Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Orange SPV Phone Review
Ian Bell writes "HowardChui.com just posted a review on Microsoft's new Orange SPV which is the first commercially available Smartphone. The SPV stands for Sound, Pictures, Video and you can download games like Doom or listen to MP3s on the speaker or even chat to your friends using the built-in MSN Messenger. But for all that the SPV features, there is no Bluetooth support. It still looks like a killer phone and I like that it is smaller than the PocketPC phones currently on the market."
Your phone has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down
Either the phone is small or his head is really big. Hard to tell.
I was deriding the Yopy a couple days ago for having a chiclet keyboard. This thing's got a chiclet keypad. Make it bigger!
Add to that the fact that you're going to get face-grease all over the screen every time you talk on the phone. I don't see any reason to get one of these yet.
I have been pwned because my
Or does anyone here believe the sound, pictures and video won't be slathered with DRM bloat?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Must be a MS powered phone you have there, it was a little slow on the processing.
Guy says in the review that the audio isn't that great, thus flushing the functionality of mp3 playing and making its usefulness as a cell phone kinda crappy.
That's a shame too because it looks like an nice phone and has some decent feature.
I believe, as an Apple fan, that Apple should make a really good phone for all us geeks wishing we had big wallets. They could get Jonathan Ive to do it, and put a *scaled-down* version of OS X on it. Plus, they could call it the iPhone! (It has a *ring* to it, yuk yuk...) I would definitely buy one (if I had said big wallet).
Look at all the Pros. None of that makes a good phone. Who cares about a customizable today screen or an optional keyboard when the phone sucks.
He is obviously clueless...
"While it seems to lack a little bit of polish as the first commercially available Smartphone, the SPV is not a bad device. "
Erm, It isn't the first commercial smartphone. Symbian phones have been around for a while, years in fact - for example, Erccisson R380 (I think there was a version before this one?), and Nokia - the Brick - Communicator 9210 - and there was a version before this too.
With Symbian you get a rock solid phone and software, far more than MS can possibly provide. Symbian phones have far better security and their OS isn't bloated, as opposite to MS its in pathetic (toy) OSes.
That's just a little freaky in my books.
...no one's gone ahead and tried to run Linux on it yet...where's my modchip?
That phone is silver, not orange.
I would really like a phone to sync to my PC's PIM. I've seen a demo of a smartphone, and that was the coolest features by far...the dude just grabbed his entire contact list from outlook. I use my phone as my contact list, with no back up, because I'm too lazy to retype the whole thing. I could also see it's usefulness to send quick emails.
I'll agree with you on the games/camera/web browsing though.
ANTITRUST, where this guy looks kinda like this real life guy. And he is taking over the airways. But in real life the government is helping. Scary, I'm going to put it in the DVD, I love horror movies.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Why the hell is it taking PDA/Cell Phone/MP3 Player/Keyboard/Mouse manufacturers so DAMN long to get bluetooth implemented as a standard across the board for syncing devices, which is what it's particulary good at - close distance, high bandwidth traffic. It's beginning to really piss me off since it has the implications to be so useful.
I urge for the day i can use my iPod as a clicker device to go to the next slide in a presentation, or when i can set my iPod next to my laptop and automatically sync it. I urge for the day i can walk into a room with a bluetooth keychain and have my pre-programmed computer automatically turn the lights on and start playing music ala Minority report. We *HAVE* the technology to do all this, why the hell are hardware manufacturers kicking their damn heals so much?
ok i'm done ranting
</RANT>
- tristan
It seems strange to me that there is no Bluetooth support... especially since it's from Microsoft. If they intigrate Bluetooth, they could definitely do a lot of cool things between it and a computer (or several devices for that matter). Maybe it's because Bluetooth isn't widely accepted yet but without the devices, how is it goint to become widely accepted?
The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is you. - Tom Bradley
I read a while back about BSquare's Maui device which according to the article was a pretty cool device. GSM is included along with Bluetooth, if IIRC.
Unfortunately the company can't seem to find an ODM who wants to bring them to market. Another case of good technology getting killed before even reaching the marketplace.
If I'm going to buy a phone, make sure it makes phone calls!
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
genious. I wish I had mod points to off set the fat boy that modded you down.
So why would anyone buy this phone at all?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Hi, The Orange one isn't the first commercially available Smartphone. It has been for sale from SMART (operator) in the Philippines for the last few months. I do not think it is selling as expected seeing that most people do not care about Powoerpoint, etc on their phones... CEO's tend to make decisions based on their own reference framework and not that of the market which they do not represent.
From ZDNet UK....slightly amusing...but a valid point, none the less.
Smartphone (with a capital S) is Microsoft's brandname for... smartphones (duh!). They've copyrighted the name, so that's what Howard means when he writes "first commercially available Smartphone".
I've played with the phone myself, and the OS isn't bloated compared to the Symbian phones (they're about the same). In fact, my Nokia 3650, which uses Symbian, crashes every now and then. I'm not saying the MS one doesn't crash, but don't think because it's made by someone other than Microsoft that it's automagically better.
I believe we have here another classic case of "integrating a shit-load of features into something small and utterly useless".
I guess they'll make a portable all-in-one X-BOX, DVD Player, cell phone, laptop with Windows XPee, tape recorder, CD burner, microwave, refrigerator, dishwasher, ass-wiper and "port-a-potty" device next.
This is completely useless and shows no innovation or creativity. I guess they're trying to take bloated software to the next level: bloated hardware.
> Is there anyone else out there that thinks these all-in-one super go go gadget phones are totally stupid?
probably...even the stupidest opinion will find support somewhere...
> Don't you realize there are billions of people starving in this world?
yes I do.....what's your point?
I want someone to realise that I always carry around my wallet, my keys and my phone.
Why is it, therefore, that we don't see a combination smartphone/pda/wallet? An average wallet is large enough to put a decent-sized LCD screen and a keypad in (after all, many wallets are quite similar in design to a clamshell-type 'phone).
This would be a kick-ass device because it'd have a big screen *and* reduce the amount of space everything takes up in my pockets. Surely it's the obvious thing to do?
Hang on - given it's obvious, I'll just off and patent it...
Microsoft's new Orange SPV which is the first commercially available Smartphone
All this time, I must have been imagining commercially available smartphones like the Handspring Treo and the Kyocera Smartphone.
Head! Paper! Now!
Move that melon of yours and get the paper if you can!
Haulin' that gargantuan cranium about!
I'm not kidding, that boy's head's like Sputnik!
Spherical, but quick pointy in parts.
Well, that was off sides, wasn't it?
He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight on his *huge* pillow!
You don't need a Microsoft-powered 'phone to do that. I've been synching my contacts and calendar from Outlook to my phone(s) for years.
FusionOne used to offer a free service to give you synch across many devices (including many mobile 'phone types).
If you want free stuff and have a Nokia, you can get software from their web site which lets you do this. Other manufacturers also have synch software these days too.
All you need is an IR-port (USB ones are sub-$20) or a data cable for your phone (which will probably be more than that).
You'll need to wait for winCE 6.0 before they get the bugs out of it.
That's what your mom said last night. Actually, I think I know the commercial, and it does sound kinda like that...
That is because of Orange. They are the cell phone manufacturer after all. Microsoft is just providing all the add on cr@p that a cell phone doesn't really need (mp3 and video).
Button size, signal receiver, lack of RF, lack of BT (keeps size and price a bit smaller), those were choices made by Orange. No J2E is Microsoft. Although I am not sure why no J2E is bad, but that might just be me.
that is all that needs to be said
I've had a kyoccera 7135 for about a week now, it has built in PalmOS 4.1, Dragonball 33 mhz, 16 megs.. SD/MMC slot, plays mp3s, sends faxes, 3G wireless, all that shit..
Perhaps, of course, that this headline is three weeks late. Quite possible. All i know is this is one cool ass phone.
I been playing pac man on it since I got it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
as the first commercially available Smartphone
Smartphones have been around for several years, based on Symbian and PalmOS. And the term has been around for a number of years as well. Microsoft should really not be able to take out trademarks on generic terms like "Windows" and "Smartphone".
Looks more like a lemon to me.
Sony E. used the name "Smartphone" for one of the older "PDA/Phone" jobs.
http://www.arstechnica.com/archive/news/1050185127 .html
You make a good point, but taking Names (TM) that already has a meaning and copyright it is stealing from the commons.
They steal the meaning that this name already have. There is nothng wrong with picking a name that helps you in the beginning you just need to undertand that what helps you now will hurt you later so take your pick.
It like the Trademarking of the word Windows. WTF. This was picked percisely because it had a well definied and undertaood meaning. The name helped yuo in the beginning now you are stuck with something that is generic and should be allowed to be trademarked.
Nothing wrong with Smartphone but as a trade mark give me a break. Maybe we need to rename Gnome or KDE SmartWindows.
Help fight continental drift.
a lill bit OOT but... ,this guy always put his face along with the phone.
anybody noticed that on all reviews on his site
like he wanna be famuos or sumthin?
d035 7hi5 100k 1ik3 4n l337 5i6 2 j00 ?
I really don't see any decent reason for packing cell-phones with so many features. How about making the cell phone have better reception so call-drops are less frequent, instead of being able to download mp3s to play them on the cellphone speakers. It's extra features like that which turn it into more of a novelty item than something that could have pratical use. I would like my phone to dial numbers, call people, and sound clear... I really don't see the use in downloading quake or Microsoft patches for security so no one can run illegal scripts off my cellphone if I happen to be using it for a server or something.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
I keep mine in my front pocket, so the wallet would do fine there... plus wallets (the bulky sort) can have a little bit of padding and/or metal to protect the screen.
It seems like a pretty good idea to me, although wallets do take a lot of abuse... but fitting the contents of an older Palm V in one should be easy by now. I'm just not sure where it would work to mount ports. Also, I'm not sure how nice it would be to hold a wallet to use as a PDA - I'll bet that wouldn't feel good for long.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If I used Perl, I would use freedline.
http://www.computerweekly.co.uk/articles/article.a sp?liArticleID=121069&liArticleTypeID=20&liCategor yID=1&liChannelID=7&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1
(paste that long URL link together if it wraps)
#1 it is old news (so not for nerds)
/.
:(
#2 it is not compatible with either PalmOS, WinCE (the regular one), Java or whatever ! (so it does not matter)
#3 it s*ks to have ad-campaign for MS, again and again on
When it is not an ad campaign it is FUD
Are people so adicted by MS, that can never make an objective analysis ?
_TOZS
I had a Psion 5MX (uses a version of the Symbian OS) for about 5 years. It went about 3 years without crashing and I used it every day. Other people have reported similar or better experiences with the version of the Symbian OS built into phones.
Seems to me that this is cause to suggest that Symbian phone is likely to be more stable than an MS based phone.
"With Symbian you get a rock solid phone and software, far more than MS can possibly provide."
Sure.
"Symbian phones have far better security and their OS isn't bloated, as opposite to MS its in pathetic (toy) OSes."
Sorry to disappoint you, but that's wrong. Windows Smartphone Edition is potentially a lot more secure than Symbian. Symbian got almost no security built in. It's just that everything is written correctly (and it can run Java). Windows SE, being a scaled down version of their main OS, has a lot of security features built in. However, it seems that they are not really well implemented. When this phone was launched in Europe (at least 8 months ago), users found that you could bypass the protections that prevented you from installing any program (yes, ANY program) by waiting for 15 minutes on the right screen !
Nobox: Only simple products.
How stupid are you?
He tells us that microsoft tries to touch every part of our lives, but so far he has managed to circumvent their plans by using the alternatives.
Its a nice idea. however, the orange SPV is not ready for prime time. The one i got was from england via uk ebay.
h one/default.asp
3 80_Smartphone_Includes_Digital_Camera
Pros:
super small
nice looking
nice little OS... (you swear someone shoved a laptop in there, 132mghz, whoo!)
plays cool games.
is the future of phones, or at least the general direction (what you are really looking for is the samsung i600, or the mitac 8380 (june, baby!))
plays a mean game of solitaire (looks almost just like the win32 version)
syncs with outlook pretty well, some say as good as any.
various SDKs for it.
can be unlocked and decerted to run custom apps.
has ie4.0 (no frames tho)
plays doom!
GRPS Internet! nice.
cons:
is super small
OS is not ready for prime time. needs more work.
200mghz is gonna fit this a lot better than 132mgz
poor construction for a phone (i took it apart, its cheaply made)
feels like it will break easy.
dust gets under screen.
buttons are too small
buttons are hard to reach.
ie4 doesnt support frames, resolutions is like 176x220
little slow sometimes.
isnt quite as functional as say a standard phone should be.
did i mention it was poorly constructed?
Smartphone Homesite:
http://www.microsoft.com/mobile/smartp
Major Smartphone Forums:
http://smartphone.modaco.com
(tons of info + community there)
Mitac 8380!!!!
http://www.brighthand.com/article/Mio_8
(come to papa! - june!)
lots of fun.
I'm selling mine to get the mitac, so. It was a fun toy, but hopefully the mitac is more ready for prime time than the spv. Fun hacker toy, but im not ready to use it as my day to day phone. Its coming tho. It *IS* the future of phones, tho. no doubt.
This phone has been around for over six months now, and there are lots of reviews around... The successor, QTEK 7070 (Tanager) is already deployed in other telcos, with improved software, smaller form factor... So, what's up with old news?
These...people... are pushing forth guidelines for writing "Orange"-friendly HTML...
Check out this "Orange Web Development Guidelines"
link
It's password protected, I could access this yesterday, amazingly when I laughed at some Orange developers and posted about this on another forum yesterday, it was indeed not password protected.
But the pdf guidelines basically states these gotchas
1) Can't send any frames.. frames are filtered out before they get to the phone
2) Jscript parser case sensitvity is opposite that of IE 4/5
3) There's one font called "nina"
So this is arguably HTML, in fact it's not HTML since frames are definitely a part of HTML. well 4.0 but they're using other 4.0 HTML features. So they're non-standard. WAP's next generation, wireless xHTML, is indeed a standard per the WAP forum, and should be adopted soon. It's just as feature-rich as wireless HTML markup can be, just like "Orange HTML" only difference is it's a standard unlike "Orange HTML." xHTML has been agreed upon by Japanese telco's, European carries, American carriers. SPV's hack of HTML browsing isn't a solution.. It's neat, but WAP will replace it. Guess WAP isn't crap.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
I actually have one of these, I've had it for a few weeks. I'm perfectly happy with it, especially since the handset cost me £30 (when I renewed by Orange contract, which I was going to do anyway). Audio is fine through the headphones, the built in speaker is a little crappy but certainly no worse than on the Sony Z7e I had previously (which was a piece of SHIT.) The OS is easy to use, OK not blindingly fast) but the screen is excellent, file browsing is a piece of piss and it Active Syncs with my PC like this - *plugs phone into provided USB cradle* *removes phone from cradle* No probs. My only gripes are that the keypad is RIDICULOUSLY small, and while I could have got the plug in keyboard for an extra £25, I can't be arsed carrying it around for the sake of SMS and navigating files etc. Second gripe is that to download and install non-official software you have to 'unlock' the phone (Orange do freely give you instructions on how to do this on their site) by modifying and reuploading a config file. Then it's Doom, SNES emulators etc a go-go. I haven't done this yet due to lack of time, but I shall. Once I unlock it and get a decent sized SD card, this is going to be a pretty handy budget PDA style device which is easy to use, very portable (it really is tiny) and to be honest, just as reliable as any other mobile device I've ever owned. While it is great fun to bash MS, if you want user experience, this phone hasn't once behaved badly and I've been giving it heavy daily usage. So there you have it.
Hmmm.
..for about a month before he gave up on it for lack of battery life and the way it'd crash as soon as you looked at it. He's now downgraded to a Sony Ericsson T68i and is much happier.
BTW, he works for Microsoft and I (indirectly) work for Orange!
These phones got issued to all the Microsoft consultants and account managers here in the UK. Every time I would speak to one of them they would soon tell me about how bad these deveices were, that they crashed or their voicemail didn't work, etc. Pretty soon, it was noticable that they all were carrying two phone, the SPV and their previous standard Nokia.
Been using it for the last few months and it is AWFUL !
Sure it sounds great, colour screen, plays mp3s, core PDA functionality, web browsing and email using GPRS (I signed up for 7 megs a month because I thought this would be useful).
But it is terrible !
So what's the problem ? Well it hangs. All the time. I get busy cursors when all I'm doing is navigating the menus. It hangs when I'm trying to make a call (it seems to get its knickers in a twist if an incoming call arrives whilst your starting an outgoing call.
Personally I'm really pissed off at having skipped the Ericsson (which I thought was too big) for this pile of shit. Been very happy with every Orange 'phone I've ever owned (been an Orange customer since they opened up here in the UK) but the SPV stinks. Edward
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Smartphone (with a capital S) is Microsoft's brandname for... smartphones (duh!). They've copyrighted the name, so that's what Howard means when he writes "first commercially available Smartphone".
You cannot copyright a name. Perhaps they have trademarked it, but this is an entirely different thing.
Which proves again what a stupid language y'all speak.
Viva la France!
Check out some of the articles on The Register. The general opinion, in Beavis and Butt-Head speak, seems to be that it sucks more than anything has ever sucked before. But what did you seriously expect from MS?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
When I first say the reviewer's name, I thought it was Alex Chu. So I thought, cool, I wonder what bizzaro time-travel device he claims he got this phone from :) But then I rememberd it was Alex Chu not this fellows name.
I think Alex Chu should definetely start some type of review site. It would probably be as funny as reading The Filthy Critic.
These things have been out in the UK for so long that version 2 is being released!
Granted, this is because version 1 was so poor that no one brought one - less than 100k units were shipped (which considering that there are about 10m sales/yr of high end phones in the UK is terrible). And that number was _after_ they started giving them away for free with a £25/mnth contract.
Microsoft fucked up by making a bad phone - not really a surprise - and the only people who brought them were the XBox-modder wannabe-techie types who wouldn't know the different between C and Cobol.
The most amusing part is that the only reason these phones sold _at all_ was because the DRM functions (you can only run executables signed by Orange and Microsoft) were broken by hackers very quickly - in fact for the French version it only required a reboot to execute. Now thats great security!
Annoying never fixed bugs include numbers stored in a different way from Outlook/OE so that when you sync your phonebook you can't dial the numbers it downloaded, text messaging that randomly doesn't work, out-of-memory errors, and a phone so large and butt ugly it belongs in 1980.
Another stunning victory then - Nokia must be quaking in their boots.
Beep beep.
Most of the team I'm working with bought these phones when we started on a project in the UK. They've been using them for about 6 months now, and these phones are loathed by all of them. They crash all the time, are very slow, and the user interface doesn't seem very intuitive at all. I'll stick with my Symbian phone.
Well i read the review and laughed all the way home as they say, i think i will stick with my amazing 7650, does all what the SPV was supposed to do and has blue tooth so i can control.
The best util for this has to be Bemused, it allows you to control your winamp on your pc through the BT on your phone, wicked laugh.
I hate to be a stereotypical advocate but Nokia really are the best at this sort of thing and i love my 7650.
S
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
The SPV is gonna be a killer phone in my opinion.
There's some great stuff on MoDaCo (www.modaco.com) like the new Spectrum emulator and a port of xRick (Rick Dangerous), which is deiniftely my favourite application!
Hi,
:)
I have had an SPV since December 2002.
The condition it shipped from the factory was less than desirable - no Task Manager, various bugs and a certification system that detered even the most enthusiastic developers (I include myself).
However, the developer community, represented by people such as www.modaco.com and www.smartphony.org, soon turned the device on its head - cracked the certification, SIM unlocked the phone, put pressure on Orange and Microsoft to fix the bugs, and developed a whole raft of excellent applications.
The SPV is now by far the best community-supported phone on the market. It is a joy to develop for and has enough capability to handle new and ported (PocketPC) apps.
To give you an idea of what community-developed apps work well with the phone, we have solid versions of Doom, Tetris, chess, a Gameboy Color emulator, various DivX players, MP3/OGG/WMA players, video calling (see who's calling you), WABA (Java-like), Task Manager, File Manager, Text editor, SCUMM player (Lucasarts game player - Monkey Island!!), ZX Spectrum emulator, and many more.
This is in addition to many excellent commercial apps.
A typical day with my SPV includes making/receiving calls, checking Slashdot on the train to work, playing some Tetris and Super Mario, listening to relaxation music on my headphones, VNC-ing (yes, VNC!!) to servers, chatting over MSN, taking a few photos and capturing some video, and checking Tube routes. Plus, I use the super-bright screen as a torch at night
Try all that on any other phone.
Oh yeah, and the phone only crashes about once every 2 or 3 days, which isn't bad for M$.
I would recommend the phone to anyone who likes to hack their tech. For newbies, I guess it's a bit of a struggle, but hey, they don't read Slashdot either.
Cheers,
Damian Lewis (porter of VNC)
Team Netsol
Manchester UK
Why all this about a mobile version that's now 6 months old?
The new version (Tanager a.k.a Qtek 7070) is smaller, longer battery life, lighter, better software, and is already available in Finland, Sweden, Honk Kong and coming to Australia this month?
Old news? What about a review of the new one?
I Have a 2 year old Motorola Accompli A008. I just bought it new the other day although it's been available for more than 2 years.
It's got a monochrome touch screen with all the normal PDA and phone functions, GPRS,E-mail, WAP, Notepad, Drawing pad etc, plus it can run J2me Java apps like a full HTML browser and games and spreadsheet program. It never hangs, it doesn't have anything that I don't need. And it costs about $100.
Now that is a SMART PHONE!
Thanks for trying M$, but no thanks.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Last weekend my wallet got nicked, from inside my trousers, while I was at the pub. I don't know how; I'm fairly paranoid, and that hasn't happened for years. But at least my travelcard, work id and house keys were in the other pocket, and the phone was in my bag, so the damage was limited to cash and calls to cancel cards.
by the swiss NZZ from february (sorry, in german): NZZ According to the article the phone often calls somebody else than you wanted - you want to talk to your friend, you get your boss on the line. Decide for yourself if this is acceptable for a phone :) But do not worry: "It will be fixed with the next software update" (this sentence is mentioned 5 time in the article.. go figure).
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
... And over here it now stands for "Service Pack Vehicle".
A colleague had one, basically for free with an expensive monthly contract, that he took back after 3 days, it had crashed so often. He and I are both now proud Sony Ericsson P800 owners.
[Begin_Rant]
The sound is fine, easily as good as my 6210
It comes with headphones for use as an mp3 player. -thats fine too
Yes it IS a little sluggish at times but it is far from unusable
I own one, I know what I'm talking about, it is not a bad phone.
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
You should check the history on this little gadget at the reg:
7 24 .html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/28
to sum up, they exclusivly partnered with Sendo, then screwed them, while taking all of their stuff and using a tiwanise company for the production....
HI all, I also have one of these phones...it was a free upgrade when my contract came up for renewal last month. So far it is the best phone i have ever used, i thought the T68 was excellent but this is so much better. Its been completely stable for me. Surfing sites over GPRS is fast. The screen quality is good. The buttons felt a little small at first but after a few days i was SMSing as fast as i used to on the T68 and nokia's. Sync'ing with my PC was a breeze, takes seconds and iteligently merged my outlook contacts to the phone contacts. There are some great games for when your traveling (including gameboy emulators). Ocassionally its slow...but in general use thats maybe only once a week. I cant remember the last time it crashed and its been turned on for about 2.5 weeks solid. Call quality is good, i couldnt tell the difference from the t68 to this. On the topic of battery life a full charge lasts about 2-3 days for me. Thats with about 45mins of calls over that period. If i dont make any calls i get 4 days of use. I have been so impressed with the phone i got one for my wife and she is happy with it too... Stu
Both myself and a work collegue have the SPV phone, and while mine behaves itself, isn't particularly slow and has only crashed once or twice, my collegue's is very slow by comparison (figure approximately 2 to 3 times the time to perform any operation), crashes regularly and frequently gets sworn at.
Standard M$ (slightly off-topic) bashing statement: I'm wondering if M$ has pushed a 'security update' to his phone at somepoint.
I'm seriously considering parting with some hard earned cash to go for a Sony Erricson T610 - I already use a T68i and haven't experienced any grief at all!
Casual Observation: I have noticed a significant drop-off in battery life after 6(ish) months of use - it will only just last a day now, whereas before I'd get about 2. The update has been applied that is supposed to increase battery life etc, but its still going downhill (compared to the life/use of my T68i)
It rocks!
what the guy says is true, but so much is good.
The patch solves a lot of the problems and WAP is just missing a bookmark, the browser works.
I love my SPV and slashdot-light works great.
First post from anywhere!
Oh and MSN messenger on the move rocks, even with the mini keypad (which you get used to quickly).
OSOD!!!!
That's orange screen of death!!
Once you tweak it and install some useful apps - such as a Task Manager. No exit commands on most programs = sluggish performance. I've had mine for about 6-7 months now and its superbly nippy having used the tweaks at Modaco - forum for Smartphones. Can't remember the last time it crashed and it plays movies, gameboy games fine. Even NetHack. :)
Plus as I'm wee, I can use the buttons no problems. No audio problems for me in London/Oxford either..
The fact is, there aren't too many phones that let you put whatever program you want on it and it be convenient (Yes, I know about Kyocera/Palm, but have you seen those things? Now THAT's a big cell phone; my friend has one and he calls it the Zach Morris phone) This phone probably has some pretty glaring bugs, but the ideas they've set forth are pretty cool. Wait for V2.0.
1p}{ 1 sp34k |33+ +|-|e|\| p30p13 \/\/il| 8e i/\/\pr3553|)
My friend bought one (in the UK) about 4 months ago, and ended up selling it after a couple of weeks on ebay. He hated it. He claimed it was slow, buggy and crashed a lot.
Now he has a Sony Ericsson P800 that he LOVES, and uses every day.
Personally I didn't want to spend 300UKP on the p800 so I bought the Nokia 3650. It still runs similar Symbian software as the P800 and it is very nice (if a little large).
YMMV.
In case anyone wants an even easier way of unlocking their SPV so it can run unsigned apps (Spectrum, Game Boy Color emulators etc etc) Here's the Orange Developers link.
Hmmm.
Said a thousand times, but worth repeatating : It's not the first smartphone, it is the first Smartphone, as in "Cell phone under MS OS "Smartphone 2002" ...
I just wanted to point out that I own one of these phone for seven months now, it had serious flaws at first, but nearly all of them were corrected by the first software update. And, geez, I do have my explorer, I do have my registry editor, I assurely do not want to change it for some phone under PalmOs or anything where the "engine" is kept away from the user eye.
(on another point : Linux for PocketPCs has been made running on it, but lacks the new phone specific functions)
Don't forget that in addition to the power consumption of Bluetooth, there is the power consumption of the device. Bluetooth is only capable of a few megabits per second (Maybe sub-megabit? I need to check...) Either way, it's a tiny fraction of the speed of Firewire. You'll be consuming on average 100x more power when you sync because syncs will last 100x or more longer.
Oh wait, you'll be consuming INFINITELY more power, because the iPod charges via Firewire! You've replaced a charging scheme with a current draw. Regardless of whether it's 10 amps or 1 milliamp, you've replaced the iPod's charging mechanism with a current draw, how do you propose it charges?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Anyone notice that this thing has been out for months already? What happened to NEWs being NEW?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
This is NOT a PocketPC. This is a pale shadow of a full fledged PDA. Smaller? yeah sure....but this thing sucks for doing anything beyond kepping contacts and making calls. If that's all you need then get another phone. These things are weak.
I have had one of these for awhile now and, oddly enough, while the voice call audio quality isn't very good, mp3s sound fine. I now use my SPV with a 256Mb SD card full of mp3s as my primary mobile music device.
I have the Nokia 3595 and it runs slow at parts too. It can run Java, but it struggles when pulling up complex menus and the like. It seems to me that the problem is the hardware isn't expecting all of that work!
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Bah humbug, the SonyEricsson P800 pisses all over these so-called smartphones.
.3gp support lets me make decent copies of my divx rips, and even without 3gpp explicit support the P800 will play 192x144 @ 15fps MPEG4/MPEG4 video.
Apple QT6.3's
but 3gpp comes to about 13MB for 29mins of video, good enough for a subway ride.
Also, iSync finally syncs addressbooks for it (calendar info "coming soon").
Its jot HWR is not as good as Newton's, but it understands my printing, once I figured out why writing on the top of the screen was in all uppercase and on the bottom was lowercase.
Mame works, without sound it is tolerable, with sound it is sl-l-o-o-o-w. The games are pretty good IMHO, particularly the driving ('Hard Drivin'-like) game.
The only nasty flaw is its use of memory stick duo, which is a hard-to-find proprietary format. It goes up to 128mb, but still it's an annoyance.
Range is a smidge better than T68, which is another caveat.
It doesn't seem to know how to do SMTPS properly, and you run either imap/pop and smtp over ssl, or none over ssl.
TIAFN..
I had a Psion 5MX (uses a version of the Symbian OS) for about 5 years. It went about 3 years without crashing and I used it every day. Other people have reported similar or better experiences with the version of the Symbian OS built into phones. Seems to me that this is cause to suggest that Symbian phone is likely to be more stable than an MS based phone.
l d=-1&commentsort=0&tid=100&mode=thread&pid=4501603
What idiot modded this as a troll. As an ex Psion Revo+ owner, I have to say that the EPOC OS (now known as Symbian) is the most stable, polished OS I have ever used. I can't remember having to reboot my Psion, EVER.
Saying that MS phones crash and Symbian phones crash is like saying "Windows 98 crashes and Solaris crashes". Yeah the statement may be true, but it's deliberately misleading. In reality, the two products aren't even in the same league as far as stability goes.
Example of people discussing Symbian's reliability:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42924&thresho
Life is too short to proofread.
Weren't these phones the ones that Microsoft stole from a British company, by making them a partner, and then turning around and killing their company?
i friend of mine got one. it crashed. she lost her address book.
The name Apple has no connection to a computer so there is no meaning theft. Safari a little less clear cut, since it piggy backs on Explorer.
It is not only MS that does this, Example Netscape Navigator. Navigator is a perfectly discriptive name, and you understand pretty much exactly what it does from the name alone.
Navigator however is a good english word and should not be trademark protected. Put a Name in front like Netscape then it is ok, just as Miscrosoft Explorer is ok, but not just Explorer by itself.
Help fight continental drift.
http://www.spvnews.com is the best actual site to find infos / patchs on this phone, whos is out in France since a few month
Just imagine when the vira start spreading on this. When you are not using it, the phone is busy phoning outer mongola and sending obscene messages to the president!
(Why this review now? It's an oooold phone around here...)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I had one of these in the UK on Orange when they came out:
It was ok, but it had one MAJOR flaw: You could not install any software which was not signed by Orange. This limited its usefulness so it went back within my 14-day period.
Camera quality was rubbish, MP3 was ok, GPRS was pretty nippy (but of not much use for downloading software).
Main problems were the cost of data/mb and the software installation problem. Also the phone is big, at least compared to most UK phones.
I have been informed there is a "fix" availible to the phone - but this is not something the majority of you will be able to get, and is not supported by the newtork operators. However the network does not have to lock the phone down in this way - most here do, to save on support calls when people shaft the phones up (apparently, but its probably to charge for a developer sig).
Verdict- Get a P800 instead.
Is it a boat?
I have had one, the MP3 quality and general call qualitiy is normal compared to most high end phones and small mp3 players
Is it a boat?
"I'm so pretty, oh so pretty..."
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
GPRS isn't a replacement for WAP. WAP is the protocol. GPRS is the connection method.
Saying GPRS is better than WAP is like saying ADSL is better than HTTP.
This phone has been out for months in Europe, and has been universally panned. It's basically non-functional as a phone, the early versions of the firmware crash every other incoming call, the vaunted features are chrome upon chrome while it lacks even basic functionality. It's a dog, and MS have proved it by failing to meet even a fraction of their ship targets. Steer clear.
Screw this thing. Get a real smartphone.
Who modded this misinformed shite up? Brand names are trademarks, not copywritten text.
Howard either fucked up the announcement, or he fucked up the trademark.
Microsoft doesn't own the trademark "Smartphone" They own specifically "WINDOWS POWERED SMARTPHONE", which isn't the same thing and doesn't preclude any other smartphone from being referred to with an uppercase S.
You cannot copyright a name. Perhaps they have trademarked it, but this is an entirely different thing.
They didn't. Grandparent is a lying fuck.
hardly a surprise from Microsoft.
When will these dolts get it. Make it work, then if you must, add features, and if the features break the core functionality, then either fix it, or scrap that feature.
Man, the only thing I hate worse than MS are the people who value a prodcut by how many features it has over how well it actually works.
"Piece of shit" = bad :-)
"Piece of piss" = good
I tested it.
It freeze on boot sequence 50% of the times; the menus are really slow;
you need to upgrade it every week !
Don't buy it !
It's the Sendo lawsuit against Orange over IP theft. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/59/31059.html
The really interesting aspect is that Sendo is suing the little guy, Orange, for something that they previously said was the work of Microsoft (stealing their technology). The court case will be very interesting if the would-be DRM kingpin is made out to be an IP thief.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07