The battery is now rated at 1150mAh, up from 1050mAh for the C500, but the talk time is rated at four hours compared to five hours of the C500. These numbers are Orange's own estimates, and are likely to differ depending on your usage. The stand-by time of the C600 has increased to six days compared to the C500's four, which is a huge improvement - at least for those that don't use their phone too frequently.

For world travellers the good news is that the SPV C600 is quad-band, so it should work in most parts of the world with the only possible exception being Japan.

Apart from the headphones and the charger the only other thing in the box is a USB to mini-USB cable, used to sync the phone with your PC. A CD with ActiveSync and Outlook 2002 is also part of the package.

The SPV C600 is a huge improvement upon the C500 without changing the core product too much. It's a shame that Orange didn't add Wi-Fi as there are models from Q-tek and i-mate that are based on the same hardware as the C600 but which do provide WLAN connectivity.

The SPV 600 isn't for everyone - PDA users might prefer a smart phone with a larger screen and the familiar tablet form-factor - but the new Windows Mobile 5 operating system has brought along a lot of new features and made it much more competitive with other mobile phone operating systems. It still has a few quirks and some minor bugs that need ironing out, but on a whole it's a vast improvement on Windows Mobile 2003 SE. In use it felt slightly sluggish until applications were loaded into the memory, but once you accessed the same application a second time it was very quick.

Verdict

Considering that the SPV C600 is free on most contracts from Orange - for both business users and consumers - it's a good choice for anyone that wants a handset that looks and feels like a regular phone but wants more sophisticated functionality. It might not be as advanced as some of the PDA phone devices on the market, such as Orange's own SPV M500, but then the C600 should be viewed as a potential replacement for your phone, not your PDA. ®