Sony Ericsson phones all share a very good user interface and provide decent battery performance, which we value above all other attributes in a mobile handset. We’re glad to report that the W580i is no exception.

Aside from the sleek curved chassis that helps you grip the phone during use, the most notable addition is a motion sensor, which is put to use under a new fitness menu. Essentially it functions as a glorified pedometer, which when calibrated and combined with an inbuilt stopwatch gives you details on your runs. The results can even be graphed by an included Java application.

The menu is still well laid out and responsive, the screen small yet usable. When playing back videos, the display can be rotated to widescreen mode to make better use of the 240x320 display. If not streamed, those videos will be stored on M2 memory sticks, which can be loaded in the top of the phone. The sides are backlit with tri-colour LEDs which change colour according to different themes.

When you slide the phone open a 2-megapixel camera is revealed – this helps keep the lens clean and means there’s no manual cover to break. The photo options are quite advanced, such as a timer and burst mode. Annoyingly, the shutter sound can’t be turned off: even in silent mode. Unlike photo quality, video results are generally quite poor, which we attribute to the lack of an LED and reliance on gain being applied to the camera’s output.

The W580i continues Sony Ericsson’s recent tradition of including Walkman software; possibly the best mobile phone music player available combined with a menu shortcut to a music store which is expensive but for the most part unobtrusive. The software happily plays back MP3, AAC, WAV and WMA files.

A wired headset is included which breaks out to some quality rubber flanged headphones via a 3.5mm headphone jack, but Bluetooth A2DP profile is supported should you wish to use your own wireless headphones.

A gimmicky but undoubtedly cool addition to the W580i is shake control. If you hold down the Walkman button and shake the phone it will pick a random song. You can only do this while the phone is playing music, and if the keypad is locked the feature will still work.

Less gimmicky are the inbuilt FM radio and TrackID feature. The FM Radio supports RDS, while the TrackID feature uses the microphone to record a snippet of a song, send it to the Gracenote database for comparison and usually returns the title and artist name.

It’s a good all-round phone with sporting pretentions, and if you’re convinced by the style we recommend it.