Orange SPV M5000

Print | Close this window

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/handhelds/0,39030065,39193329,00.htm

Reviewed 18 October 2005

Reviewed by Sandra Vogel

There are several handhelds that can double up as a phone for data and voice calls by accommodating your SIM card, and several that have mini-keyboards built in. But the SPV M5000 from Orange breaks new ground in being 3G-capable, having a clamshell that lets it function like a mini-laptop computer, and offering memory that won't wipe itself if the battery runs down completely.

The SPV M5000 is not alone in opening up these new frontiers. The base hardware and Windows Mobile software that are at its core are also available from O2 as the XDA Exec, T-Mobile as the MDA Pro, and operator free as the i-mate JASJAR and the Qtek 9000.

If you get the device from Orange as the SPV M5000, you'll pay up to £400, depending on your contract.

Design
You'll have to really want this Pocket PC to warrant carrying its 285g of weight and fairly hefty bulk around everywhere, but it's difficult to see how all the features could have been combined to make a lighter or smaller device.

This is the first Pocket PC we've seen with a clamshell design. Anyone who to remembers Psion's dinky and exceptionally functional range of handhelds, such as the Series 5 and the Revo, will immediately get the point of the format. You lift the lid, look at the screen and tap at the keyboard as if you had a mini laptop in your hands.

But the SPV M5000 has another trick to show off. You can swivel the screen through 180 degrees using a sturdy-feeling hinge mechanism and lay it flat so that the keyboard is covered and the screen faces outwards. Now you have a more standard-looking Pocket PC.

The screen automatically changes between landscape and portrait orientation as you swivel it, though you can make the change manually by tapping an icon on the Today screen if you need to.

The keyboard is, of course, pretty small, so don't expect to be able to touch-type on it. Still, we found that by holding the SPV M5000 in both hands and using our thumbs, we achieved quite good typing speed. It seemed easier and faster to use than any other handheld with a mini keyboard we've tried.

There's a proper number row on the keyboard and, above this, six shortcuts to get you quickly to various menu options, with a couple of other shortcut buttons on the bottom row of the keyboard near the space bar. There's even room on the keyboard for cursor arrow keys in the inverted T shape that you will usually find on laptops.

When the keyboard is out of sight there are enough buttons around the edges of the SPV M5000 to allow for making calls (by tapping numbers out on the screen, using the built-in contacts and speed dials or voice dialling), using the built-in 1.3-megapixel camera, changing the system volume and making voice notes. There's a 3.5mm headphone jack and, along what is the front edge when you are working in laptop mode, a pair of stereo speakers.

The screen is the best we've seen on a Pocket PC. At 640x480 pixels its resolution is as high as you'll find on a handheld and while its 65k colours might seem old hat in the mobile phone world, it is at the forefront of what you can expect for a handheld.

Features
One of the key draws of the SPV M5000 is that it has 3G built in. It's the first time we've seen this in a Pocket PC, and while Orange's core customers are expected to be within businesses, where the high data rates that 3G offers will come in very handy, there is clearly potential for others to make use of the feature.

Making video calls is a cinch. There's a dedicated button on the on-screen tappable keypad, or a keyboard button if you have the clamshell open. On-screen icons let you switch between large and small windows for you and the caller.

The other great use of 3G is likely to be fast data downloading, and the SPV M5000 comes equipped with the Windows Mobile 5.0 version of Internet Explorer and with Pocket Outlook for managing incoming emails. When you are not in a 3G coverage area, your SIM will switch back to GPRS for data calls, and of course video calls won't be possible.

There are two cameras in this device. The one by the screen is used for video calls, while on the back of the casing sits a 1.3-megapixel lens with flash unit, for taking stills and shooting video. There SPV M5000 screen acts as your viewfinder, and you can shoot stills at five resolutions (1600x1280, 1280x1024, 640x480, 320x240 and 160x120 pixels), video at three resolutions (320x240, 176x144 and 128x96), and use shooting modes for Picture ID for contacts, MMS video and even use a special assisted mode for taking three-shot panoramas, which works surprisingly well.

Both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are included, so you can hop onto wireless networks for browsing and data sharing, and also use a Bluetooth headset -- trust us, this is a lot neater than holding the SPV M5000 itself to your ear to make voice calls.

Windows Mobile 5.0 comes with plenty of other software including a contacts manager, your diary, Pocket versions of Microsoft Word and Excel, a PowerPoint viewer and the Windows Media player. Orange adds a PDF viewer and Zip file manager and the Packet Video Player for watching videos.

The 128MB of built-in memory is all flash-based. Some of it is used for the built-in applications and a total of about 67MB is free for you to use. You can augment this with an SD card if necessary, but the really good news is that if the battery runs down, all the software and data you've put onto the SPV M5000 should be safe.

Orange has its own substitute for the Windows Mobile Today Screen, which adds tappable shortcut buttons to the screen so you can quickly get around the SPV M5000. These buttons can be used, for example, to view or create SMS, MMS and email messages, to jump to your diary and contacts, to see the call history and drop into the Internet, and to launch four applications you can specify.

Performance
The processor behind all this power is Intel's PXA 270, running at 520MHz. Applications opened with reasonable speed, but we found the SPV M5000 rather slow to switch screen orientations.

Video calling and Web use with a 3G connection were both fine, and a large 'U' on the top of the screen indicates very obviously that you have 3G coverage. Voice calls were perfectly fine to make too, and the built-in speaker was both loud and clear. What we didn't like was holding the SPV M5000 to our ear to make voice calls -- a Bluetooth headset will be an important accessory.

Battery life is quoted by Orange as being a maximum of 4 hours of GSM talk, 3 hours of 3G and 2 hours of video telephony. You are not likely to want to make that many video calls in any one day, and we found we easily got through a couple of days without needing to charge up.

To give the battery a rundown test, we looped MP3 music with the screen forced to stay on, and got music for 5.5 hours, with a further 45 minutes of battery life after the SPV M5000 decided it didn't want to put its energy into reading our SD card any more.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide