Orange SPV review

Index
Overview
Navigating
Applications
Specification
GPRS and beyond

Overview
With US GSM/GPRS networks still in their infancy, Microsoft has chosen its lucrative venture into the mobile phone market to start in the UK. October 28th 2002 sees the release of the Orange SPV running a stripped down version of Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002 (PPC 2002) operating system known simply as the Smartphone OS. We bring you the world's first full review of the SPV featuring Microsoft's new OS.

Originally manufactured by HTC (makers of the Compaq iPAQ), the tri-band, GPRS mobile phone/PDA hybrid will be branded by Orange restricting its release to only those countries with an Orange service. Currently this excludes the US although other manufacturer's Smartphones will launch there early next year.

It's also likely that Orange's SPV will dominate the market for some time with other manufacturers' yet to publish release dates for their Smartphones. Although reports of Sendo's Z100 Smartphone (pictured below) have been filtering through to the public domain for over six months now, the envisaged UK release is still not likely this side of Christmas. We now have a preview Z100, but some of the software is still in development. That said, where relevant hardware comparisons with the Orange SPV have been made.

After only a few days living with the SPV, it's clear that some very sensible choices have been made in stripping out some of the functionality in Windows CE to create the Smartphone Edition of PPC 2002. The choices mainly stem from the restrictions imposed by the design - size, input mechanisms and connectivity options.

Microsoft has removed all apps bar Pocket editions of Outlook, Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player, with no native support for touchscreen input or for Bluetooth wireless connectivity. Smartphone's Home screen presents a similar set of features to a PDA with additions for telephony-oriented functions. The navigation is mainly via a four-way rocker switch although keypad shortcuts speed things up.

Not much bigger than a standard handset - measuring 48 x 21 x 116mm (W x D x H), with a weight of 130g - the SPV is powered by a 120MHz processor and fitted with 48MB of memory expandable via an SD/MMC memory slot. As with full-blown PDAs, both the SPV and Z100 are supplied with desktop docking chargers for PC synchronisation. By contrast, the Z100 weighs less at 119g but is chunkier measuring 50 x 21 x 126mm (W x D x H). Although the Z100 features a 132MHz processor, it's difficult to rate any potential performance with the preview sample.

Using the SPV makes it hard to justify owning a separate PDA, especially as Sendo will be supplying viewers for PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Zip and PDF files. And you can even switch off the phone independently from the PDA (although convincing an air stewardess of this might prove a tad difficult). If you're not yet convinced, the SPV also comes with a clip-on 640 x 480 resolution camera.

The £200 inc VAT asking price is remarkably good value for money even though you'll be tied to the Orange data/voice contract for a minimum of 12 months.

Navigating

Smartphone's Home screen is similar to a PDA including message inbox, diary and tasks, with additions for telephony-oriented functions such as SMS and MMS. Five shortcut icons run along the top, which are dynamically replaced by recently used apps, as with the Windows XP Start Menu shortcuts.