So, the same day that I bought my iPod Touch, my mom and I finally kicked that awful Sprint habit we had, opting for more the more enticing iPhone and white Sony Ericsson Walkman w580i respectively. Well, more than a month in, we are both really happy with our purchases. Here’s what I think of my w580i.

First of all, Sony knows design. This is one seriously bad-ass phone, with that Sony quality we all know and love. It has some really flashy looks, which, since describing will make me sound like an idiot, I’ll sum up with two pictures.

One of the really notable features of this phone, missing on previous Walkman phones is an accelerometer, utilized in fun (but novel) music control and a surprisingly useful pedometer. By holding down the Walkman logo button on the phone and giving it a quick shake, it’ll pick a song randomly from your current playlist and begin playing it. The pedometer is simple enough to use, and gives you readings on number of steps, calories burned, distance traveled, top speed, low speed, average step distance, etc, etc. I’ve used it multiple times already, and I have to say, I am very impressed with it.

As for the rest of the features, it is pretty much identical to any other recent Walkman Phone, except with a minor UI update in the form of the new default theme, daisies (which is nothing like it sounds).

The screen lives up to Sony’s reputation; it’s beautiful, bright, and so clear that it seems like it must be printed on the freaking phone.  Even on the lowest brightness setting, it is clearly readable in direct sunlight.

The camera is decent, but nothing really notable.  It’s a typical tacked-on phone camera.

The built-in speaker is like nothing of any portable device I have ever heard.  Music is very clear, the sound range is astounding, and the maximum volume is just plain impressive.

My major gripe with the w580i is that it looks and functions almost exactly like the LG Chocolate.  I have a friend with one, and I seriously couldn’t point out any striking differences.  It bothers me a little bit that people go, “you have the Chocolate?”, but I can take solace in the knowledge that snazzy sliding music phones were pretty much invented by Sony.  So there.

PS: I also had some fun with the bluetooth in my local Apple store: I paired it up to a MacBook and remote-controlled the mouse from afar to bother people trying to use it, and at a later date, I used it to snag the default Leopard wallpaper (since it’s all illegal-like to share it online).  I know you can do this with lots of phones, but I just can’t get over how cool it is to do be able to do that at all.