Orange SPV E650 Review - CoolSmartPhone.com

So, the Orange SPV E650. Just an Orange version of the HTC S710 we reviewed, surely? Well, yes and no. Firstly, the keyboard is a different colour, we have the obligatory Orange logo and there's a distinct lack of Windows Live (no MSN Messenger fun here kids). Whilst Windows Live may have vanished, something rather painful has popped up instead, but we'll get to this in a minute.

First, let's have a look at this delicious device. There's a vivid screen which is clear, crisp and close to the casing. People may look at this phone as you sit in a local restaurant and think, "Yeah, it's ok." Rarely, though, will you find these same people ignoring it when the QWERTY keyboard pops out.

The Orange SPV E650 is one of the first Smartphones (or should I say "Windows Mobile Standard Handsets") to get Windows Mobile 6.0. This flavour of WM6 is named "Standard", which means "not touch screen" and current owners of Pocket PC's (Windows Mobile Pro) devices may find themselves tapping the screen for a short while after buying this. Windows Mobile 6.0 does bring some added benefits, such as the Office Mobile suite - something which is suits the keyboard on this device well. The Office suite on board won't let you create documents, but it will let you edit them - yes, it's strange, but there's an obvious way to get around this by simply keeping a blank document on the device and using it as a template.

Powered by a Texus Instruments OMAP 850 CPU running at a little over 200Mhz there's 64Mb RAM and 128Mb FLASH ROM. It has a QVGA 240x320 LCD screen there's also a 2.0 megapixel camera and a MicroSD card slot for storing the images on.

Connectivity is good, although there's a lack of 3G in this handset unfortunately. You do get GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band connectivity along with WiFi and stereo Bluetooth.

In the box

Along with the CD's and manuals needed to get your started you'll find a standard MiniUSB cable for hooking up your device, a charger, headphone / handsfree kit, battery and the handset itself.

Let's have a look at the handset with our usual zoomy zoomy close-up camera. At the front the numeric keypad is almost reminiscent of those on the Lobster 700 we reviewed a while back in that the keys are tilted backwards. This time though it works and the keys don't jiggle around and they work rather well.

The centre keys and navigation pad are black in colour which is continued around the back and sides of the handset.

The outer keys are a polished silver colour with the call answer / release keys being on the bottom portion of the keypad. It doesn't take too long to get used to these frequently-used keys being here. The "home" and "back" keys are just above and the polished silver is continued around the screen.

The central navigation pad is raised slightly and has the two soft-keys either side for choosing menu items with Windows Mobile. You may also see the small light sensor at the bottom of the keypad just below the "0" key. This senses when to turn the backlight on for the keys - a cool blue colour is used on both keyboards.

The QWERTY keyboard pops out with a small push and that damn sound is played at the same time (turn it off by going into Settings->Sounds->Keyboard Sliding->Off). You should be able to see the two status lights on the top left. The first is the familiar "CAPS" light you'll have seen on your normal PC keyboard whilst the second indicates whether the FN key is in use. This gives you access into extra functions shown below in blue.

The keyboard is easy enough to use, although I've had a few comments about the fact that the screen is slightly to the right of the keyboard. It's not a massive issue, but I thought it best to mention. In addition to the QWERTY keyboard you've got two more soft-keys at the top, plus if you need to you can still use the numeric keypad even while the rear keyboard is extended. I found this useful for the all-important "Home" key and for navigating webpages, answering calls etc. With the keyboard extended you'll probably start using the normal navigation pad to browse webpages without even thinking about it.

As we look toward the top of the device there's a rather sexy little earpiece containing a couple of LED's for Bluetooth / network / charging activity. These will flash to let you know what's happening with the device. Ooohh.. look at that polished surface.

At the very top of the handset is the power button. You need this for nothing more than turning the phone on and off. You can see in this shot how rounded the device is too, it fits nicely in the hand and lacks any harsh corners.

If we flip the device over you'll see the 2 megapixel camera. There's no flash here, but it seems to work a lot better in low-light than any other phone camera we've tested before. More on this later. You'll also notice the main loudspeaker behind the grill on the right. That gromit on the left is for fitting an external aerial etc.

While we're looking at this area I'll show you how the back of the phone looks with the keyboard extended. You can see the slot where the SIM card goes - if you pull the SIM out you'll find that the power goes off.

It's certainly a lot easier to install a SIM card in here and there's no need to fiddle around with the battery and battery cover to access it. With the phone upright and closed you'll see the volume controls and the voice-dial button. The volume control buttons are'nt as good as they could be. I couldn't find them easily enough during a call and ended up having to take the phone away from my ear to adjust the volume. Again, this is probably just me being a tad picky but they're not quite prominent enough to find by touch alone.

Press the voice-dial button and you'll go into the voice-dial application (duurrrr). If you hold it down you'll get the "Notes" application that we'll look at later - this will let you record some voice recordings for typing up or as reminders etc.

One definite bonus I've noticed here is that all of these keys work even when the device is in its "power saving" mode. This means I can just tap this or the camera button without having to use the power button first.

I wasn't going to use the shot below because the light balance was a bit off, but it does show you the curvature of the handset, which again gives it a comfortable feel in the hand.

Switch to the right-side of the handset we've got the camera button on the top right. This will activate the camera application and will take photos in a portrait style - this makes photos very "tall" instead of "wide" with a resolution of up to 1200x1600. Thankfully it's set it to be 1200x1600 (2 megapixel) as default - so many times I've picked up handsets and they've been set to resolutions lower than the maximum as the default "out of the box" setting.

More on the camera later.

At the bottom right we've got the MicroSD slot. This is tucked behind a rubber flap and lets you increase your storage capacity easily. Check out the prices at www.mobymemory.com if you're after a cheap card for this device.

Here it is with the rubber flap bent back - the mechanism clicks in and then holds the card, with the rubber flap their for added protection and peace of mind.

At the very bottom of the phone is your miniUSB connector. This is where you'll plug in the supplied headset / hands-free kit, your charger or PC cable. This again is hidden behind a rubber door. I found it a little tricky to open and close, however if it did fall off I don't think I'd miss it much :) This is the same as all the other miniUSB slots you'll see on many other Windows Mobile phones - don't worry it it looks a little different to the one you have. To the left is your microphone and then the loop for any wrist or neck strap you may wish to use.

Inside

The colour scheme on the SPV E650 is a combination of grey and orange. The homescreen is relatively uncluttered and, for some bizarre reason, Orange have dropped their extremely useful Today / Homescreen that we've seen on other Windows Mobile devices such as their Orange SPV M700 and the Orange SPV C600. Personally I quite liked the previous homescreen - it gave quick and easy access into the popular areas of the phone, so I'm puzzled why it's gone. The new homescreen has a guy climbing a mountain and a very basic layout which doesn't show off the abilities of the phone.

Here you can see that the WiFi is turned connected to one of my home WiFi access points (called 8MBFORFREE) and we can see messages, date, time, appointments and profile.

The homescreen will also give you more information such as whether the alarm is turned on - a small bell will appear next to the clock to indicate that you've set it. Thankfully there's also a large amount of homescreens and themes out there for you to customize your homescreen and the colour scheme. First, let's have a look at the WiFi and how I got it connected.

Selecting the top rows (showing "Orange ... Wi-Fi: XXXXX) brings me into the Comm Manager application. I now press "4" or move to the WiFi option and press select. It'll do a bit of searching and then hopefully spot my access point. I should probably mention the power saving here - the WiFi is turned off after a period of inactivity and then back on again when you start using the phone. This is all configurable through the "Power Mode" setting as shown on the right here.

OK, now I've turned on the WiFi it's spotted some access points for me to choose from. Two of these are mine (I'm greedy). Pressing "2" gets me into my access point and I then need to simply add in my WEP key to get access. You can see at the top I've now got a "WiFi" symbol in my status bar so I know I'm browsing via WiFi!

You can get more detailed information about your WiFi connection through the "Settings" option shown above. This shows you the access point your connected to, what channel you're on, how strong the signal is and the speed you've got. You can also do advanced stuff like refreshing your IP address and more.

When you're connected to a wireless access point you'll get the appropriate name in on your homescreen. This will vanish and it'll say "Off" if you don't do anything on the internet for a bit. Again there's lots of options to tweak here and you can adjust pretty much everything.

The next thing you'll probably be wanting to do is open up Internet Explorer. You can access this from the homescreen or through the programs menu. It's undergone some changes since Windows Mobile 5 and seems to render pages quicker. You'll also notice the lack of an address bar - you can open up an address bar and add your own URL by clicking "Menu", however the default homescreen (and one which can't be changed - grrrrrr!) is this..

Whilst there are good points to this home screen (I like the Favourites and History tabs), Windows Live has been integrated as a search engine into the homescreen so all searches go through that instead of Google. This is highly irritating, especially considering that you can't change your home page Sorry Microsoft, but lets' face it - people want to use Google, not Microsoft Live.

Searches you do through Windows Live will be rendered into a mobile format which may look different to what you'd expect, however you can still enter and view websites manually by clicking the "Menu" option.

I'll start things off by doing a search for the Orange SPV E650 in Windows Live. I've pulled the keyboard out so, the screen has switched to its' "widescreen" mode. You'll noticed that the natty "xt9" system has kicked into life which helps out when I'm using either keyboard. It'll show words you've typed previously and words from its' own built-in dictionary - good for quick data entry.

Due to the WiFi connection pages appear really quickly and its' nice not to worry about data charges from your regular phone network. Each page shows up as "One Column", however you can change this plus the text size to suit your preference. If you close your browser and then come back to it later you'll find that your browsing history is tucked under the relevant menu bar on the home page - this lets' you find the page you checked out earlier without any difficulty.

OK, so you've browsed the web. I'm guessing you may want to go onto Messenger now... oh, wait. Sorry. You can't. Orange have decided to remove it from the E650 (you may remember it being fully available in the network-free HTC S710 version we reviewed). Why? Well it's the same reason that Orange have continually given - there's an "Orange Messenger" on the cards that will let you talk to your mates instead. However, despite several months of promises it's failed to materialise.

So, if we've got no instant messaging we'll instead have to use email, text and MMS. Setting up an email account has been made even easier in Windows Mobile 6.0 and most of the work is done for you if the wizard finds your settings. You've also got the keyboard of course, so there's no excuse to get your normal POP3 email setup.

Once into "Messaging" you'll see a screen like the one above. It's just a matter of choosing option "3" to add a new email account. Next I slide out that keyboard and enter the necessary information to setup my email account. First up it's my email address and name - again, look how the "xt9" system picks up words for me..

This process needs a few bits of information - your name (easy enough I hope), your email address (simple), the incoming / outgoing mail servers (if you're unsure, copy this off your PC settings or let the wizard have a go at it) and the username and password. You can then set it to automatically receive at set intervals as I've done above. Once complete you'll have a new account to use in your "Messaging" program. This will let me check to see if I've got email from you guys, and reply to it, when I'm on the train, the bus, or in the pub. Good eh?

OK, so what next? We've got onto the WiFi, we can browse the net and we're all setup for email. I guess we better add some contacts really hadn't we? :) This part can be one really, really easily by connecting your PC into the phone with the supplied cable. This will send across all of your existing Outlook contacts onto the phone. All you need to do to add someone is simply do it on your PC and then all of their details will magically get transported over to the phone.

To add people in when you're on the go it's easily done through the Contacts system on your handset. First up, enter "Contacts" and then choose "New". The Orange SPV E650 will ask if you want an Outlook Contact or a SIM contact. I'd choose Outlook here, but it's useful to have the SIM contact option should you be swapping SIM cards.

You start off by entering all the usual details. Again the xt9 system helps you along the way.

As usual there's bucket loads of fields to use up. You can, if you wish, add just the name and number, however that'd be a bit of a waste when you've got home numbers, work numbers, company numbers, email addresses, company names, department, job title, office address, town, postcode, birthday, nickname and so much more !

As you can see me and the Queen are quite close, so I've got her details and picture added into the phone. These new details will get sync'd to the PC or Exchange server too.

Once you've saved your contact it's easy to edit or find it. From the homescreen you simply need to start typing out the name. If I wanted to call her Majesty I'd just need to start typing "783" and the predictive dial will find it. It'll look for names starting with "QUE" and other appropriate variations in your contacts and call history along with any numbers starting "783". This makes finding people and calling them quite simple.

All of the other contacts you can see above have been added in using Outlook - I just plugged the phone in and it mirrored everything across. Now, this doesn't mean that I can't still edit those contacts - this is easily done by choosing "Edit" on the menu, plus any changes I make will be reflected back wth the PC after. I can also beam contact details and send them as a vCard or add them to Windows Live. There's bags more stuff to choose from depending on what you're part of the contact card you're looking at. You can even have an individual ringtone so you can tell who's calling before you even reach the phone.

I touched on the Call History before. This will not only show you the contacts you've called but also those who've called you, plus your missed calls, timers and more.

Let's have a little look around the Office Suite. It's slightly different to the PocketPC / Windows Mobile Pro version. You can't create files with the Microsoft Office applications here, however you can edit them. It's a slimmed-down version of the Window Mobile Pro editing capabilities too, but there's enough functionality to keep you and your slide-out keyboard happy.

Yes, you heard me right - you can't create documents. You can, if you wish, copy a couple of blank documents (say, blank.doc and blank.xls) to the phone and use these as "templates", then do a "Save As". I've already done this and it works well - an excellent work around. Here's Excel. One thing I did notice is that - if you've got Office 2007 on your PC - you CANNOT copy the new "xlsx" documents over to Office Excel on the phone. Even though the "xlsx" format it now saved as standard on Office 2007 you'll have to manually go in and choose "Save As -> Office 97-2003 Workbook" and then copy it to the phone. Yes, yes - I know.

Here's me viewing a document. You then have to switch to "Edit" mode to tweak the document and then you can save it or send it on.

Word has a lovely smooth scrolling system and when you're viewing documents it's so nice to slide down the .doc file. Again you can choose "Edit" mode and change bits about the file. You can also adjust the zoom, adjust font style and perform searches.

Powerpoint lets you view slides before you get to a presentation or meeting and will let you prep for that all-important briefing. Again there's lots of viewing options and the ability to go to certain slides, show links and orientation control.

An essential piece of software (at least in our book) is Adobe PDF. It's not in the "Office" folder, but instead lives all alone in a folder called "Document Readers", which again I found a little strange. Why have Orange put one program all on its' own inside one folder? That's like me having one drawer for just one t-shirt, then another drawer for another t-shirt.

There's zoom control and a whole lot more packed in here so you can open up PDF documents that you may have been sent on email. One thing I'm disappointed about is the lack of "Zip". If you get any of these documents (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Adobe PDF) zipped up you're stuck. :(

I almost wasn't going to load up the "Calculator" application. In Windows Mobile 5.0 the calculator is a bit... meh. But look what's happened. It's undergone a serious facelift, plus they (and I mean the Microsoft "they") have made it easier to use by including the mathematical functions on the navigation pad.

Let's say we want to do 4 multiplied by 18 divided by 6. I'd just press "4", "left", "18", "right", "6" then it's just a matter of press the navigation button in the centre and bingo - you're done. What a fantastic idea, and so damned simple. Lovely, just lovely.

Let's have a look at the messaging application again. We touched on the email side earlier, but most people will want to know about the text (SMS) messaging and MMS messaging. Writing a message is simply a matter of clicking "New" (which is hidden away under "Menu") and then using the predictive function we saw earlier (when dialing someone) to choose the recipient. Below you can see the message listing screen. If you open one up you'll see the contact picture at the top of the message plus the whole message.

As you can see, I'm great mates with the Queen and she's been watching a TV show on Sky. I can forward her message on, reply to it, delete and more. If you want to forward a message on you'll find that option under "Menu->Reply->Forward", which......again, is a little weird.

When typing out a message you can use the "xt9" system to help you out or - if you want to use the old way and type without assistance if you wish. Either way, you can use the slide-out keyboard to type stuff out fairly rapidly by using your thumbs.

Picture messaging / MMS is easily done and follows a similar pattern. You choose the MMS account, select a contact and insert objects or pictures. It'll tell you if any attachment is too big and will offer up resize options on the fly.

You can keep your life in check too by using the Calendar. This will synchronize with your PC or Exchange and keep you on-time for those all important meetings and appointments.

You're also able to change appointments or suggest new times as well as replying to meeting requests. The calendar view has an added bit of "zing" now with a fluid gliding motion through the dates.

Now let's have a look at some of the programs available in this handset. We've covered a few of them already, however it's good for you to see what's available. Don't forget that you can navigate this menu system with your navigation pad or press the relevant numeric keys - i.e. 1 for "Call History", 2 for "Address Book" etc.

Notice the Orange icons - these have obviously been generated purely for the Orange network as I've not seen these in other handsets. The "Organiser" option on the left is actually a folder and will take you into the screen on the right - this is where the "Voice" and "Quick" Notes applications live - these are accessible from the hot key on the left of your E650 too, so let's have a look at them.

Here's the Voice Notes. It's relatively simply really. You just record any memo, audio note or whatever you like into the phone - you can then play it back later or set it as your own strange ringtone.

Here's the Quick Notes application. It's a little like Notepad on your PC with a hint of Post-It note organisation.

Messaging, Call History, Internet Explorer, Contacts, Calendar we've already covered. We'll have a look at the camera in a moment but first up let's use the "Pictures and Videos" application. This does pretty much what it states - you can watch a slideshow of your pictures, change folders, copy and paste. If you select a picture you can perform some cropping, auto-correction or rotation, beam or bluetooth the picture, set it as your home screen, zoom or save it under a different name. I like the cropping option - it's good for quickly tweaking shots on the go before you email or MMS them off to someone.

On the next page of applications we've got PV Player to show your videos, a video recorder for capturing them and a "Games" folder which of course contains b****y Bubble Breaker and Solitaire.

Let's have a look at Windows Media Player. I love using this to listen to streaming audio and TV - something which is done easily thanks to the WiFi connectivity. Yes, it's a shame that the handset doesn't have 3G, and you're restricted somewhat on the move. I love listening to www.dance.fm around the house - just hook onto the wireless, open up the relevant web page and then fire up the streaming URL. I can then bop away around the house (or anywhere else with a wireless access point) with my headphones on or I can place the phone on one side so that everyone can hear it.

Here I am browsing a few rather nice sites to get to my favourite streaming link. I use www.streamingpda.nl, which is linked from mobile.coolsmartphone.com

Above I'm listening to a streaming radio station, however I can easily open up a TV stream and watch that instead..

Windows Media Player also includes the usual library system to easily categorise your music and video files by name, genre and album plus you can update or switch the library from the internal storage to the MicroSD card for more room.

File Explorer comes on board and lets you do most of the stuff you're able to do in Windows Explorer on your PC. Rename files, copy, sort, beam, delete, make new folders or send the files as email attachments. There's alsoa Bluetooth explorer that'll let you browse other handsets as if they were a network share. This makes moving files a lot easier.

There's a Java app for running games and utilities plus an accessorites folder containing the extras on the right screen below.

The task manager helps to display what programs are currently running in the background. This can help to speed up your phone if you find that one application is sucking all of the phones' resources or memory. I've got all this stuff running and still have over 8Mb free.

In the settings you've got stacks of options to choose from and change. Everything from the sounds, background image, power, security and regional settings can be changed plus there's now a Window Update function to help keep your phone running smoothly.

Remember years ago I mentioned how rubbish the Smartphone alarm system was? Well, luckily enough I got the chance to go over to Seattle and tell the Microsoft boys myself. End result? It's now slighlty better. It's still not as configurable as the Pocket PC (Windows Mobile Pro) version, however it'll now let you sound the alarm every day, on weekdays or not at all. Huzzar!

Many of you will want to know about the sounds, ringtones and message alerts on this handset. They're better than the Windows Mobile 5 OS and you've got more choice now too. You can always download more from our downloads section if you want !

As you can see there's sounds for everything - even that keyboard sliding sound I mentioned earlier.

There's also several Profiles to choose from and you can edit each one to suit your tastes. That "Automatic" one at the bottom will turn the phone onto "Silent" mode when you're in a meeting that you've scheduled. Clever huh? There's also home screen options and colour schemes, so you can change the green areas to be a different colour etc.

Let's not forget that you can change the colour scheme and layout through the "Home Screen" option. You can change the background image too, maybe even make it one of yur own photos.

I've read a few reviews whilst preparing for my own and some tend to mention the low camera quality. Now, whilst it's not going to beat a 7-8 megapixel Canon camera it is rather good indeed. I noticed especially that the shots in low-light were much improved over other HTC devices. Here you'll also notice how the E650 takes more "portrait" style photos. You can of course change this by rotating the phone and then altering the picture rotation on your PC later.

Click each image for the original "un-resized" shot. All of these photos were taken on the standard setting - I've not messed with the brightness / exposure settings at all.

In daylight the camera is probably about as good as any other 2 megapixel camera. However, it's in low-light that this camera really works a lot better than other devices I've tested. Sure, you have to make sure that both you and your subject aren't moving too much when you take a photo in low-light, however the results are much better. I took the shots above whilst visiting my parents house. A neighbour turned up in his helicopter, as you do, so I filmed it to give you an idea of the video quality. I've stuck it on YouTube below...

I'm not the best camera man in the world, so here's a bit where the helicopter came a bit closer.

The camera application is the "new style" one we've grown used to in more modern HTC-built handsets. There's a few shortcut keys to help you out too, for example "1" will rotate through the capture types,"2" will change the resolution, "3" will change the exposure setting and so on. You can also use up / down on your navigation pad to zoom and left / right to increase the brightness. There's also that "Metering Mode" setting that will detect either the light at the centre of the shot or the entire shot. This helps when you're taking pictures with a combination of light and dark. You also get a few helful prompts like this when you put a new storage card in

In the top right you can see that I'm storing my images / video on the phones' internal memory. You can change this by pressing the left soft-key (the spanner symbol) and changing it to the memory card if you want. There's many more settings to play with including the photograph effects (negative, grayscale etc), time stamp, shutter sound, review duration and more. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that, after taking a shot it'll give you a review of the image for a couple of seconds and then switch back to the camera preview window again. This is good for rapid-fire shots and cuts down on the amount of buttons you need to keep pressing.

As I mentioned before the shots are taken in a "tall" picture like this, so photos come out in a "portrait" style instead of widescreen. Just rotate the phone and then you can rotate the snap later on your computer. Here's some more of the settings that are available - notice the metering mode and quality settings, these are just some of the options available.

To zoom in you'll need to drop the resolution a bit, so you can press "2" to alter the resolution down to 1 megapixel and then used the "up" button on the navigation pad to zoom in. Once you've taken a photo you'll get a quick look at how it came out so that you can try again if you wish.

You've probably heard about the fairly major bug with the Orange SPV E650 over at MoDaCo, but there's still a large amount of people stating that they've never had any problems. Why? Well, to be honest it's best if we explain it in pictures. It happens when you're installing software, however it only happens in the Orange SPV E650 model and not in the SIM-free HTC S710 we borrowed from the guys at devicewire.com. Luckily there is an easy work-around, or you can use the MoDaCo fix to sort it more permanently.

Here's a look at the problem..

This handset has some great features. The fact that it looks and operates like a conventional mobile phone is fantastic, and I love the fact that I am, at last, reviewing a Smartphone (Windows Mobile Standard) handset. Sure, Pocket PC's (Windows Mobile Pro handsets) are great too, but the minute you get a stylus out and start tapping on the screen a lot of people tend to knock you down the "cool" scale somewhat.

Let's have a look at the downsides though. Firstly, there's no instant messaging application. Secondly, there's no 3G, yes, no Zip application and one fairly horrible bug. However, Windows Mobile allows you to get around these problems. If you ensure "xT9" is selected when you install stuff then you're fine, and you can install an instant messaging application yourself. Let's also remember that this is a "normal looking" phone that packs not only WiFi, but a terrific colour screen, good camera, large storage capacity, spring-loaded keyboard, voice dial, Office Mobile, stereo Bluetooth and MP3 / video capabilities plus a stack load more.

This is a device I like, a clever phone with a kick-ass bonus. There's no touch screen, no virtual numeric keypad - you're given a proper keypad - the same familiar keypad you've used a million times before but with the added flexibility of a QWERTY keyboard, WiFi and a good camera all in one compact handset.

Link - Orange.co.uk