Motorola i580

Motorola i580 Review

Motorola i580

If Nextel is known for one thing when it comes to cell phone design ( see How to Buy a Cell Phone Guide ), it’s the rugged durability of its handsets. Models such as the Motorola i355 and the i530 are built like tanks ( also see motorola nextel i576 article review ), with thick protective skins designed to withstand the elements and impacts with the ground. Though the carrier has dabbled in more trendy designs over the past year with models like the Motorola i850, the new Motorola i580 goes straight to Nextel’s roots. Tough, sturdy, and solidly built, The Motorola i580 flip phone offers all the usual Nextel offerings and a respect able assortment of features, including Bluetooth, a speakerphone, a Micro SD card slot, and support for two separate phone lines. It is expensive, however, at $249 with service.

In a nutshell, the Motorola Nextel i580 is the world’s toughest multimedia phone. It makes reliable phone calls, plays MP3s like a boom box, and shrugs off shocks that would destroy lesser phones. It’s expensive, but worth the price. From the outset you know The Motorola i580 isn’t for sissies. This is a burly phone through and through, from the rubberized, two-toned gray exterior to the solid construction of its oversized hinge. It’s not about style by any means but all about being functional and useful. To that end, Motorola and Nextel added some unusual touches. Perhaps in an effort to emphasize the phone’s durability, the middle of the front flap is covered in a tactile pattern that resembles steel plating. Even external features, such as the Micro SD slot and the headset jack on the right spine and the charger port on the bottom, are covered with rubber flaps, while the stubby extendable antenna has a solid construction. Nextel continuall y boasts that its handsets are certified to military specifications for blowing rain, dust, shock, and vibration, and The Motorola i580 is no exception.

Motorola i580 is built to last and last

In the past, Nextel’s phones have gone two ways—either rugged but basic, like the redoubtable i355, or powerful but less durable, like the i930 smartphone. The Motorola i580 makes no compromises, starting with durability: At 3.8 by 2.2 by 1.1 inches and 5.1 ounces, it’s built like an 18-wheeler. Keys are pretty big and well separated. The monochrome, one-line external display shows Caller ID just fine, and the bright 262,000-color, 176-by-220 internal screen looks good even in sunlight. Above the screen are the camera lens, a self-portrait mirror, and a tiny flash, while the right spine holds a volume rocker and a Direct Connect button. On the top of the phone are the speakerphone key and a button for sending calls to voicemail and accessing the recent calls list when the phone is closed. All keys are coated in durable rubber. The internal display is one of the better design touches on The Motorola i580 . Measuring 1.8 inches (176×220 pixels) and supporting 262,000 colors, it vividly displays text and graphics with eye-popping colors and sharp object outlines. We’re also pleased the phone supports Nextel’s newer animated menu design. You can change the backlighting time and the font size but not the brightness or the contrast. The border surrounding the display resembles the aforementioned patterned exterior on the front flap. Below the display are large and tactile navigation controls. A four-way toggle doubles as a shortcut to four-user defined functions, while an OK button sits in the toggle’s center. There are also two soft keys, a dedicated camera button, a camera shortcut control, and the talk and end keys. The backlit keypad buttons are quite large, and they are raised above the surface of the phone. It was easy to dial by feel and in dim situations. The power key is located just below the keypad buttons and is set in a rubber casing that exten ds from the outside of the phone.

The Motorola i580 has all the Nextel business-friendly offerings you’d expect. The 600-contact phone book has room in each entry for seven phone numbers, an e-mail address, an IP address, and a Direct Connect number. Contacts can be organized further into a variety of groups for regular or push-to-talk (PTT) calls, and you can pair them with one of 12 monophonic or 3 polyphonic ring tones. Other features include a vibrate mode, an airplane mode, a calendar, mobile e-mail support, voice dialing, call and voice memo recording, a memo pad, text and multimedia messaging, a speakerphone, and onboard GPS. Since there aren’t a great number of Nextel phones with wireless capability, The Motorola i580 supports full Bluetooth for connecting to a headset or sending data to another Bluetooth device. You also get Nextel’s Direct Connect walkie-talkie service (including Group Connect, which lets you chat with up to 20 others via PTT at once) and Direct Talk, which give s you out-of-network walkie-talkie chat with another Direct Talk handset at a range of up to six miles. A newer feature is Direct Send, which sends PTT contact information to other compatible Nextel phones.

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Service Provider: Nextel

Operating System: Other

Screen Size: 1,9 inches

Screen Details: -

Camera: Yes

Megapixels: 1,9 MP

802.11x: No

Bluetooth: Yes

Web Browser: No

Network: iDen

Bands: 800

High-Speed Data: -

 

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Perhaps the biggest news, however, is that The Motorola i580 supports Nextel’s second line service, which allows you to add a second line to the phone with a different phone number–perfect for users who want separate digits for personal and business use. Nextel was one of the first U.S. carriers to offer the functionality. It will cost extra, of course, but you can have separate ring tones, separate billing statements, and even phone numbers with different area codes. Dropping it on concrete and even spiking it on a tile floor like a football didn’t seem to hurt it any, though the phone does flip open when it hits the ground. Then stuck the handset in the freezer for about 3 hours. It turned on, slowly, and reported that it had no battery. Amazingly, the phone returned to normal operation when the battery thawed. Next, it outside into 100-degree heat and then threw it from a second-story window onto concrete. The battery door popped off, but other than th at, the phone was okay. Once put the battery back in, the phone worked fine, with only a minor scratch in the corner of the case. Since it had hit the ground pretty hard, we decided to wash it off in the sink. The water-resistant Motorola i580 shrugged the cool spray off like a duck.

Okay, what can actually kill The Motorola i580? To make a point, we stuck the tough little phone under the wheel of a Saturn Sky roadster, which weighs about 2,680 pounds. Eight wheels later (two rolls forward and back), we had managed to crack The Motorola i580′s LCD screens—but astonishingly, the phone still worked! we make calls, Direct Connect, and even use the camera.

Motorola i580 is camera is fully equipped

Motorola i580

Nextel was relatively late to the camera phone game, but it has begun to catch up. The Motorola i580 joins the Motorola i870 in offering a solid 1.3-megapixel camera. You can take pictures in six resolutions from 128×96 to 1,280×1,024 pixels in either Fine or Normal quality settings. Settings include a 4X digital zoom, a flash, and a self-timer, but absent are the picture color effects, brightness adjustments, and white-balance controls that you find with most VGA camera phones. Picture quality is decent, with better color saturation than other megapixel shooters, though it still can’t compare with a digital camera. On the upside, The Motorola i580 follows most Motorola handsets in including a handy memory meter in the camera application that shows the available space.

The Motorola i580′s video recorder shoots clips in two resolutions (176×144 and 128×96) with sound. Clips meant for multimedia messages are capped at 15 seconds; otherwise you’re limited by the amount of available memory. Clips were nothing special, with a grainy, pixelated effect. Once you’re done with your snapshots or videos, you can store the files on the phone’s 25MB of internal memory, which is on the low side, but you can always save these files to a Micro SD card. You can also use images for picture caller ID, though they won’t show up on the external display, or as your phone’s wallpaper, and you can send them wirelessly to friends. The built-in MP3 player uses a pretty handsome interface, playing MP3-format songs off a microSD card (a 64MB card is included) through the powerful speaker. It’s quite audible outdoors. Unfortunately, you can’t assi gn your MP3s as ringtones, but that’s the usual deal for most U.S. phones. The interface is beyond basic, with nothing in the way of album art or graphics. That said, the external and internal displays show the artist and song name and elapsed time during playback. Features include shuffle and repeat modes and Rock, Pop, Jazz, Classical, and Bass EQ presets. On the downside, it plays tracks only from TransFlash cards, so you can forget about direct-to-device music transfers, let alone over-the-air downloads. We also wish The Motorola i580 had external music controls, though we realize they might compromise its durability.

You can personalize The Motorola i580 with a choice of wallpapers and themes. If you don’t like what’s on the handset already, you can always download more options with the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser. Alternatively, you get a fair choice of Java (J2ME) applications, including three game demos (Vijay Singh Pro Golf, Bejeweled, and World Poker Tour); 1KTV, an on-demand pseudo-TV service; and the Trimble Outdoors and TeleNav subscription-based navigation service that takes advantage of The Motorola i580′s GPS support. The Motorola i580′s durability is even more impressive because it’s a really good phone. The speaker is extremely loud and unusually clear when making calls outdoors and doing Direct Connect. Push-to-talk sounds positively gorgeous. Indoors, you can hear a little bit of background hiss in the earpiece. The phone connected to Plantronics Bluetooth headsets easily, and you can trigger voice dialing over Bluetooth (though voice diali ng relies on recorded tags and is not speaker-independent.) Also, since the phone is designed for loud environments, ringtone volume and vibrate power will literally knock your socks off. Battery life was solid, too. The Motorola i580 yielded 7 and a half hours of talk time.

The Nextel Motorola i580 sets a new standard for Nextel, bringing together maximal features and rock-solid durability. Sure, you’ll pay extra for that. If all you need is a purely voice-oriented rugged phone, the motorolla i355 will certainly suffice. But The Motorola i580′s combination of features and ruggedness is simply unmatched.

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