Jørgen Sundgot puts the petite Orange SPV M600 business phone through its paces, finding both ups and downs among its extensive set of features. Does it pass the mustard?
Review summary of the Orange SPV M600:
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 Contrasts abound in Orange’s SPV M600. An excellent display and comprehensive connectivity are held back by the absence of a thumbboard and 3G, resulting in a device best suited for viewing rather than editing data. At this, it does very well indeed, and although it’s no match for the operator’s own SPV M5000, good battery life, an improved setup for one-handed navigation and a 2 Megapixel camera render it a very nice sidekick indeed - even though its performance is modest and its memory limited. Release: April 2006. Price: $1.
Pros: Impressively small; good one-handed navigation and battery life; 2 Megapixel camera
Cons: Lacks thumbboard and 3G; limited memory
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Full Orange SPV M600 Review:
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Is it just us, or are Windows Mobile devices shrinking by the month nowadays? At 148 g and 108 x 58 x 18 mm, the rather stylish Orange SPV M600 is even smaller than the company's own SPV M3000 or the O2 XDA Mini S - but at the expense of not including a thumbboard, which is one of the most important factors of a good business phone. Can the SPV M600 overcome this handicap and climb the charts? Let's find out.
Look ma, one hand
Chalking up a first place for one-handed navigation among the Windows Mobile Phone Edition devices we've reviewed to date, the SPV M600 not only offers an excellent navigational pad and soft buttons but also dedicated 'Start' and 'Ok' keys. Alas, other buttons are few and far between; there's one for the combined radio/vibrating alert/synchronization Comm Manager, and one to manage the Camera. Unfortunately, a thumbboard is nowhere to be seen, leaving only a virtual keyboard for data entry - which is mildly put an inadequate option.
Meanwhile, the 2.8-inch QVGA display of the SPV M600 is a bright and highly legible affair despite its sub-par ClearType font-smoothing performance. It also doubles as a viewfinder for the 2 Megapixel camera, which makes quite the jump in quality as compared to previous Orange business phones; white balance is a tad off, but shutter speed and colour saturation are both to our satisfaction - as is the somewhat fumbling macro mode which requires a manual lens rotation.
There's such a thing as good enough
Sadly lacking 3G connectivity, the Orange SPV M600 still does rather well in the connectivity department with adequate data transfer speeds and good voice performance as delivered by quad-band GSM and EDGE support. The inclusion of Bluetooth 1.2 for dial-up networking and headset use further improves matters, as does Wi-Fi 802.11b and the USB 2.0 with charging support - always a nice touch for road warriors.
Sporting comfortably snappy overall performance despite its modest 200 MHz processor, the SPV M600 does well at common productivity tasks, including the full set of its pre-installed applications. It's a bit limited in the memory department with 43 MB of storage and 25 MB of RAM, which means its SDIO capable SD/MMC expansion slot should come in handy for all but the most basic of users.
Under the hood
Capable of sustaining Windows Mobile 5.0 for up to two days with average use, the SPV M600 plays to the strengths and weaknesses of this operating system which include its broad variety of Microsoft branded applications, best-in-class desktop synchronization and good groupware support for Exchange. Document management, meanwhile, is decent but by no means extensive with Microsoft's own applications handling the viewing and editing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files; as a nice touch Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files are also supported.
For users more concerned with the phone functionality of the SPV M600, Orange's Today screen modification will likely be appreciated as it lends itself towards improved accessibility for phone, messaging and browsing tasks. Those not in favour of it can easily revert to the standard Microsoft setup. Lastly, it should be mentioned that, in an unusual move, Pocket MSN - including Pocket MSN Messenger - has been excluded from the line-up of pre-installed applications.
Price and availability
The Orange SPV M600 is at the time of writing available for free on pay monthly contracts to subscribers of mobile network operator Orange.
Price and availability
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