March 21st, 2008 omo
Almost a month ago we upgraded our family AT&T plan for another two years. The four lines now are fitted with 1x LG Shine and 3x Sony Ericsson W580i. The shine is silver, and we got a pink SE along with two black ones.
If you didn’t know, my old phone was a SE W600i, which is the prototype, entry-level (except it’s lol not entry level price at the time) walkman phone. The fatal flaw to that phone wasn’t that no one likes swivel phones, but it had no memory expansion. Plus it was expensive for what it was.
Not sure it’s a good or a bad thing, but even if the SE phones are mostly locked in with the Sony Memory Stick(tm) format (which is more expensive than comparable SD micro stuff every other phone uses, and many cameras and whatever), the proprietary (lol not really) control of the Memory Stick enabled my W580i to support to up to 16gb of space. Compared to that, off-spec SD micro cards you can get from eBay or Verizon dealers only supports up to 4. And weirdly enough there are only a handful (and none that you can get with a carrier in the US) of phones can support the SDHC format (which goes up to 32gb on a SDHC micro). If you want to stay to standard spec (as off-spec SD micro cards can have compatibility problems) you’re limited to 2gb.
And 16gb is enough for most folks (even if it’s still a good $120 off eBay).
As a phone, both the W580 and W300 are similar, and they both get the job done. Compatibility between the two phones are high, and it was nice to be able to send my entire contact list via bluetooth to my new phone, with just a few key presses. The only real, notable difference between the two, I’d say, is that AT&T locked the W580i to a max of 300kb (or so) file size for any music you want to use as a ring tone. Not so on the W300.
As a video media player, you can actually play back mpeg-4 encodes with this phone, provided using the gp3 format (so use Super or something to convert your xvid or h264 video from AVI/MKV). There may be tweaks or hacks or a 3rd party solution to it, but the playback software for video is sorely lacking, and you cannot seek or even pause the video; and when you play back in landscape mode, you cannot remove the seek bar or the menu option. I guess it wasn’t meant to be (even if it’s capable hardware-wise).
In terms of quality, this phone definitely feels cheaper than my W600i. It’s lighter, which is good, but the keys are flimsier, and the outer shell is thinner. The screen covering is not as hard, either. SE phones, IMO, has better UI years ahead of what Motorola, Samsung or Nokia had to offer their customers. At least back in 2005. To that end the UI in the W600i was more or less the same as the one in W580i, with a few differences, mostly in the music playback software. The thing I miss the most from my old phone not found in the W580i was the lack of the spring-loaded “hold” trigger. It’s a little spring-loaded sliding switch on the side of the W300i which on being flicked, puts the phone on key lock. Like the W580 if you swivel the W300 it turns off key lock, but like slide phones, most of the time I don’t swivel or slide out the keys to use it, making locking/unlocking a little irritating. That switch was the most awesome hold/key lock thing I’ve seen on any pocket-sized electronics, hands down. I really miss it to see it go.
Still, the W580i made things up with features. First and foremost, it perfected the wireless walkman concept and fully converged it with the cell phone: Wireless stereo bluetooth, lots of space for music playback, sufficient UI support, and a large enough screen. The cellphone integration with the bluetooth stereo phones is great; when I get a call it will play the ring, but when I use the phone it won’t get confused with my microphone-less headphones and try to mix that up.
The down side about that is simply most people don’t have bluetooth enabled stereo headphones, and they’re really missing out on the convergence experience. Currently, stereo bluetooth headphones are expensive (and few are any good) and for casual users, not worth the step-up cost. A semi-passible set of headphones would run you $50 no problems, and that’s $50 more than what most people pay for their craptastic white iPod headphones.
Y’see, I’m not really an audiophile, but reason and logic dictates that where rubber meets the road, it’s where you want to make sure you’re “converting” the most of what you’ve got. What is lultastic is people who want high quality rips of music, but only to play back on an iPod with $10 headsets. That’s just a waste. So I use not-so-high quality (but just high enough) rips on A2DP with these nuts.
And these are some pretty darn good nuts. The iPod kit retails for $300, but since I don’t really have an iPod to myself I left the adapter (which is pretty small, by the way) alone and went for the headphone alone. It came in a very nice box that fits what you think $300 electronics should come in. There are some exchangable headphone tips and a carrying pouch, plus manuals (on a CD) and the charger cable.
Setting things up and pairing was easy (hold down the play/power button till it blinks). Charging only takes a couple hours. Controlling the playback from the headset is simple enough and it works. When you hold it down to turn it off it will also stop playback. The >>| and |<< keys just skips tracks, and does not fast forward or rewind a particular track; you have to use W580i’s control for that. The headphones also “go to sleep” after some time of inactivity and turns itself off.
The only drawback to the headphones–besides the way it looks–is that each time it’s playing something there’s a detectable amount of background “buzz.” It’s not loud enough to affect you, but it’s notable between when it’s not buzzing (such as when it’s inactive, but on) and when it is (such as there’s a silent part of the track). It’s most notable when you’re switching tracks, and the two tracks ends and starts with a lot of silence. Maybe it’s just how quiet it can be with these passive noise isolation in-ears.
Just for your information, my old setup was a pair of Shure E2C‘s, and those are pretty good for low-end (lol if $109 retail is low end) in-ears.
Like all in-ear drivers, bass response is weak on the Ety8s compared to even free iPod headphones (and, FWIW, the headphones that came with the W580i’s; but Sony tend to give you pretty good freebie headphones for their electronics). The treble response is there and it’s good, but clarity is not as great as my old Shure; however the low-mids are much more present and overall gives a richer sound. It also does isolation better, IMO.
As for the fit, I have a rather large head and the headphone cable went around my head just fine; the only thing that had to be adjusted was that I had to use a bigger earplug attachment for a more secure fit, as the cable will get caught on my skin or on my collar when I turn my head too much, and pulls one of the earbuds out. With a tighter fit that wasn’t a problem.
But not having to mess with wires was easily worth the additional cost I spent (which was well below MSRP, I assure you) on these. If you can get the kit without the iPod attachment and at a discount, go for it.
I’m happy about these purchases. The phone was cheap enough at this time of the year (as it’s near the end of the life cycle of these phones, I fear), and if you can get the headphones at a bargain price like I did, there’s no regret.
[edit: a few days later?] so my w580i has broken down. The problem started when the phone went into standby after keylocking it by the slider. It would be unresponsive and there was no way to power it off besides removing the battery. After forcing it to turn off, when pressing the on button it would keep on vibrating with nothing happening. We declared the phone dead and got it replaced. This phone was brand new, and less than 4 weeks old. Yeah, the quality of this phone is not the greatest.
Tags: cell phone, headphones, mp3, PMP
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