Product Reviews

The i-mate K-JAM was our A-Listed smartphone of choice during much of last year, but both it and its successor - the HTC TyTN - were simply too bulky to carry round as everyday phones.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the SPV E650 is the answer to this problem - it's just a little bit deeper and heavier than Orange's original SPV C series. But this isn't a Pocket PC device at all: it's a smartphone. There's no touchscreen, and the menus are mostly controlled using the numeric keypad.

That it runs Windows Mobile 6 Standard rather than Professional isn't as much of a limitation as it would have been with WM5, though - in particular, smartphones now get the Mobile Office suite. Without a touchscreen you won't be able to use point-and-click applications, but WM6 Standard is still more than capable.

But the show-stealer is the slide-out QWERTY

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keyboard, with the screen automatically switching into landscape mode. The keyboard is naturally quite cramped (you type using both thumbs), but it's certainly more usable than T9 multitap when writing emails or editing documents.

The real first for this form factor, though, is that it actually feels like a phone with added mobile facilities, rather than the other way round. With its black and chrome livery, it also looks the part, and you won't have much trouble winning the "who's got the best new phone" competition in meetings. Build quality is equally impressive.

It also has all the convenience we've come to expect from Windows Mobile devices. Charging, PC syncing and the earphones/hand-free facility all operate via the mini-USB socket on the bottom of the phone, and expansion via a side-mounted MicroSD slot allows memory cards to be hot-swapped.

We're pleased to see Wi-Fi included, but there's no 3G - a disappointment partially assuaged by Orange's excellent EDGE network, which delivers data at similar speeds. Orange quotes a standby battery life of five days, but we found it to be more like two or three days with reasonable use.

Overall, though, this is a fantastic Windows Mobile device. We'd have preferred to see 3G, and we're also annoyed that Orange has seen fit to remove the Windows Live integration from WM6. But if you can live with these little foibles, it's a brilliant alternative to the Nokia E61.