When reader Martin McNeil asked us why we hadn’t talked much about his new phone, the Orange SPV C500, we did the logical thing and asked him to do our job for us. Since Marty is a sucker, he actually did it. We’re going to start making everybody answer their own questions (and why does he have American quarters?)
Orange has recently released a new SmartPhone in the UK, France and Netherlands dubbed the SPV C500. It is the fourth handset in their signature phone series in that it carries their brand, although the phone is actually manufactured in Taiwan by HTC. This particular handset is also available from QTek as the 8010 and i-mate as the Smartphone 3. It will doubtless be carried by other providers and resellers with their particular branding.
Billed as the SmartPhone which is not big, but clever, it certainly is a head-turner. It is a miniscule 108 mm long, 46mm wide and 16.3mm deep and weighs only 100 grams far smaller and lighter than any of the previous phones in the SPV series. One might think that such a small phone would be underpowered, yet it sports a Texas Instruments 1510 OMAP core running at 200MHz, the fastest of any SmartPhone to date. It certainly is a great deal more responsive than the 132MHz SPV E200.
The box contains the handset, battery, mains charger, a USB data cable (which can also be used to charge the phone), a 16Mb mini-SD card with some trial applications, a stereo personal hands free kit and a CD sporting MS ActiveSync and the full version of Outlook 2002 Anyone who has used a Windows Mobile SmartPhone will immediately be familiar with the UI. The move to WM 2003 Second Edition has brought some tweaks and advancements that I have not had the time to fully investigate yet.
Voice activated dialling has finally been implemented and can be initiated from either the corded hands free kit (supplied) or a Bluetooth headset. On that note, the Bluetooth stack has been greatly improved and now works with a wider range of headsets, car kits and other devices with much clearer signal quality and range. Another plus for a majority of people looking for a versatile handset is a full Java implementation on the C500. I ve not had the opportunity to test it myself yet but the mere fact it is there opens up a wider application base to the SmartPhone user.
Having had the handset for less than 24 hours I m more than impressed with it so far. The one (minor) gripe I have had is that the button placement could be somewhat awkward for those with large fingers or thumbs, although I doubt such a person would opt for a phone as small as the C500 in the first place. One word of warning to those people outside of Europe looking for an network free handset it does not work on the GSM850 band, so if you must have one of these handsets make sure that your provider
Call quality, Bluetooth implementation and overall speed and responsiveness are streets ahead of the previous Orange branded SmartPhones and significantly better than my wife s MPx200. How this phone will fare against the MPx220 when it is released remains to be seen and I ll have to wait until my wife upgrades to one to find out!
Read – Catalog Page [Shop.OrangeUK]
Related
Orange Confirms SPV C500 Smartphone [Gizmodo]
New Orange Smartphone: SPV C500 [Gizmodo]
https://gizmodo.com/orange-confirms-spv-c500-smartphone-15883
