EDIT: A better review of the s500i/w580
Bought a yellow s500i and so far its been an pleasant journey with the phone.
Let us look at it in a deeper sense of things.
MULTIMEDIA ( AUDIO ) ( Rating : 4 out of 5 )
With Walkman 2.0, all I see is additional navigation and cosmetic changes.
Nothing to brag about since the first edition of Walkman. Mega Bass is here
as usual to pump beats into ur ears. Its eye candy with visualizations included
with the walkman. However, so far there is only 3 visualizations and no, they
do not follow to the beat of your music. Quality of the music is amazing, with
stereo widening, you'll come close to actually listening to it live. On the sad
part, you don't get more advanced playback controls such as playback speed,
etc. Support for WMA and album art somehow makes up for that.
MULTIMEDIA ( VIDEO ) ( Rating : 2 out of 5 )
This is a big disappointment of the model. Fullscreen playback of MP4 files
and the ability to size down resolutions larger than 320x240 is great, but there
is no control over the playback of videos which renders watching videos over a
minute useless. Also note that the encoding of videos leaves a lot to be
desired as there are slight artifacts appearing randomly, jagged edges and lag.
Videos are a NO NO for this phone.
THEMES ( Rating : 4 out of 5 )
Support for Flash lite ver1.1 is good, but then again it should be a custom for
phones nowadays. Default themes are the best so far ranging from the time
sensitive themes like s500i's to the eye candy themes with walkman2 equalizers
on the standby screen from w580's. Nice? yes. Boring? soon.
CAMERA ( Rating 1 out of 5 )
Blur, watermark effects, high noise, under exposure. Need I say more?
NO, the night mode is useless. And NO, no zoom on 2mpix mode.
Owh yeah, no autofocus but it seems like this camera don't need it at all
with the medicore output quality. Sony did not even bother to include a
small mirror for self shots. :(
DESIGN & STYLE ( Rating : 3.5 out of 5 )
Slim slider phone. Quite the robust build, steady and firm on the hands.
Keypad lights aren't that bright and there are no effects there. Light effects
on the side of the phone are cool, but nothing you can set except for incoming
calls. Some themes will influence the color of the side light. D-pad key paint
will come off from usage. Screen size is kind of small for a 240x320 phone,
the upcoming w910 has perfect screen size :)
Owh, s500i green/black users might face broken keypads.
JAVA ( Rating : 4 out of 5 )
For 3D gaming, the performance is above average if the developers do not slack
on their optimization. Games that come to mind would be products from Fishlabs.
Bloover and BT info will keep you busy on trying to mess with other people's
phone, although those exploits have been fixed, its still fun if someone allows
access :)
Other worthy mentions would be Opera Mini 4, IM+ or Windows Live Messenger.
If you're planning to do administration with this phone, java programs for SSH
and remote desktop is available although methods of connection is limited since
we do not have WiFi.
MOVING ON
If you have a s500i, simply flash w580 main to it and voila! you have a walkman
phone. Transfer visualizations and walkman skins from the w580 extracted FS
to your FS and your walkman is fully setup to go. Get all the flash themes from
all SE 240x320 phones and slap it into your phone. :)
And try to mod the cam driver :)
