Mobile News and Phone Reviews

A cool-looking slide-design Walkman phone with funky lighting effects. It’s not the greatest Walkman phone ever (with limited memory capacity) and doesn’t have an exceptional camera, but it’s a good all-rounder and is one of the best lookers. We feel that it’s quite expensive for what you get.
The Sony Ericsson W580i is a Walkman phone in a slide design. It’s available in a choice of white, black or grey.

Physically, the W580i looks cool. It’s a nice slider, with a very usable 5-way navigation key. The keypad has sensibly-sized keys that light up in use and are easy to press. Dedicated keys are used to control the Walkman functions, so you can play music when the slide is closed. The screen is of good quality and can be viewed outdoors without too much trouble. Like the S500i, the W580i features very cool lighting effects and is a beautiful phone to look at and play with.

The W580i features a “shake control” - you flick your wrist when the music player is on and a random song is selected to play. Gimmicky but cool. Another gimmick is the built-in pedometer. It’s a useful feature if you do a lot of walking, but pedometers are cheap and readily available - do you really need one in your phone?

The main feature of the W580i (apart from making phone calls, of course!) is the music player. We’ve written about the quality of the Walkman music range many times on this site - take it from us, it’s good. The W580i has the new version 2.0, and is also equipped with an FM radio. A stereo headset is included in the sales package, and there’s also support for an optional Bluetooth stereo headset. The available memory is not generous - just 12 Mbytes built-in (enough for 3-4 songs) but the memory is expandable to 1 Gbyte (Memory Stick Micro™) or 4 Gbytes (Memory Stick PRO).

The phone also comes with a 2 megapixel camera with video recording capabilities, but this cannot compare with the autofocus-equipped cameras on the K800i or W610i.

With the release of the Sony Ericsson W580i, the Walkman phone range is beginning to look very crowded (we count 9 or 10 Walkman phones currently available). What does the W580i offer that the others don’t? Well, it’s a slider and has cool looks and lighting effects, so this could be its best selling point. The pedometer and shake control have been offered in phones previously and have never been popular. It’s actually very similar to the W850i slide phone, which is selling for a much lower price than the W580i and has the advantage of 3G too. With only minor improvements in the W580i, it makes the price of the W580i hard to justify. Is Sony Ericsson starting to get a little too greedy? Before buying, check out the W850i slider and the conventionally-designed W660i.

Features of the Sony Ericsson W580i include:

• 2 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom
• Video camera
• 3D Java games
• Display: 262,144-colour TFT LCD, 240 x 320 colours (2 inches)
• Music player (Walkman 2.0)
• FM radio
• Megabass™
• PlayNow™
• TrackID™
• Polyphonic ringtones & music tones
• Speakerphone
• Sound recorder
• Pedometer
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email
• Animated wallpaper
• Personal organiser functions
• Flight mode
• Memory: 12 Mbytes plus Memory Stick Micro™ support (up to 1 Gbyte)
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB mass storage
• WAP, EDGE
• Web browser, RSS feeds, picture blogging
• Vibration alert
• Size: 99 x 47 x 14 mm
• Weight: 94g
• Quadband (GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900)
• Talktime: 9 hours
• Battery standby: 370 hours

Nokia reserves its “7″ series for “fashion” phones: phones where style is the most important feature and which are deliberately not to everyone’s taste. Sometimes usability is compromised, and the phones are not usually at the cutting edge, feature-wise. They tend to be love-it or hate-it phones. The 7500 Prism is not as extreme as some of the previous 7 series models, but it is very definitely a fashion phone - no other phone looks like the Prism. Nokia have used conventional materials to make the Prism, and the overall shape is a classic, but the style is in the detail. Bevelled surfaces and geometric patterns are what the Prism is all about. The patterns are continued into the user interface design, making for a polished, integrated feel. The Prism is black in colour, but comes with a choice of replaceable “accent” colours (blue, green and pink) that decorate the edging of the phone.

Although heavily stylised, the Prism is a perfectly usable phone, with keys that are not so different from a conventional keypad. However they are quite small and slippery, and the navigation joystick isn’t as easy to use as a navigational pad. On the positive side, the plastic construction does make for a very lightweight phone (just 83g).

Feature-wise the Prism isn’t an outstanding phone. The LCD display is average, the camera below average, and the video camera well below par. On the other hand, the music player is excellent, being very similar to the one on the 5300 XpressMusic, with support for all the main formats, compatibility with Bluetooth headsets, an equaliser and surround sound / stereo widening. There are nice themes in the player and sound output from the loudspeaker is excellent. The phone’s memory is limited to 30 Mbytes, but a memory card can be added to increase the available memory to 2 Gbytes. In addition there’s a fully-featured FM radio, with Visual Radio support. This enables you to find out information from the station you’re listening to, such as what track is playing, and also provides interactive features such as surveys and voting for your favourite songs.

Another interesting twist is the internet support. The Opera Mini web browser is supplied, although with no 3G support, the browsing experience isn’t the fastest. A novel feature is the “Nokia Sensor” which is a mobile social networking tool that lets you connect with other Nokia Sensor users. There’s a good choice of pre-installed games too.

Connectivity is good, with USB mass storage and Bluetooth compatibility. Battery life is not so good though.

To wrap up then, we’ll say that we like the 7500 Prism, although it’s by no means the best phone practically (the Nokia 6300 is a far superior phone). However, if the design is important to you, then the Prism has few peers. Other fashion phones that you might consider are the 7373, which has a very similar spec but a completely different design, or the higher-spec 7390.

Features of the Nokia 7500 Prism include:

• 2 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom and flash
• Video recorder
• Music player (MP3/AAC/eAAC+/WMA formats)
• FM radio with Visual Radio support
• MP3 ringtones / 64-voice polyphonic ringtones
• Animated wallpapers
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email, Audio messaging (record your own voice message and send to compatible devices)
• Games: Sudoku, Tower Bloxx, Snake III, Music Guess
• Internet: WAP, GPRS Class 10, HSCSD, EDGE
• Web browser: Opera Mini
• Alarm clock, Notes, Countdown timer, To-do list, Calendar
• Memory: 30 Mbytes plus microSD card slot expandable to 2 Gbytes
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0
• Offline mode
• Tri-band EGSM 900, GSM 1800/1900, and EGSM 850
• Size: 109 x 44 x 14.4 mm
• Weight: 83g
• Talktime: 2.8 hours
• Battery standby: 280 hours
• Music playback: 9 hours

In a nutshell: The 6500 Classic is Nokia’s thinnest phone so far, and is a stunningly beautiful phone too, with its polished metal casing. It’s an easy to use phone that does just what most people want from a phone - make calls, take pictures and play music. Supplied with 1 Gbyte of memory and a stereo headset, it’s already equipped to go. The one thing missing from this 3G phone is video calling.

Now here’s a tasty-looking phone. Nokia have finally joined the ultra-thin revolution with the 6500 Classic phone. This is the slimmest Nokia phone released in the UK and, incredibly it’s a 3G phone too! And doesn’t it look nice, with its sleek aluminium casing (”individually polished”, according to the Nokia blurb) and available in Black and Bronze. Let’s pause a moment to enjoy the looks.

OK, having drooled enough, let’s look at the exterior of the phone in more detail. There’s absolutely nothing to complain about here. Whereas Sony Ericsson seem intent on destroying nice phones with unergonomic keypads, Nokia have learned their lesson from making “cool” keypads and have provided the 6500 Classic with a very functional keypad and navigation key. The combination of an ergonomic design, a plain Series 40 interface (no Smartphone junk here!) make this an extremely easy and pleasurable phone to use. Power it up, and the next thing to enjoy is the large and ultra high-resolution LCD display boasting the latest 16 million colour display technology. It’s a display that you can easily customise with a choice of themes (wallpapers, sounds, screensavers, and backgrounds).

The featurelist of the 6500 Classic matches what you’d expect from a mid-range 3G phone in 2007: a 2 megapixel camera (no autofocus - so don’t throw away your digital camera!), a competent music player (although support for Bluetooth stereo headsets is missing), a video camera and good connectivity via USB and Bluetooth. There’s nothing to get very excited about here, but it ticks all the boxes that most people will care about. One obvious thing that’s missing, considering that this is a 3G phone, is video calling. There’s no front-facing camera, so video calling is out, I’m afraid. However, the sales package does include a Nokia Stereo Headset HS-82 and a microUSB Connectivity Cable CA-101, so we can’t fault Nokia for their generosity there.

One of the unusual features of the 6500 Classic is that it has a fixed memory of 1 Gbyte, of which around 920 Mbytes is available to the user. Now this has its good points and bad points. The bad point is that there’s no slot for increasing the memory beyond 1 Gbyte. But on the other hand, 920 Mbytes is enough to store 200-300 songs, which is certainly enough for most users, and it means that the memory is all easily accessible in one place, without any hassle of copying data from internal memory to memory card. Given the kind of phone that the 6500 Classic is (i.e. mid-range) we think that this is a perfectly good solution.

Other thing to point out is that battery life is less than average, which isn’t surprising for an ultraslim 3G handset. It’ll probably need charging every other day.

We do like the 6500 Classic. It’s a very beautiful phone and lovely to use. It isn’t all-singing and all-dancing, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. At Mobile Phones UK, we like our phones to look nice and to work reliably, and the 6500 Classic does that. If it had included video calling we might have rustled up another star and awarded it 5 out of 5.

Features of the Nokia 6500 Classic include:

• 2 megapixel digital camera
• Video camera (176 x 144 pixel resolution, MPEG4 format)
• Display: 16 million colours, 240 x 320 pixels (2 inches)
• Music player (AAC, eAAC+, and MP3 formats)
• Integrated handsfree speaker
• Ringtones: MP3, MP4, eAAC+, AAC, WMA & Video ringtones / 64-voice polyphonic (MIDI) ringtones
• Voice recorder
• Voice controls
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email with attachments (POP3, IMAP4 & SMTP protocols)
• AMS (audio messaging service) for sending voice clips over-the-air
• Java games
• Themes: wallpapers, sounds, screensavers, and backgrounds
• Calendar, To-do list, Notes, Alarm clock, Stopwatch, Countdown timer, Calculator
• xHTML web browser
• Memory: 1 Gbyte (not expandable)
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, micro USB 2.0
• WAP 2.0, GPRS, EPGRS, 3G (max download 128 kbits; upload 356 kbits)
• Quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) plus dual band 3G (WCDMA 850/2100)
• Size: 110 x 45 x 9.5 mm
• Weight: 94g
• Talktime: 3.5 hours
• Battery standby: 9 days

This Walkman phone has everything you need from a music player phone: the latest version of Sony’s award-winning Walkman music player, a built-in FM radio, and a 2 megapixel camera. It also has the benefit of 3G video calling and comes in a classic slimline design with an ergonomic keypad and navigation key.The Sony Ericsson W660i is a nice addition to the Walkman phone range. It’s basically a 3G-enhanced version of the fantastic W610i with an improved keypad, although the camera isn’t as good.

The W660i is a great looker. It has a classic design, with lovely curves, and is available in two distinctive colour schemes: black or rose red. The phone is slim (but not superslim) and is a good size and weight to hold. The W660i has an easy-to-use navigation key and has nicely-sized tactile keys, which is a relief after so many recent Sony Ericsson phones have suffered from clunky joysticks or small keys - Sony Ericsson haven’t put a foot wrong with the W660i in terms of design. The display is a good size and, whilst not as high in resolution as the W880i or K810i, is typical for this price range.

The W660i has a good quality 2 megapixel camera and a video recording option. It can’t compete with the camera on the high-end K810i, and is missing autofocus and a camera light. Being 3G, it also supports video calling.

Naturally the W660i is equipped with the latest Walkman® player 2.0 and is an excellent music phone. Audio quality is excellent, you can easily control the music player, creating your own playlists on the move, and you can now view original album art on the screen as the music plays. Interfacing with a PC is very straightforward: using the USB mass storage interface you can simply drag and drop music (and other media) from the PC to the phone. The memory capacity of the phone is not as large as we’d have liked - onboard memory is just 16 Mbytes, which is enough for just a few MP3 tracks, so you’ll definitely need a memory card to make full use of the phone. Memory cards of up to 1 Gybte are supported (2 Gbytes using a special adapter). We should also mention that an FM radio is included.

Connectivity via USB and wireless Bluetooth is supported, including support for a stereo Bluetooth headset, but there’s no support for infrared. With 3G the phone is permanently connected to the internet, and the phone can handle web browsing, RSS feeds and picture blogging. Push email is also supported.

In conclusion, the W660i is a great phone. It has everything that the W610i has to offer (except for the camera), but with the benefits of 3G and a more conventional keypad.

Features of the Sony Ericsson W660i include:

• 3G video calling
• Video clip recording
• 2 megapixel camera with 2.5x digital zoom
• Display: TFT, 262,144 colours, 176 x 220 pixels
• Walkman® player 2.0
• FM radio
• MegaBass™ - enhances bass frequencies
• TrackID™
• Polyphonic ringtones / Music Tones
• Speakerphone
• Sound recorder
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, Push email
• 3D Java games (pre-installed)
• Web browser
• Picture blogging
• RSS feeds
• Animated wallpaper
• Personal organiser functions
• Connectivity: Bluetooth (with support for stereo headset), USB
• Memory: 16 Mbytes plus Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) support (up to 1 Gbyte)
• Flight mode
• Vibration alert
• Size: 102 x 46 x 14.5 mm
• Weight: 93g
• Triband (GSM 900, 1800, 1900) plus 3G (UMTS 2100)

A classically designed 3G smartphone. It’s the lightest and most compact smartphone available, and probably the easiest to use. Equipped with 3.5G for fast web browsing and downloads, this phone is smart enough to do most things you could ask of a phone.

The 6120 Classic is a classic-looking Nokia finished with attractive chromed highlights (available in black, white and pink). It’s a slimline phone with a large screen, and an easy-to-use keypad and 5-way navigation key. Like the very popular 6300, it gives the impression of an old-fashioned Nokia (which is a good thing) as if the company has learned some lessons and is getting back to what it used to do so well - making great phones that do just what you want.

However, looks can be deceiving, because this is no bog-standard Nokia, but a 3G Symbian smartphone. In fact it’s the lightest and probably the most compact smartphone available, and the most mainstream one too. The 6120 Classic is a high-spec device, outstripping the Nokia N73 in some respects. The first thing that we note when examining the phone is the display. This is a very high quality display with an amazing 16 million colours and a very high resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. However, this does mean that fonts are small, and anyone whose eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be may well struggle with this phone. The camera is rated at 2 megapixels and is nothing special, but the 6120 Classic does also support video calling. The 3G is a fast (so-called 3.5G) HSDPA implementation, enabling download speeds several times faster than normal 3G.

The 6120 Classic is equipped with a music player that can handles all of the common formats - MP3, M4A, eAAC+, and WMA - and there’s a built-in FM radio too. Audio quality is good, especially when using the Nokia Stereo Headset HS-47 supplied. With an internal memory of 35 Mbytes, you can store half a dozen songs, but the memory can be expanded to 2 Gbytes with a microSD card, giving the phone the same capacity as an iPod Nano.

One new feature that appears in the 6120 is Text-to-speech. This lets the phone read your text messages and emails out loud. Could be handy if the fonts are too small to read!

As well as being 3G enabled, the 6120 Classic is quadband, so you should be able to use it on any network anywhere in the world. Connectivity is Bluetooth 2.0 and USB, but not infrared. The battery life of the 6120 is below average, and you’ll probably need to recharge every couple of days, depending on usage.

The only problems that we can see with the 6120 Classic are the small font size and the below-average battery life. Apart from these two issues, the 6120 Classic is a beautiful smartphone, and a much more satisfying phone to use than most of the Nseries phones. It’s neat, it’s smart and we like it!

Features of the Nokia 6120 Classic include:

• 3G with video calling and high-speed 3G (HSDPA)
• Symbian S60 3rd Edition user interface
• 2 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom and flash
• Video camera
• Display: TFT, 16 million colours, 240 x 320 pixels (2 inches)
• Music player (MP3, M4A, eAAC+, and WMA formats)
• FM radio
• Nokia Stereo Headset HS-47 included in sales package
• 64-voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 & AAC ringtones
• Messaging: SMS, MMS, email with attachments
• Voice dialing / Voice commands
• Text-to-speech: let your phone read your text messages, multimedia messages, and emails out loud
• Voice recorder
• Memory: 35 Mbytes plus microSD memory card slot (expandable to 2 Gbytes)
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, USB mass storage
• Quadband (EGSM 850/900/1800/1900) plus 3G (WCDMA/HSDPA 850/2100)
• Size: 105 x 46 x 15 mm
• Weight: 89g
• Talktime: 2.4 hours (3G) - 3.1 hours (2G)
• Battery standby: 9 days