Recently launched in Canada through Rogers, the Sony Ericsson W580i Walkman Phone lets you change tracks with a flick of your wrist. Just like SanDisk’s Sansa Shaker that I reviewed earlier, the Slider handset will randomly change to a new song when you literally shake the phone physically. For an additionally touch of flare, the phone also has a set of orange illumination lights along the spine that light up whenever you navigate through the phone’s menu system.
Sound silly? As I found with the Sansa Shaker, shaking your mp3 player is not a practical way to change songs (especially if you’re the kind to dance or move around when listening to music), it works, but in a fun, novelty way. The difference here being that the Shaker is pink and designed for little girls while I’m guessing the W580i is geared for adults. You’ll probably shake it to show off for your friends, but not when you’re listening to music on your own.
At 14 mm thin, the new slider comes in two colours; “style white” and “urban grey”. It has a 262K screen, uses Sony’s Walkman 2.0 music player and Disc2Phone Music Management software, both Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 support, and can be loaded with music tracks from a Memory Stick Micro. It comes with 512MB stick in the box, but you can also get a free upgrade from Rogers for a 2GB memory stick instead.
