal matter, but frankly speaking the controls block could use a bit of a more user friendly design.

The side edges of both handsets are almost free of control elements, the only exception being the chrome-coated two-positioned button of volume control on the left edge of the casing.

The latest SE's devices have their interface slot on the side edge which doesn't do any good to the ergonimics. The only good thing about it is that unlike the candy bar phones by the same manufacturer the Fast-port is located not on the same level as the keypad, so a plugged headset wire does not interfere with text input but still causes discomfort when you carry the phone in the pocket.

The upper edge hosts the memory expansion slot suited for M2-type (Memory Stick Micro) cards protected by a plastic plug. The phone supports hot swapping for memory cards. The sales package includes a 512 Mb card for W580i and a mere 64 Mb card for S500i. The profile switch button if found nearby.

The lower edge hosts the speaker mic and the lace holder. The battery of both SonyEricsson S500i and W580i is of Li-POL, BST-38 type and has a capacity of 930 mAh. In fact that stands for approximately three days of moderately extensive usage and that's quite a good result. When it comes to battery lifes, Sony Ericsson phones have a high reputation for being able to survive without recharging for longer periods of time. Tests involving continuous mp3 playback yielded a result of approximately 17 hours of battery life, S500i managed to stay longer for 20-30 minutes than the W580i (in the Flight Mode).

While unfolded, the design of the bottom surface of the slider depends on its model and color version as well, the yellow S500i had a silver overlay made from anodized aluminium having a flowered pattern, the black one had a green overlay to match the keypad, the respective colors for the W580i are orange and blue. The solution looks elegant and surely deservers attention. By the way, the first phone to ever feature a bottom surface engraving was Nokia 7370. This approach to design looks much more appealing than plain plastic coating with exposed screw heads. However the slider mechanism tends to leave two lengthwise scratches on the metal coating over time. It's hard to tell whever it's supposed to be a mere side effect or some sort of abnormality, but in reality that's not as annoying as it may sound. The scratches are hardly noticeable. The embedded 2-Mpix camera module is located nearby, it's hidden within the casing while the handset is folded.

The screens of SE S500i and W580i are virtually the same, utilizing a QVGA TFT matrix with a 2'' diagonal (31x41 mm) with a color depth of 262,000 colors. The display is one of the best screens currently present on the merket, the image quality is surprisingly high. The display makes a good match for SE K800i, W850i, Nokia 6300 and so on. Due to its small size, pixelization is almost unnoticeable. Both phones have their displays slightly countersunk, the protective glass is rather thin and the screen gets overrun with ripples if you press on it hard enough, but on the whole we can't call the screen protection insufficient or ineffective.

The final word on design would be that the both devices look good, the design combines compact size, intriguing color solutions, but the harmony is shattered by the mediocre material and build quality because of the inconsistency between those and the positioned market niche.

Keypad

The keypad should be taken as a separate matter for consideration because of the very specific problem that should be cast a spotlight at - the keys tend to crack after a few days of usage. Let's dwell deeper into the problem. It's not a secret that the first variant of SonyEricsson S500i that was released to the market was the greenish black variant, but after numerous customer complaints and a rush of merchandise returns the manufacturer publicly admitted the fault and issued a service bulletin stating that every person experiencing such problems with their newly bought SE phones should be granted a free keypad replacement at the service centres. Also there was an announcement that this problem was only found with the green variant of S500i due to an unexpected chemical reaction between the plastic of buttons and the paint that covered it.

Let's try to understand the cause of incident and how serious the threat might be. From the technical point the keypads of both phones are same and seem to be a kind of a standard cell phone keyboard. That is really so, a vast number of cell phone keypads utilizes similarly built keypads. The base plate of the keypad is stylized to resemble metal, its surface is given a unique feel, but in fact it's made of a thin kind of plastic that is prone to bending. It's coated with paint - green, silver, white or dark gray respectively for different color solutions. The base plate covers a layer of sticky substance that conjoins a number of silicone pads that support the buttons. The glue between the pads and the buttons is only placed at the very centre point of each button, that means that the brims of the buttons are left without support and thus are prone to bending as well or you could accidentally hook a button with the fingernail.

As it has been already mentioned, such approach to keypad design is widely distributed among many phones by other brands, one of the most typical example being Nokia 6120 Classic, but in that case there's no reason to worry because of the impressive thickness of plastic that the buttons are made of. The keys successfully resist physical damage, they are hard to break by pressing forcefully on the one of the brims even though only the centre of the button is glued to the silicone pad, while the S500i and W580i can't boast a material quality that would keep the buttons from breaking, the plastic is unfortunately too thin and prone to bending.

It's easy to guess the possible outcome. If you push the buttons precisely on the center, they are not going to break. But that rarely happens in real life, so pressing the buttons on the brims will eventually cause them to bend and break. All color variants of the two phones are plagued by this issue, so Sony Ericsson's tales about a chemical reaction looks like a lame and very cheap excuse. Perhaps there's something to it and this reaction does exist, contributing to the destructive process, but the principal factor that actually causes button breaking is the quality of plastic.

Why is the greenish black S500i has a bad reputation of the most defective variant of the series? The reason for this should be first looked for in its early release, but another idea comes to mind as well: the button coating of the green S500i server as a pretty good background for the cracks to become visible against. Our example of an orange SE W580i the button cracks were mostly unnoticeable and only appeared while the button was pressed. We even had to press the keys with a ruler for the cracks to become visible in the photo. The silver coating of S500i buttons also did a good job concealing the cracks, but over the course of time the trouble will grow worse and worse so eventually you will end up at the door of the service centre asking for the keypad to be replaced. Don't be mislead with this falsely comforting way out, it's very costly to make changes to the production cycle so the manufacturer will keep providing you with lame keypads since now and forever.

That's the second case of Sony Ericsson having customer trouble because of freaky designer solutions. It's not just some plastic of a really low quality that cracks in no time, it's just the insufficient thickness of the buttons the makes them go that way. SonyEricsson W910i doesn't suffer from that because the thin plastic bands that the buttons are made of are evenly fixed over the whole surface so the keypad has no weak points where cracks could occur, it's quite safe to use.

Communications

The phones are fit for EGSM 900/1800/1900 networks, the 3rd generation is not supported.

The phones possess no IrDA, but quite expectedly there's Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR. It works equally fine both for the headset and the rest of possible ways. Judging by the data transfer speed, EDR is working incorrectly - the actual results weren't much different from K800i. We honestly hope this will be fixed in the future versions of firmware. The following profiles are supported:

Wire connection traditionally utilizes the brand interface. The manufacturer claims USB 2.0 support, but in practice the speed in significantly lower. Modem connection is also supported as well as Mass Storage and PictBridge.

Any mode can be selected from the corresponding menu. Mass Storage connection works quite adequatly, both disks were displaying the way they should - the phone itself and the memory card. The Sony Ericssom PC Suite application that comes with the phone allows for phone-PC synchronization.

W580i Personal Coach and Motion Sensor

SonyEricsson W580i is supplied with an embedded motion sensor which is used for switching songs in the player and, what is most interesting, allows for counting the distance you've walked and the number of steps you've made. There are to sports modes for that - Walking and Running, each having unique settings. The Running mode allows for setting the sprint distance in kilometers, the sprint time in minutes and an auto-pause after a number of rounds. Minimum and maximum sprint speed values are also adjustable. Either when a fixed number of rounds is over or after being manually stopped by the user the Mobile Coach displays the results:

This tab summarizes the results of the whole training session, detailed info on each round is available below. The motion sensor isn't ideal but functions fairly good. If you intend to use its capabilities in real-life training, it won't be a bad decision after all, the results are close to the real state of things.

Setting additional parameters is possible in the special Java application that processes your coaching results. Detailed stats including total coaching time, lifetime distance, time, number of steps and the average daily values thereof are shown in this application for each of the two modes. All the values can be viewed as 2D diagrams and gives you a pretty detailed picture of how well you have been doing during the day or on a monthly basis and analyze your overall progress.

Differend kind of medals (bronze, silver or gold) are distributed in each category depending on the total values of time, the amount of consumed energy, the number of steps made, the maximum speed and so one. The medals can be also given for winning a sports-themed quiz. This option is called trivia and consists of a number of ten-question series which require quickest possible answers (your score depends on the time it takes you to answer the questions).

Judging the device in regard of its sportive orientation we have come to the following verdict: being a seemingly limited solution, the Personal Couch is still practically useful and has every necessary function to plan your personal training schedule. The statistical values produced by the application appear to be close to life provided that you don't fool the mottion sensor purposely or accidentally, so you have to keep track of your actions and check the application mode every time you switch activities. The minor flaws include the absence of a special hand holder so you have either to keep it in the pocket or in its special case fixed on the person's arm during the training session, which will cause some measurement inaccuracy.

Professional sportsmen won't be interested in such functionality since they have much more accurate dedicated devices at their disposal, but that feature may come in handy for young people pursuing an active lifestyle. This kind of people is exactly the target audience the creators of SonyEricsson W580i are counting for.

User Interface

Both handsets are based on the traditional A100 utilized in the majority of Sony Ericsson phones. The updated A200 will serve as the base for newer models starting from K850i later in autumn, so A100 can't be called outdated yet. Considering that A100 is quite able to challenge the functionality of the S40 platform used in Nokia phones, it's one of the most advanced solutions on the European market so far.

Interface customization options include a number of themes to choose from as well as dynamical theme change depending on the time of day. This is sure to leave few people untouched. Any image or photo can be set as the background and an .svf animation is selectable to replace the default screensaver.

The standby mode shows a lot of information on the screen, the status line at the top of the screen shows the signal level, the battery charge level, unread message notices, missed call notices, Bluetooth status and so on. The size of the screen clock is customizable in the screen settings menu.

The main menu has a traditional SE appearance common for all the devices based on the A100 firmware platform. The traditional design includes four rows of vividly drawn animated icons though you can switch to a Flash-based theme as well, allowing for an interface overhaul. You are free to customize icon positions, size, animation, color and so on, standing for an infinity of possible variant. Shifting the selection from one icon to another can be accompanied by a vibro signal (depending on the theme settings). Three themes come preinstalled with S500i, two of them being Flash-based, and the third being a traditional one styled after the regular SE interface concept. W580 sports five preinstalled themes.

The menu can be rapidly navigated through with the numerical keys. Besides of vertically aligned menu items, some of the menus have horizontally aligned sheets (like in the File Manager of the Call Log) which can be activated by pressing the navigation button left and right.

The menu is well-organized and easy to use, the only minor flaw being the lack of possibility to change the menu item order while Nokia and Motorola offer this kind of functionality. For example, the shortcut to the rarely used PlayNow ringtone and music download service is a good candidate for a more practical replacement like an FM Tuner shortcut but you can't do that.

The quick menu has four tabs:

The first tab displays the events: reminders, calls and messages. The second one lists the currently running applications. It acts as a Java task manager allowing to switch between different Java applets. The user can simultaneously run a favourite game and chat in ICQ, switching between the two when necessary. Once an application is active (for example, someone is writing to you in his ICQ client) you can see that and switch just in time. Java multitasking is one of the strongest features of the A100 platform, and the competitors don't have any serious alternative solutions to offer. The third tab displays a list of user shorcuts. The fourth one contains a list of web bookmarks.

The Track ID service is exclusive to the W580i, being positioned as a purely musical solution, besides the actual lack of an FM tuner in S500i would make that service a bit useless (should there be any in S500i). This service allows for a recorded fragment of a song to be saved and sent to the web via GPRS. If a track is identified, the sender is forwarded an SMS reply providing info on the song title and the name of performer. That also means that you can purchase a copy of the song from the database. This service is sure to attract interest of the wide youth audience.

The lighting effects are among the most remarkable features of the device. As we have already mentioned while describing the appearance of the device, the two side edges have semi-transparent pieces covering the LED lights, one on each side. A vast variety of options for customizing the way the LED lights work is available in the corresponding menu. The user can switch between different modes and colors, the way the colors change and so one. In addition to the two side lights, the front panel backlighting also flickers but that neither depends on any settings nor can be customized by the user.

The LED lights can't be turned off which might possibly narrow the target audience, but anyway the lighting is beautiful - with a wide range of vivid and mild colors. It significantly contributes to the phone design. SonyEricsson engineers aren't the pioneers in the sphere of lighting effects, but in these days only SonyEricsson phone make use of such a rich lighting scheme, which in this case caters to the target audience.

The contacts book can keep up to 1000 records with 5 phone numbers per each: a home number, a mobile number, a work number, a fax number and a misc number. On adding a new number the user is asked to specify its type, every additional phone number can't be of the same type as any of the previous ones. To list all then numbers associated with a contact you don't have to open the contact properties every time, the numbers are easily browsed through by pressing the navigation button left and right. If several numbers are associated with a single contact, one of them can be set as the default number.

In addition to that, a contact may include a E-mail address, an IM number, a WWW address, a regular mail address, work position, organization, home and work address details and as well as the date of birth. The latter can be synchronized with the organizer so a preliminary notice will leave you with enough time to buy a present for you beloved grandmother. A misc text note can be added to any contact.

User groups are supported, but here comes a particular flaw - there's no way to associate a unique image or ringtone with a specified user group. At the same time, a contact can be individually given a unique logo or melody. Anything up to a custom voice record can be used as a ringtone.

Traditionally the list either shows either contacts stored in the phone memory or those from the SIM card, but never on the same list. That's quite unhandy. Either the SIM card contacts list or that one comprising the contacts stored in the phone memory can be set as the one displayed by default. There's also an option to force newly created contacts to be saved to SIM card memory by default unless specified otherwise. The phone-stored contacts book can be backed up in the SIM card memory. Unfortunately there's no blacklisting function, so you have to install a third-party Java application to add that capability. Contacts can be sorted either by Name or by Surname but there's no options for sorting by other contact parameter.

The voice dial function left us disappointed - SonyEricsson made use of an outdated technology that wasn't changed since the T610 model, which is not very convenient (up to 40 voice marks can be made). An example of a more successful solution might be a Motorola device supplied with a more useful function serving the same cause.

The call icon is large, PhotoID and VideoID services enjoy a sound implementation. Dial interface is notable for the large size of numerical symbols, anything is easily legible from a distance. Quick dial has standard implementation, numbers from 2 to 9 can be made shortcuts to eight different contacts.

The call log design is typical for a SonyEricsson phone. A common list is used for displaying received, dialed and missed calls. The navigation button allows to list through separate logs for each call type. In the common list, calls of different types have different icons.

Messaging

Sony Ericsson are known for implementing a very versatile and developed messaging service in all of their products, this being twice as true for the MMS implementation. Up to 1000 can be stored in the user memory (SIM card memory also available yet not included into this count). There's the RSS-feed support. You don't require a lot of settings to get it functioning: just specify the web address and its title. The rest of the service is quite in keeping with the standard A100 functionality. Upon creation of a new message the user is asked for its type, selecting from Text Message, Picture Message, Voice Message or E-mail.

The text input is notable for the quick symbol line showing the next one to appear. It's going to help anyone who's new to Sony Ericsson interface or doesn't send messages very often and has no habitual knowledge of the text input interface. The message length is limited to 1900 symbols, up to 8 text lines fall into the field of view. The Copy/Paste function is just as useful as it sounds, allowing for the whole text or some fragments to be selected and moved or copied. Only some Nokia products are known to have this functionality as well. The function is activated in the context menu, then you mark the beginning and the end of the fragment. The traditional T9 support is in its place along with templates and emoticons. There's also support for chatting.

The unread message reminder sound can be chosen out of the seven offered by the manufacturer; you can't use a custom sound. The options also include the 'deliverance affirmation query'. Turned on, this option also sends to the message recipient a query asking for delivery confirmation. It can prove useful for urgent messages where it's vital to know if the person is absolutely sure to have received the message.

The E-mail is rather good yet not ideal - the functionality covers all the basic needs but little besides that. You can control attachments, files that can't be read by the phone itself can be saved for further PC viewing. There's no support for handling Office files. E-mail messages can be sorted by size, date and time or by the message body itself.

The font size of the message is also customizable, it can be set to Small, Medium or Large. A fullscreen viewing option is present as well as copy/paste functionality, the set of functions is quite typical.

The following encoding standards are supported:

OTA	+
Push email Protocols	POP3 and IMAP4 IMAP Idle (IMAP4Rev1 extension) OMA Email Notification 1.0
Security	SSL/TLS, POPS/IMAPS and STARTTLS
Remote control	OMA Client Provisioning and Nokia Smart Messaging
HTML mail	Yes (Tagless)
Inline images	+
Message management	The latest 50 message headers or size-limited
ESMTP	+
Backrgound sending	+

Let's have a deeper view of MMS, since the A100 platform provides for a number of interesting multimedia solutions. To make an MMS attachment, you can select multimedia objects right from the camera (raw video/ image) or from the File Manager, Contacts, Calendar, Task, Note, Browser (vBookmark). The following audio formats are suppored:

As you see, that's quite fine for a mid-end handset. An image attached to the message can either keep its original size or be resized to 640x480, 320x240 or 120x160. Options also include message auto-downloading, reading and delivery notice. Messages can be limited to a specified size or a warning can be displayed once a message exceeds the limit.

PIM

Calendar can be viewed either by month or by day, the latter option includes displaying hour schedule of each day as well. There's also the quick jump option allowing to skip to a specified year, month and day. Reminders can be customized by setting type, duration, place and preliminary warning. If the corresponding option is activated, reminders will work even with the phone turned off. Recurring events are supported as well as auto-delete for expired events (older than a day or a week). You can perform searches in notes, reminders and events which is very comfortable.

Each day can be marked with a 'meeting' label for which the subject, the time of beginning and the duration parameters are set and a general description note. Tasklist is a very modestly functional feature, the only two types of tasks being actually a Task and a Telephone Call.

The Birthday line of any contact can be synchronized with the Personal Information Manager so you won't ever forget about your grandma's birthday because the preliminary reminder will get activated in advance, leaving you with enough time to take care of the presents. The reminder can be activated on the day of event, one day before or any number of days before as specified by the user.

The Alarm Clock can be either set to get activated only once or follow a user-defined schedule. A total of five alarm clocks are available to the user, so the waking-up capability of the phone by no means can be called negligible. Any ringtone including custom .mp3 files can be used for the alarm clock.

Notes, timer, stopwatch and the calculator are quite standard; nothing special to be discussed here. A Password Manager is available to the user, the title being completely self-explanatory. It helps to store all kinds of passwords.

SonyEricsson devices are well known to be traditionally successful on the multimedia front, supporting a wide range of media file formats. The phone supports MP4 (AAC, AAC+, eAAC+), MP3 (officially up to 192 Kbit/s, but our tests proved that the device could handle even higher bitrates), M4A, 3GPP (AAC,AMR), AMR-NB, AMR-WB, WAV, G-MIDI1, SP-MIDI, RealAudio 8, eMelody, iMelody, RHZ, XMF, WMA, MP4 video (picture MPEG4, sound: AAC or AMR), 3GPP (picture: MPEG4 or H.263, H.264, sound: 3gp, AAC or AMR), RealVideo 8, WMV ASF, Graphical JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, SVG, WBMP. In other words, almost any media format used in mobile devices is supported by this model.

Let's take a more detailed consideration of the audio playback features, because here lies a certain difference between the two variants of the base platform. The S500i makes use of a 1st generation player that has undergone few to none changes since the times of K750i. That's quite a plain but yet efficient solution (while K850i uses a 3rd generation player). Background mode, sorting, playlists and equalizer are in their places. The equalizer has five bands, equalizer presets are customizable though you can't save user-made presets which sounds at least strange. The overall player design is quite traditional and even somewhat outdated, yielding to a variety of more advanced solutions found in newer Nokia and Samsung phones.

SonyEricsson W580i comes with a Walkman 2.0 player which is way more advanced and utilizes a user friendly and nicely designed interface as compared to the 'non-musical' S500i. The principal difference consists in the presence of the trademark MegaBass function and some particular traits in interface design. The controls are very comfortable, settings include repeat, reshuffle, random song autoselect, sorting by performer, genre and extended stereo (though the latter option has almost no perceptible effect on the quality of sound). Progressive rewind is quite expectedly supported. The current song info tab has an eye catching, nice design.

Visualisation settings include displaying album cover (though its size is too small) or one of the following options: Walkman Lines, Album Lines, Inner twirl. There are two extra color schemes available in addition to the default black one - orange and white, though switching between them only affects the background and font color. Nothing very impressive considering that latest Nokia phones support full-blown player skins which look much more intriguing.

Both handsets support Flight Mode, although SIM card is required to be kept in the phone which is a weak point considering W580i's positioning as a music phone. It takes for about 17 hours for a continuous mp3 cycle to waste a full battery charge for both models (with FM turned off). Such result is quite all right, the device has no rivals in its class as far as maximum playtime is concerned.

The embedded motion sensor is quite an interesting feature, however its functionality is a bit inferior to what we have in the case of the more advanced W910i model. Its only principal function here is to change the current song with a simple shake of the hand while W910i lets to scroll through the playlist back and forth and perform a number of other actions with different moves. The function still looks appealing, it's sure to attract people who prize original solutions, but in pratice it won't find a wide usage as often innovative feats do.

Sound quality is virtually the same with both device, the only difference being the bundling. S500i disposes a common headsetthat only allows for an average sound quality while W580i comes with an advanced HPM-70 headset with an adaptor allowing for 3rd party headsets and earphones to be plugged. In both cases the headset only has an Answer button, no player controls like rewind/pause/play are provided for. The sound volume is sufficient for most situations save probably for very noisy places, which is actually a weak point inherent to many SE products - not a major one but still we have to point it out. The sound quality is not ideal but might be next to it - the Walkman series traditionally provides for a steady above-than-decent sound quality, quite comparable to latest Nokias, but unfortunately as high as most recently released Samsung devices. In addition to providing the best sound, Samsung have also acquired a reputation of the loudest phones, so Nokia and SE can hardly challenge the Koreans on the front of sound reproduction.

The embedded FM tuner is present in W580i but isn't found in S500i due to SonyEricsson's decision to split their product portfolio into a musical and non-musical categories. The sound volume in the FM mode is very decent, it's a bit higher than in the MP3 mode. RDS and autosearch are supported.

The three standard applications PhotoDJ, VideoDJ and MusicDJ provide the user with a limited capability to edit images, video clips and music files. The image editor includes the following options:

The two other editors aren't of much interest, the music editor has a limited midi editing capability and the video editor can be used to create short clips with the help of a few standard objects. In fact, few people will ever get to use it.

The Track ID service is present in the W580i model (primarily because it's positioned as a music phone, besides that the lack of a FM-tuner in S500i also makes such functionality redundant for that phone). This service allows you to record part of a song and send it to the Web via GPRS. The information about the song title and the name of its performer (if any is available) is forwarded back to the user as an SMS. A successfully identified song means that it's present in the database and you can purchase it. This service will surely attract attention of the youth audience.

The voice recorder can record phone talks as well, but the user has to activate it in the menu once a talk has begun. The maximum record length is only limited by the amount of available memory.

Preinstalled Software

Besides the above mentioned application the phone disposes a number of extra preinstalled software, for example a good web browser that supports the SmartFit technology allowing for optimal text and graphical object arrangement so that the user can read large pages transformed into columns that fit the mobile phone screen. There's an option to save images from web pages to the memory and another one to change the screen aspect to landscape. Zoom is available. However, the best option for active internet users will remain the OperaMini mobile browser.

Lumines Block Challenge looks an interesting challenge among the rest of the preinstalled games package, being an improved Tetris spinoff. Other Other hits are the mobile adaptation of Electronic Arts' bestseller game, Sims 2 (available on W580i only), and Brain Juice for S500i.

Remote control software provides the mobile system with limited remote control over PC applications, however this requires special software to be installed on the PC as well. This software comes on the software disc included into the sales package. The rest of presinstalled software includes Music Mate 2 and Walk Around The World for W580i and Audible, AccuWeather for S500i. The latter application is used for getting instant weather forecasts and Audible lets the user play audio books and TV program records. The software has a friendly interface, however its functionality is only limited to the database contents of www.audible.com while 3rd party Java applications offer the same functionality at the same time bearing no content limits.