Orange SPV E600 email phone
Is this mish-mash mobile masterful at all?
Review It's always nice to have a little look-see at the newest hardware, but the E600 isn't actually new as such - it's the reincarnation of several previous models, including T-Mobile's Dash and MDA Mail - as the Dash is called over here - and manufacturer HTC's own S620.
Orange's incarnation, like the others, weighs in at 160g and measures 11 x 3.3 x 1.3cm so it fitted snugly into our busy editorial palms. The E600 has an undisputable Palm Treo-esque design and blends together style with business-grade connectivity - it's a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE device. Though don't except the E600 to be seen struttung up and down any Milan catwalks, because when it comes to design, Orange has got things very wrong. The E600's looks smacks of a central London designer sofa store. All you need is a good looking and affordable mix of springs and material, but what you end up paying over the odds for is actually very different.
The phone's appearance is, in essence, ugly. A myriad of tiny keys, a single large central control, multiple colour buttons, a rubber backing, a brushed sliver front, a shiny encircling frame... all help to ensure the E600 will never be invited back to any fashion shows once its five minutes of fame are over. The pictures make it look far nicer than it is.
However, if you are willing to look past the E600's aesthetic failings, then its operational ability and application performance do impress.
Running Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0, all but the most computer illiterate user - or Mac and/or Palm OS aficionado - will be able to find their way around the E600's various applications effortlessly thanks to the familiar Start menu.
COMMENTS
There's Minimo
Minimo is based on Mozilla like Firefox is.
Poor software choice on device
i work in the mobile phone industry as a sales consultant and so i got to play with this phone when it first came out, and to be honest its poor, very very poor.
ok the email features are what the phone has been designed for and does that well, but most business people need more from a device. The main reason to go for a single device smart phone over acombination of PDA and a normal phone is that the single device is just that, a single device capable of doing both.
This phone has lost MS office software, there is no Word Excel or Powerpoint. Instead the phone has some software called Clearview which only allows you to view (as its name suggests) and not manipulate the documents.
This has been the major sticking point for most customers and just makes the phone feel as though it has been released cheaply. Majority of customers will push towards a Vario 2 as it does everything this device is ment to do just alot better, and most dont mind the small charge for the device compared to its features.
Doesnt compare
Recently had the pleasure of playing with this phone (in its t-mobile incarnation) and all I can say is that its a very poor second to the Nokia E61. I looks and feels cheap to me and as noted the keyboard is awful. The display is way behind the E61 and for me the only saving grace was the use of WM5, Im familiar with 2003SE so it was easy to find my way round.
Browsers...
True, there's no Firefox for Windows Mobile, but what about Opera?
http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/
Des
