Orange SPV E200

Want to know more about my SPV?  Check out my SPV Journal.
 
 


Technical Summary

 

Processor:                   133 MHz TI OMAP.

Memory:                     32 Mb.

Screen:                        16-bit colour, 222 x 176 transflective resolution.

Operating System:     Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone Edition.

Power:                        Internal Lithium Ion Polymer replaceable,

                                    rechargeable battery, 1,000 mAh capacity.

 

Form Factor

 

The Orange SPV E200 looks like a conventional, if slightly bulky, modern cell ‘phone.  The unit is dominated by the keypad and screen in combination, but given that the SPV is essentially a modern ‘phone with a built-in PDA, this is understandable.  At the back of the handset you’ll find the lens for the built-in camera, and along the side are three buttons for power, volume and voice recorder facilities.  The unit also has both a universal serial port and a headphone socket at the bottom, and an infrared port at the top.

The device is easy to operate in the one hand, something that is very difficult to do with many more conventional PDA designs - but not impossible.

 

Screen

 

The SPV E200 uses the same screen as the original SPV and the revised E100 model - this is a good thing.  It’s crisp, bright and colourful.  It’s a 16-bit colour screen with 222 by 176 pixel resolution - this being 53% greater than most older PalmOS devices including the m515 and m130.  It is one of the finest mobile ‘phone screens I’ve ever used, although this is perfectly understandable given that the SPV is much, much more than just a mobile ‘phone.  For video, there is a slight trace of “ghosting” when displaying a fast moving image, but it is less noticeable than the Palm m130, for example.

 

Sound and Notifications

 

Perhaps one of the most important concessions to the SPV E200 being rather more than just a conventional cell ‘phone is the built-MP3 player, which uses Microsoft Media Player.  The device has competent audio abilities, although the external speaker is noticeably inferior to the iPAQ’s, it’s certainly loud enough.  With the headphones, the quality is good enough for most purposes.

The ‘phone also offers a polyphonic ringer and a vibrate function, and of course new sounds can be added to the device if required (either as WAVs or MP3s).

 

Storage

 

Although SPV E200 has a quoted 32 Mb of RAM, which appears to be rather disappointing, this is only half of the story.  Windows Mobile manages memory in a slightly different way than PocketPC 2002 and 2003, which means that it is rather more efficient than these types of device.  In effect, this makes the device rather more effective than a 32 Mb conventional PocketPC 2002 / 2003 device, but less efficient than a 32 Mb PalmOS device.

Expansion

 

The SPV E200 has a single SD memory slot and Orange provide an 8 Mb card with the unit, which is of limited use for carrying MP3s.  The SPV E200 has a memory card manager bug, which dramatically increases the devices’ power consumption when the slot is in use (either a memory card or the blanking plate).  I’ll monitor my SPV’s battery status and report back in due course.

 

Communications

 

The SPV is a tri-band cell ‘phone using GSM 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz frequencies.  In addition to the GSM hardware, the SPV also has GPRS, infrared, USB, head ‘phone and Bluetooth, all built-in.  About the only items missing from this list are GPS and WiFi.  To be fair, I would use both GPS and WiFi, but not enough to justify getting a device with all of these features (not yet, anyway, but the XDA2 looks quite natty).

 

Battery Performance

 

Although packing a 1,000 mAh Lithium Ion battery, the SPV’s main weakness is in battery longevity.  It’s rather too compromised for a cell ‘phone - Orange quote an optimum standby time of three days and a talk time of three hours.  The SPV has easily the most compromised battery of any PDA or ‘phone that I’ve bought.  It’s too soon to report on the battery uptime and I’m working on sourcing some software that can monitor the battery performance a little more accurately than the standard indicator.  However, before I do this, I need to unlock the SPV.

 

Summary

 

In conclusion, I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on a “Smartphone” device for some time.  Although the SPV E200 will not replace my preferred primary PDA - the Palm m515 it’s good enough such that if I don’t have both devices with me, I can still manage my life.  I wasn’t expecting the device to be as capable as the Palm m515 in some respects, but in many it comes close.

However, the relatively poor battery life is disappointing and even a little bit frustrating.  If I go anywhere for an overnight stop, I have to compromise somewhere along the line - I either bring along the charger or I have to switch the SPV off for periods of time.  This largely negates the advantages of bringing along just the one device - but this is largely academic since the SPV is rather too compromised a PDA for the sort of note-taking requirement I usually need when away at a conference.

To conclude, the SPV does the job I wanted it for as robustly as I need it.  Only the battery life lets it down.