Testing an Orange SPV 'Smartphone'

theolein writes "The register has an article discussing the first major phone company's implementation -Orange SPV- of MS Smartphone as well as a common user's experiences with it. More or less confirms what quite a few expected."

Comments

put it back in the oven

[jptxs]

I think the reviewer says it all:

This is a phone that has shipped before it's finished. Microsoft see their Smartphone OS as a way of stopping Symbian getting a hold of a platform that they don't yet control and for this reason they've rushed it out.

Everything he says and I've heard from other points to this. It's actually nice to see M$ so scared that they're using their clout to scare companies into making bad moves like an early release of something so flawed. If they keep that up it will be all the more easy to watch the monopoly meltdown. not that I want to see them fail completely, but some real competition (read: some real reasons for quality user focused software) would be nice.

Reasons why Sendo dropped their smartphone?

[kawaichan]

I never really believed sendo dropped their phone when it was ready for launch. May be it's a combination of crappy speed, horrible UI that really ticked off the company. It also explains why not that many phone makers are signing up to MS's smartphone platform either.

Also, have you noticed that most of the problems that the guy found in the MS smartphone DID NOT occur in symbian based phones (the SE T800, Nokia 7xxx (don't remember the model name))

At the beginning, I thought MS's smartphone is an excellent idea, but then again, heavy, buggy, slow, horrible UI cannot be possibilly good for something that they have been designing for so damn long.

feature laden pda/phones.. liking it less and less

[merc_sa]

Sound, Picture, Video sounds nice on paper but I can't imagine it would be too useful in practice.
having grainy little pictures on 2 inch screens is just unbearable for any kind of useful application.
The only reason I can think of to put a camera on a phone and email, is to get evidence when you get
in a car crash. It's useless to view on PDA and horrible to be subjected to on a decent computer
screen. Video is just a lame gimmick. Now, sound would seem to be promising.. but given I'm fairly
used to decent quality of sound from cheapo discmans and ok quality from the current
generation of mp3 players, listening to AM/FM quality mp3 on my phone gets less and less
appealing. The only real use I've got out of wireless web at this point is checking short email
messages, and checking movie times for a particular theatre if I overran on time and need
to catch the next showing. It's simply too unpleasant to do too much websurfing on a phone
simply because of the dimensions of the screen.
Don't even get me started on web surfing on your phone savages the battery life.. And if you really
feel the need to drool over porn on the 2" screen, I'd recommend putting yourself out of your misery.

so my new list is down to:

1. smaller dimension (anything bigger than my 270 will be junked, in fact, I wish it was 30% smaller)

2. better sound quality for the phone

3. longer battery life

everything else would be treated like the damn hairclip help in office.. I'll ignore it until
it gets in my way. once it does, it's gone.

Given the average /.'er generally have a terminal case of gadgetitis, the PDA will need to do
everything including cleaning the kitchen sink and run a solar power fusion generator. But I'm
starting to wonder now that if we actually did get everything we wished for in a PDA, would we end up
regretting it.. it's time to realize why the early Palm succeeded and the old Newton failed.
simplicity, usability at a price we're willing to pay..

In order to secure the market...

[mtec]

it looks like MS FUD has evolved...past empty announcements to empty releases.

Note: I just set up a doctor on a Treo phone and everything works great. Even syncing to a Mac.