BIOS: Technology Means Business

Orange has expanded its business range with the excellent SPV C600 smartphone (£199). The device bolsters Orange’s range of mobile devices based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system, allowing users to connect to their company's Microsoft Exchange 2003 servers without additional software. It also supports high speed data access by using EDGE technology (up to 247Kbit/s), although the UK does not currently support EDGE (we have to make do with GSM and GPRS connectivity). Those in France, Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Belgium are in luck.

Similar to most modern smartphones, the SPV C600 (5.9x108x18.8mm, 105g) lets you access your e-mail, use your calendar and synchronise data with your desktop (it synchronises with Outlook perfectly), as well as make calls and send text messages in the usual way. However, unlike other smartphones such as Orange’s SPV M3000, the SPV C600 sports a compact mobile phone design so there’s no full keyboard.

The SPV C600 is designed to ensure that doing business out of the office is simple and effective - and it largely succeeds. Underpinning these key business features is the faster data rates that EDGE provides, giving you faster access to your e-mail and other business data via Orange’s high speed advanced EDGE networks. Quad-band compatibility also ensures global network coverage, making the phone perfect for business travellers.

Similar to its predecessor, the SPV C500, the SPV C600 is designed and priced for high volume business sales, opening the way for companies to equip their workforce to do business remotely. However, ease of use has been improved with a joystick, the screen is slightly bigger and has a higher resolution (320x240 versus 220x176 pixels), and the digital camera has been improved to 1.3-Megapixels (1280x1024 compared to 640x480 pixels). You can also shoot video at 176x144 and 128x96 pixels.

Battery performance has been juiced too, with a talktime of around 4 hours and standby time of around 6 days. Unfortunately there’s still no FM tuner or Wi-Fi. To help busy executives kick back, there is an MP3 and WAV music player in the form of Windows Media Player 10 Mobile.

The SPV C600 has 64MB of internal memory for storing applications and data, but in real-life terms you’ll only get around 11.5MB of storage memory and 27.3MB of program memory available. There is a miniSD slot for additional external memory but Orange only ships a 32MB card, which shouldn’t last long if you take lots of top-quality shots. And to swap memory cards you have to power down the device because the slot is inconveniently located underneath the battery.

Built-in e-mail and real time syncing with Microsoft’s Outlook is supported, giving you access to your diary, contacts and e-mails out of the box. In addition, Windows Mobile 5.0 ensures the closest experience to the desktop version of Microsoft’s Office on a mobile device. We also really liked the unique Orange Homescreen, which is customised to provide one-click access to key business features including ActiveSync, File Explorer, Calculator and Notes. You also have the option to further personalise the menu to your individual requirements.

The SPV C600 runs on Microsoft’s new smartphone operating system, Windows Mobile 5.0. The operating system is a great improvement from Windows Mobile 2003 SE and you don’t need to rely on Orange’s photo ID application anymore. Microsoft has built support for contact pictures directly into the operating system. The pictures even sync over the air along with e-mail, calendar entries, contacts and now tasks. Tasks is a new addition to sync over Exchange ActiveSync or manually over ActiveSync allowing Outlook users to use and sync tasks easily while working mobile.

Apart from user interface tweaks the major new addition to Windows Mobile 5.0 is push e-mail, allowing Exchange 2003 SP2 users to receive their e-mail in a similar fashion to Blackberry users. The great news for enterprise mail operations is that Microsoft has built this functionality directly into Exchange 2003. Research In Motion (RIM), manufacturers of Blackberry, requires enterprises to purchase separate Blackberry servers for this.

Internet Explorer has also been greatly improved with the SPV C600. You can now view sites in full-screen and you can tell exactly how much data is being downloaded at any given time. Mobile favourites will sync with your desktop PC allowing you to always keep a backup of your SPV C600’s favourites. The Calendar application hasn’t really improved, although you can now see more entries thanks to the higher resolution screen, but ActiveSync 4.1 greatly improves on previous versions.

The downside is that you will have to install ActiveSync 4.1 in order to sync the SPV C600 - backwards compatibility isn’t supported. Contact has also been improved and you can now add pictures to the contacts directly, along with custom ringtones. Orange also bundles a stereo headset and a copy of Outlook, along with a mains power adapter, PC connection cable, printed getting started guide and a more detailed printed user manual. Overall, this is the best smartphone if you need to stay in touch with your Outlook-based contacts but don’t want to lug around a fully-fledged PDA.

[9] - Editors’ Choice

[Best Mobile Phone Pricing UK]
[Best Mobile Phone Pricing US]

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