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Review: Sony Ericsson W580i

Form Basics Extras Video Wrap Up Comments 27

Music Camera Pictures / Video Browse / Customize Other

Browse

Sony Ericsson is one of the few manufacturers that includes an HTML capable browser in their phones. The W580 has a much improved version over past models. Visiting mobile formatted websites, whether WAP or XHTML is very fast. EDGE does not seem to affect the phone's speed and pages are drawn very quickly. When visiting desktop web pages, the browser does its best to reformat the page for the phone's screen, refomatting pages as a single column. You can view pages in portrait or landscape, and in either view you can choose to view them in a text-only mode.

The browser uses a tiny 1 pixel wide font that is not used anywhere else in the phone. The screen is so sharp that's not too difficult to read, however it would be a strain to read an entire New Yorker article in such a small font. In the views menu, there is a zoom option that increases font size while reformatting the page so that the text still fits in the width of the screen. I strongly suggest hopping up to 120% if you plan to read long articles. The browser saves your zoom preference across all sites you visit in a session.

Browser

home page

Customize

Like other Sony Ericsson phones, the W580 is completely customizable. You can select from one of the included themes to change the look of your home screen and menus or download one from Sony Ericsson or many other third party developers. Although they are included in the theme, you can also customize your wallpaper and ringtone with any file you want as well as customize the light effects.

You can customize shortcuts on both the D-pad and the shortcut menu.

File Management

Sony Ericsson has a file manager which lets you both access and modify any file on the phone or memory card. Not only does this include the usual array of pictures, movies, sounds and applications but also web pages - which you can download to the phone from the browser.

Sony Ericssons are one of the few phones that support universal mass storage mode when connected to computers over USB - this means that transferring files from Macs is just as easy as using a PC. Unfortunately the phone is hampered by a slow USB connection that makes transferring music a torturously long affair.

Customization

file manager

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Sony Ericsson W580 / S500

2" display 240 x 320 pixels
Memory Card Slot

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