I own the W580, and after around 1 year of use it is soon to be in need of replacement. However, I am hard on electronics and have dropped it quite a few times from fairly high up do to my own butterfingers. (I've even changed out a wheel bearing on my car while accidentally lying on top of it) The phone still works (quite well actually) but it is starting to show wear from abuse.
IMHO I consider the Sony Ericsson phones the some of the best phones you could buy for their feature set (especially for a music phone), but they are fairly fragile and should always be bought with insurance from AT&T. Mine is a good one, but I have heard a lot of erratic reports about the build-quality like screens dying and the like. Don't forget the insurance...
I can't say if the W760A is better made, I haven't bought it yet. But it did feel a bit sturdier in my hand than the W580. It's also a little bigger than the W580 and, according to the guy at the Cingular store, the phone was designed to address the fragility issues of the W580. I know that's not conclusive, but I am thinking of upgrading to the 760A, myself, for a couple reasons:
* Full HTML Support (W580 is a little lacking with its web abilities; I can't come onto Finalgear for example
)
* Built-in navigator
* Sturdier feel
I have looked around and there's also the
W350 which Cingular is selling for free. If you really wanted to hedge your bets, you could get that for free, look around a bit with a new phone to tide you over and just get a better one a little later and extend the contract again. (For some reason I could swear there's a flaw in this logic...)
EDIT: Apparently, there's a mail-in rebate on the W580 that makes it free as well on
Cingular's site too. So that plan also could work with the W580.