w580i at&t

Have only had it since wednesday. Not a full review but mainly what I like about this phone so far !!! And there is alot to like !

RF- I am in a rural area and have not had dropped calls at all.
Seems to be alot faster switching from tower to tower. My past phones (nokia, samsung, and yeah RAZR V3 ( am I allowed to say RAZR in here? :)) all had trouble holding onto a signal.
What impresses me the most is that the call quality is unreal. Sounds better than my land line !!! The callers on the other end have a hard time believing that I am using a cell phone !!! From the very first call I made I had instantly noticed that all of the background noise was totally gone. I am serious. I mean there was no noise at all, crystal clear.. This blew me away as I have moved recently and was ready to switch carriers. My previous phones would cut in and out along with the voices warbling, echoing and when they lost a signal it would take forever to regain it. This w580i even with just one bar lit sounds just as good as when I have 5 full bars..
Earpiece volume is good enough driving with both windows open.
Speakerphone could be a bit louder. Not very usable in a outdoor enviroment. And I hate bluetooth so I cannot comment on that..Just don't like the idea of having a piece of aluminum sticking out of my ear >)))
Walkman- again, crystal clear sound and absolutely no hiss at all. When it changes from song to song even at full volume you could not even tell it is on! The volume could be just a tad louder. The controls work great. No need to even open up the phone.
I cannot comment on the supplied headphones cause I am using my own with the included adapter.
The supplied USB cable makes it simple to just drag and drop all of your mp3's right from the explorer window. How easy is that..
I even downloaded (free) wavepad editor so I can make all of the mp3 ringtones that I want!!
Screen- let me put it this way, the only cell so far that I can even see in the sunlight. Just make sure you use the origional theme (walkman) that comes with the phone. I downloaded some other themes but noticed right away that it really hurt visibility in the direct sunlight.
And the screen is razor sharp! I hope I am not sounding like a salesman for this phone, but I am telling you that I am really impressed so far !! I freaking really like this phone alot so far. I have never been able to say that before about any cell that I have owned..
This is getting long so I will do the camera and EDGE and that stuff at a later date. I haven't used any of that enough yet to do a proper review.

regards dan

Hello again.. OK had the phone now for almost a month.. Let's start w/the camera..
Camera: not to bad in a pinch, but if you want a better camera go for the k series phones.. I personally just use my 6mp canon.
And don't even bother trying to take pics in low lighting, they are worthless no matter what settings I used.. Will definitel try some new cam drivers when they become available for this phone. No flash or auto focus either... No zoom in 1 or 2 meg pix res either....that really sucks... I got this phone more for the walkman than the camera...

Walkman:not to bad stock but I loaded some peter acoustics and the sound now from the stock hpm70 headphones is astounding. Mega bass is also very good even at high levels. I would match this sound against any Ipod out there.
I only have around 200 songs loaded. The only problem that I have had is that when the player is playing for awhile and I go to hit the walkman button it takes awhile for the the screen to come back on.. About 20 seconds.. Not a real big deal since I just let them usually play through most of the time. (this is intermittent)
Uploading songs using a sandisk 1 gig is pretty slow through Myexplorer. Between 179 and 300 KB/sec. Took me about 35 min to upload around 150 songs. I am wondering if a card reader would be alot faster ??? Have the latest USB drivers loaded also..
Fitness Prog.. Great for me as I do alot of walking. Can even estimate how many calories you have burned ! Distance, hiow many steps etc etc. I love this feature.
Debranding: very simple using XS++.. Took me about 15 minutes...
Internet: not bad at all since debranded, I have edge service and as long as you disable pictures and the like from loading it works great for reading, keeping track of my stocks, sending e-mail, google maps, etc etc. Was kind of a pain though after debranding getting the sms, e-mail, and internet settings back. There seems to be 2 links to the SE site. The one didn't have the proper carrier listed. I stumbled upon another link in SE-NSE and it worked great listing my carrier. AT&T(formerly cingular wireless. The other site just listed AT&T.
Phone sound: what can I say??? Alot of folks commenting when they hear it ring, or if I use the speakerphone, play music through speaker (WOW that thing is loud) lol
Thanks to peter for his acoustics. Handset volume also extremely loud, never have to go past 3 bars. Can hear with both windows down in car w/no problem !! Can even use speakerphone now when driving w/windows open.
Keyboard:Have done alot of texting and e-mails and have no problem with the keys cracking. Very easy to use also. I have medium size hands and no problems pressing correct keys. Very well lit at night also..
Phone calls: read above, still the same, great RF and crystal clear! Better than all of my other phones when I am inside brick building..
Battery Cover: yeah it can be a real pain until you get the hang of it. I just put my fingernail on the sony emblem, give it a push and it comes right off now..
Build quality: Have had no problems yet, but the phone does feel alot more delicate than all of my previous phones. Guess only time will tell on this one. I am being alot more careful w/not trying to drop this phone.
Games:first phone that I can actually play games on. Screen resolution is razor sharp and have also had alot of good comments about that also..Also like I said above, you can actually see it in direct sunlight ! That is a first for me w/ any phone I've had
The bottom line for me and this is really just the tip of the iceburgh as to all of the feature this phone has !
Before I got this phone all I did was make calls, Now I can debrand it, load games, music, flash themes, walkman skins, load all kinds of files, internet apps, e-mail apps,
change startup and shutdown screen, edit customization files, etc etc. Bottom line...
I LOVE THIS PHONE...and the best part...Make and receive crystal clear Calls !!! I guess to sum it all up, This phone is alot of FUN !!!!

Regards Dan

I hope that the people buy these phone can use it more than 4 months, the repair about these phone is difficult, the design of these phone is bad, too many problems about these phone such as the speaker problem, the side light problem,etc

just wondering adam, what kinda problems are you talking about? what speaker problem, side light problem?

i just go this phone also. It kinda sucks that they limit the mp3 ringtone.

the grey color one has alot of problems from my experiences and the paint is peeling off from my grey color one

also i hope there isnt the problem like the s500 where the buttons eventually crack in half too

they siad something about that in a review i once read about it

i have that phone & it's great - well, if it's about SW side of the phone: display is great, mp3 player also, sound quality is astonishing... it's alo very light! - compared it with W610 - which should be only 1g heavier - but it doesn't feel so, W580 feels like a feather compared to W610

when we start to talk about it's firmness & build quality, well... it's completely new & it doesn't feel 2 sturdy under fingers, it feels like it's about to crank, & like it's very gentle. it's build quality concerns me a bit, because it doesn't feel like you can allow yourself to drop it

I just got this phone from AT&t too and the sound is amazing but i hate how at&t takes out features i originally in the phone but i guess all have to live with that. the camera is also amazing whenever i take pictures my friends are amazed by the quality the only bad part about the camera is it doesn't have flash but it is still good

The night mode on the camera isn't very good indeed...

I've had this phone for a while now... and I can tell you, it's a nice phone, really fun to have, but it's VERY DELICATE. As some of you may know, removing the rear battery cover is very difficult without alot of effort..... and because of this excessive effort damage can be caused to the "insides", this is what happened to me.... my right side light began turning on randomly which reduced my battery life to about 1 day.... then soon after the navigation keys began to lose their click....
to make a long story short, i took it back to rogers...... who then sent it back to sony.... who then kept it for a month... and then returned it to me fixed (finally) though it has been rebranded and some what battered and scratched.....

durability (2/5)
style (5/5)
walkman functionality (3/5) [still can't figure out how to order my tracks]
phone functionality (4/5) [way better signal then my old moto v551]
overall bang for the buck (3/5) [170 CAD + 3 year contract]
camera (3/5) [2mp is nice, but without alot of light everything looks really hazy]

I've noticed occasionally poor reception when the weather is cloudy.. the calls dont drop.. but they are extremely choppy and broken up

i have this phone aswell, compaired with two other phone i had (samsungs) the w580i has the best reception. This is an awesome phone!

The paint on the center four way button comes off.

I'm trying to replace it, but I don't know if that falls under warranty.

If I had known that it would flake, I would have been more careful with it.

My wife has had this phne now for a little over a month and she has dropped it several times, yet it still looks brand new. No chips, no dings, no scratches. I dont know how, but they seemed to have put some kind of protective coating on the phone or something, because it can take a beating and still look new.

The buttons are of my main concern because they seem like they wont be able to hold up to a heavy texter like my wife. I can just see that the buttons will start to wear out in 6 months and be cracked or broken before the year is up. Im keeping a close watch on it.

I am getting the 810i; my first sony phone, but I ran into alot of people who have problems with their sony phones. Hope this don't happen to mine.

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Originally Posted by shadster

I just got this phone from AT&t too and the sound is amazing but i hate how at&t takes out features i originally in the phone but i guess all have to live with that. the camera is also amazing whenever i take pictures my friends are amazed by the quality the only bad part about the camera is it doesn't have flash but it is still good

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debrand your phone! there are some good tutorials on these forums specifically for the w580i. Once it's debranded you can set any mp3 as a ringtone.

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Originally Posted by AdamNimrod

My wife has had this phne now for a little over a month and she has dropped it several times, yet it still looks brand new. No chips, no dings, no scratches. I dont know how, but they seemed to have put some kind of protective coating on the phone or something, because it can take a beating and still look new.

The buttons are of my main concern because they seem like they wont be able to hold up to a heavy texter like my wife. I can just see that the buttons will start to wear out in 6 months and be cracked or broken before the year is up. Im keeping a close watch on it.

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I am planning to get one pretty soon and am worried about the keypad problem.... not clear whether it is sorted or not... anyone with the phone have any idea??

yea, i'm still worried about my phone's keypad, there hasn't been any problems with mine, and i had mine for a several months, but i'll see

Uhhh... I have w580i side light problem. i.e. on the right side, the color match to the themes. on the left side, the color don't match, maybe the blue light is broken. I didn't break my phone, I think I dropped it 3 times (not from high). How can I fix my phone?

I have not had any problems with my keypad, phone is about 1 month old. One thing i did notice is the bottom part where it would say at&t (mine rogers) is kind of loose on one side.

Another thing is it seems the top slide part is lifted up more than it used to be... not sure but it would allow more dust and crap to get inside. I have not dropped my phone.

it's been almost 2 months since i got this phone for my wife and so far we are pleased with it. she dropped it once and honestly i can't find a scratch. we are debating rather or not to debrand it since i read that att crippled many phone features.

the bad part is that at&t button that takes you to internet....i can only figure out not to accidently go by keeping phone locked.

I got mine in Canada from Rogers. In terms of locking features, they're just as bad or worse than AT&T. With this phone, it's definitely worth it to unbrand it... it makes the phone so much more enjoyable.

I only have three qualms with the phone -- put in autofocus and a flash for the camera (if Samsung can put one in the U600, why can't Sony Ericsson?), make the keys better (I've sent it in twice now for keys cracking), and give it a standard headphone jack (the SE connector sticks out too wide, and is cumbersome).

their physical branding is really ugly >.<

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Originally Posted by carsncars

I got mine in Canada from Rogers. In terms of locking features, they're just as bad or worse than AT&T. With this phone, it's definitely worth it to unbrand it... it makes the phone so much more enjoyable.

I only have three qualms with the phone -- put in autofocus and a flash for the camera (if Samsung can put one in the U600, why can't Sony Ericsson?), make the keys better (I've sent it in twice now for keys cracking), and give it a standard headphone jack (the SE connector sticks out too wide, and is cumbersome).

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Rogers is WAY WORSE!!
They take out the data counter, they want you to overuse
They don't give out unlock codes, for any reason still no...
They're just robbers and pure evil!

I like the phone, but I hate how the EROM fails a little over a month of me using it. Not to mention I have tried various things to bring it back to life, but im still at square 1. Wotan - invaid login; XS++ - Stops after displays the protocol; SETools - CSloader wont work or something, error 29 - "its fatal" ??

i have been using it for a month now, debranded it the day it arrived. the att firmware sucks :( dont have any keys cracked yet!

Is it worth debranding the w580i and if so, what are the chances that I will break the phone while debranding? Thanks.

it is worth debranding, att locks many features like flash menu and other cool things abt the phn. as for breaking it , if you do everything correctly you will not damage it........

dude i have the phone and the side button isnt working anymore
i think its a software related issue though

interesting, i just got mine refurbished free from att last week and amazingly seems brand new. no problems whatsoever.