Orange SPV C500
- Reviewer
- Debbie Davies
- Review Date
- 17 January 2005
- Manufacturer
- Orange
- Price as reviewed
- £price dependent on contract
- Latest price
- compare
Reader review
User: Pushpraj, IndiaAgra
Date Posted: 13 June 2006
Review: I had this SPV C500, but it gave me trouble when I received calls whilst dialing, its hand over wasn't good, I don't know if this is only in my phone, or with all of them! The joystick never worked for selection either. All else said this phone is ok or you could say satisfactory.
Rating:
5 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Andy, London, UK
Date Posted: 27 May 2006
Review: Most frustrating phone I have ever had. The joystick is terrible. This phone crashes at will and takes an age to re-boot. Lock/unlock has a mind of its own and the keypad has worn out to the extent that some keys hardly work at all. The menu is far from intuitive. Worst of all it started to randomly delete saved numbers from the SIM card. The camera works, but I wanted a phone.
Rating:
3 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: JL, London, UK
Date Posted: 10 December 2005
Review: I have had this phone for over a year and can say it has many small, but over the long term, extremely annoying problems with usability. The context sensitive menus rarely give you the options you would expect or need. For instance - When using the 'Call History' its impossible to send a text message to say someone has called you. Overall the interface is very inconsistent and frustrating to use. The web browser is great for a phone, as is the date book. However the phone often freezes, sometimes when your trying to answer a phone call. Overall I would say it’s nice as a small personal organiser, but sucks as a phone.
Rating:
4 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Bozo, UK
Date Posted: 15 July 2005
Review: Nearly all the gripes above are down to user error. It will crash all the time if you don’t close down applications when you have finished with them, just like a windows PC. I have seamless integration with Outlook via ‘activesync’ with multiple contacts folders for work and personal. You do need a decent grasp of Outlook to get the most out of it but that’s not the phones fault and for basic syncing it's easy. Seriously this is a fantastic phone. Get it, spend some time to get to know it, and get on the internet to find out how to use it properly. You will find it impossible to go back to a Nokia (and I used to love Nokia).
Rating:
5 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Patrick, Amsterdam, NL
Date Posted: 14 June 2005
Review: This C500 is by far the worst phone I ever had. Maybe I expected too much. Don't believe what you read in the manual, a lot of the stuff does not work well or it’s so terribly cumbersome you don't even want to try it out. As far as I'm concerned, apart from design failures, the biggest flaw is the Windows Mobile OS and Activesync. They take me right back to the days of Windows 3.1 when things didn't work or did stuff unexpectedly and nobody could answer me why. While synchronizing with Outlook, it persistently keeps on throwing some of my contacts away, not all, only some! Furthermore it keeps on adding double dates to my Outlook calendar, it doesn't understand daylight savings, I get warnings an hour too late, and MS Activesync is so incredible featureless. They were in a terrible hurry to get a foothold in this market no doubt. That's even apart from having to reboot a cellphone every now and again. I don't care that it takes rubbish pictures; I use it for my business. Well, not for very long. The support Orange is giving here in Holland is appalling, it seems they don't know themselves how to work this thing and the services they offer, F.I.and MMS, never did work, even though it has been activated four times now! If you want a useful cellphone with PDA-like features, get a Blackberry, a Sony Ericsson 900i or a Treo. Microsoft still has a long way to go before they deserve to be a major player in this space. And Orange is one to many operators in an already overcrowded market here.
Rating:
3 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: David Morgan, Wales
Date Posted: 3 June 2005
Review: Overall, I think it’s not a bad product since it’s a free upgrade! Most companies are giving these away with every salmon sandwich you buy and you can guess the reason! Yes, the central control toggle is rubbish and hard to use. The camera is quite usable but let’s be honest, all phone cameras are just a gadget to take a small rubbish photo which could not be used for any other reason than an image memory! My phone has not crashed once, the only thing I have a gripe with is the poor reception. If I were you, I would take it back and get a 6310i (I loved that phone, I even dropped it down the toilet and it still worked!). As for the majority of your other comments, I think you must have been slightly miss-lead when you ordered it! It’s a phone for Gods sake, along with some useful PDA applications, that’s it! It has no ray guns, body scanner or any other Star Trek technology you might think it should have. Love it or leave it, it’s a good step forward for all us gadget freaks. It reminds me of the time I had my first mobile with its 9v battery pack and 4hr standby life!
Rating:
5 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Nick, York, UK
Date Posted: 1 June 2005
Review: I think this is a great phone let down badly by the central joystick navigation key. The centre-click needs careful use, otherwise it buckles to the left or right and you end up frustrated by doing something you did not intend to do. I would strongly recommend you use this key for a good while before buying. Otherwise, all OK, bar a couple of crashes in the first week.
Rating:
4 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: JD, UK
Date Posted: 8 May 2005
Review: There is a proper 'phone lock’ just press and hold the black 'hang-up' phone symbol on the right until the prompt 'unlock' appears on the screen above the left hand menu button. At this point, the phone is key locked, and you have to press that button and then the hash key to unlock it. It’s not a fault with the phone - just the poor manual!
Rating:
3 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Nik, London
Date Posted: 29 April 2005
Review: This is a shockingly poor phone. Is this the best that the most successful company in the history of the world can do? Maybe it's just because I spent a few years in Japan, the land of the mobile phone, where design is so superior it's not even funny. Leave out that they sent emails not stupid bloody SMS or MMS, even the texting software I used to have, which wasn't predictive, was better than the rubbish in this phone. <br><B>Hard to use joystick:</B> Menus and options are selected and navigated using a flat four-way joystick, with a centre-click for select. Centre-clicking isn't difficult, but when my hands are cold (and it is December, which means cold in London) it's easy to hit slightly in the wrong place and go up before clicking. With a phone as slow as this one, this can be incredibly frustrating. It leads to putting the wrong word in when writing texts, it leads to choosing the wrong program to start, and it leads to a whole world of related pain. <br><B>Stylus! Please! Inconsistent UI:</B> The phone has two pointless buttons: Home and Back. They probably thought it was a really good idea to have one click to go home, but it's not. In fact it seems that it's up to the apps what they do with the buttons on the phone. The camera application will only quit if you press the Hangup button! You can't even cancel though the menu! <br><B>Slow boot:</B> This is simply wrong: it takes over a minute between me pressing the power button and my phone being usable as a sort of rubbish PDA, and then an arbitrarily long time to recognise the network it's on and be actually ready to use as a phone. A minute never seemed so long before I spent one staring at Windows Mobile. <br><B>Crashes:</B> Another thing that's simply wrong: it's a phone and it crashes!!! I'm pretty sure that my parents' phone doesn't crash, possibly because it's made of bakelite and fixed to the wall with rusty iron screws, but the idea is there. Make a phone which doesn't crash. If it crashes, fix it and then sell it. A phone that periodically requires me to take the battery out and wait that painful minute before I can use it again doesn't deserve an owner.<br><B>Slow software:</B> Actually, I don't know if this is the software's fault or the phone's, but the experience is slow. My friend has a Palm Treo 600 (he loves it) and his mapping software flies around. He uses his stylus and just drags the map around. I have to click up, down, left or right on the stupid little joystick in order to move around the map. And whereas the mapping software he uses is an image of a streetmap, mine is a bloody vector image, with only the major roads on it, and only some of them labelled with names. It's basically useless. I tried to use it to find somewhere in Soho, in the cold December rain. In less than the time it takes to boot I called my friend with an A-Z and he told me where to go. <br><B>Button placement:</B> This is another simple, simple, simple mess-up. There are two buttons for adjusting the earpiece volume. Never mind that they don't work very well and that the earpiece volume goes up in about 4 steps and so could be easily managed with one button, the problem here is that you have to press them hard, which means bracing against the opposite side of the phone, where the camera is. So, while you are in a noisy call, you adjust the earpiece volume and nine times out of ten you start the camera. If you recall, you can't stop the camera application in order to check your calendar or contacts without pressing the hang-up button, with the predictable effect of hanging up. <br><B>Texting software:</B> I have so many complaints about the texting software, I'll see if I can remember them all. <br>* The built-in dictionary doesn't include capitalised words. When would I ever want to write elizabeth? Or i vs. I? <br>* The user dictionary does remember capitalised words, so if I add a word at the start of a sentence which shouldn't always be capitalised, I have to either - add it un-capitalised, delete the subsequently inserted word, reset the initial-caps in the texting software and type the word again, but at least this time predicatively, or - add the word capitalised, and then live with it capitalised in my dictionary forever (I haven't found out how to edit the user dictionary if it's possible) which is a pain because you can't even then add a non-capitalised version of the same word! <br>* When you finish a sentence with a period, it switches to initial-caps for the next word. Great! If you write a word and delete it though, it doesn't remember the initial-caps. Not so great! <br>* If you use ‘...’ it thinks for some reason that you want initial caps on the next word. That would be 4 periods, if you don't have an ellipsis character. Bizarrely it has some words in the built-in dictionary for 3 presses of the punctuation key, such as :-) and :-<br>* And so on, but you can't add any new ones for 4 or more punctuation key presses. Let's say you're sending a text to multiple recipients, but you decide after entering a few contacts that you don't want the first one after all. You naturally scroll back to the end of the first contact and hold down the back button (which should take you back to where you were before, but has been repurposed into a delete key here) because holding down the back button should delete to the beginning of the line. Except here it deletes the whole set of contacts! Undo? No such luck. You can't expect undo on a phone which doesn't even have text selection, copy and paste! <br>* If you insert a word in the text, it adds a space after the word irrespective of whether one already exists or not, leaving me with two spaces. I thought it was supposed to be a Smartphone! <br>* The phone, while managing to separately store useless meta-data like the name and phone number of the person who sent you a message, it keeps no record of whether you've replied or not! There's no idea of a conversation or thread in the texting software either - you have to remember everything. I thought it was the PDA that was supposed to remember stuff for you... Old phone numbers in texts/calls: This is clearly a design decision, but a total mis-feature. When the phone logs a call, it stores the caller and number independently of your contacts list. This means if someone calls you and you save the number, the number still shows up without the name in your Call History. Why didn't they attach it to the Contacts database? <br><B>Finish:</B> OK, maybe not such a massive problem, but I've had my phone only a few months and the silver is worn off every protruding edge. It just looks shabby now.<br><B>Camera:</B> Oh, and the camera is absolutely useless for anything other than pretending to take photographs. And it has no digital zoom unless you first set the resolution lower! So if you are in 640x480, which is your only hope of capturing any detail whatsoever, you can't just zoom to the middle of the picture. First you've got to work out how to change the resolution (hint - its multiple non-obvious clicks) and then you can zoom. But don't forget to switch the resolution back when you've finished, or next time you whip out your camera phone to capture some featureless blob you'll end up with a featureless blob at a resolution so low even your mum knows its rubbish!<br><B>Can't send contacts:</B> There is no function to insert data from your contact list into an SMS! Or even into an email! It's pretty basic functionality that my 1 yen phone from 3 years ago had! You’d have to convert to a vcard and make an attachment! It should be easier to just copy someone's phone number or email address or birthday or whatever piece of data you like into an SMS!<br><B>Deleting files:</B> Sooner of later you are going to run out of space, and the phone will, from this point on, repeatedly and annoyingly remind you of this. God help you if you're writing a text message at the time because you can't postpone your message until you've deleted some of your files. Luckily, due to the appalling industrial design you've probably got a whole boatload of completely black camera images you didn't even know you had taken. I had about 30. What's the best place to free up space? The File Manager! You can decide exactly what to delete, rather than be stuck deleting only images or only sounds. Except to delete an image in File Manager, you need to press the following: 1. Start 2. 9 3. 9 4. 9 5. 4 6. 3 7. (several more clicks) 8. 9. [Internet Explorer loads and displays the photo] Back 10. Menu 11. 7 12. Have you got that!
Rating:
9 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Mike, London
Date Posted: 22 April 2005
Review: I've had a C500 for over 5 months now and after a few hitches, caused by installing unstable software, the unit has worked pretty much perfectly as a phone, PDA and media player. It’s much better than carrying several units around. Oh, and watching Lord of the Rings on it is pretty good.
Rating:
5 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Mike, London
Date Posted: 22 April 2005
Review: I've had a C500 for over 5 months now and after a few hitches, caused by installing unstable software, the unit has worked pretty much perfectly as a phone, PDA and media player. It’s much better than carrying several units around. Oh, and watching Lord of the Rings on it is pretty good.
Rating:
4 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Ian Vickridge, Paris
Date Posted: 14 April 2005
Review: I had an old Nokia 3xxx and an IPAQ 36xx. This brilliant phone has replaced them both, and is smaller than the NOKIA. It slips into the top pocket virtually un-noticed - my wife has stopped getting at me for the ripped pockets caused by the old IPAQ (and before that the Casio E100!). Basically I have NO gripes. The battery life is unbelievable for such a device, I put in a 128Mb mini SD card and so have a very reasonable MP3 player (and the small screen, is quite fine to watch films on). I downloaded Quake for it, plus the metro/bus/RER map for Paris, and about 70 other cities, unbelievable. I expect that over the coming months there will be much more freeware/shareware being ported to this machine. The whole thing feels like my CE PDA’s did about 5 years ago - and I ask myself the same questions: Why isn't everyone onto this device? I guess they could have put 802.11 into it, plus an Ethernet connecter, full size unfolding keyboard, 240Gb hard drive, GPS, and holographic 21inch 3D colour laser projector, but I guess you can't have everything at this price. Seriously though, the only little, little tiny weenie gripe would be the central 'cursor' key which takes a bit of getting use to. But the real test: I left the old IPAQ hooked up to life support until I was sure about the SPV C500 – but it has come off life support now and it will be going to the big computer farm in the sky and I expect that the SPV will be my PDA and phone for the next couple of years at least. Oh yes, by the way, the camera (640x480) is not bad either.
Rating:
3 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Si, London
Date Posted: 6 April 2005
Review: I don't think many of you get it. We always come back to the same place: "what is a business phone?" We think that because a phone has loads of features it makes a great business phone. This is not the case...a great business phone is a phone that makes your working life easier and we all know that the only device that does that is a BlackBerry. Safe, secure, encrypted, compressed, easy to use, easy to manage and unmatched by any other product!!!
Rating:
4 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Dav, Leeds
Date Posted: 1 April 2005
Review: I've got to disagree with you all. As a long time PPC user and gadget freak, I think this phone is flawed. It is not at all intuitive to use, the rocker button is fiddly and it keeps crashing. And why on earth would you want to watch LOR on a screen barely 2" across? Get a life or a hobby :-)
Rating:
8 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Peter, Peterborough UK
Date Posted: 7 March 2005
Review: I agree that this is probably the smallest, neatest smart phone around, but having had it for a few months now, I do have several gripes: <br>• True to form for a Windows-based device, it has already crashed several times: frozen screen, keys locked up, even the on/off switch doesn’t respond: the only way out was to remove and replace the battery! <br>• It often seems very slow to log on to a WAP or Internet site, for no apparent reason – my Symbian phone was much quicker. <br>• The “key lock” is not a true key lock, it’s a “PIN lock”; it doesn’t disable the keypad keys. The result is that it’s quite possible, if you’re carrying it in your pocket, to accidentally press 4 keys in sequence (which will be interpreted as an “incorrect PIN”) – do that 3 times and you’re locked out!) – or maybe even worse, accidentally dial 999 or 112: emergency calls are permitted even if the phone is “locked”. <br>• The phone is “application-locked”, which means if you try to install any program which has not been properly digitally signed and approved, the phone will reject it. (You can get Orange to lift the lock – but you have to register with Orange as a software developer to do so!) <br>• Several applications which, on my previous (Symbian-based) smart phone were either built-in or available as a free download (e.g. Word and Excel viewer, GPRS data counter, countdown timer, etc.) are only available on this phone as a third-party chargeable download. <br>• (Again, true to form for a Windows-based device): Orange have already issued a software upgrade for this phone. If you download and install this, you will lose ALL the data stored on the phone (contacts, settings, downloaded programs… the lot!) To be fair, Orange do warn you about this. Luckily I had backed up all my data, but it still took ages to restore all my settings, games, etc. – it’s a good job I had kept the activation codes for the software I had bought! <br>So, for all the above reasons – I’ll be going back to a Sony Ericsson Symbian phone when I upgrade!
Rating:
5 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Ed, London
Date Posted: 31 January 2005
Review: I was hesitant before getting this phone - being slightly dubious of Windows for mobile devices. Once I got it, though, there was no turning back. It synchronises perfectly with Outlook (and comes with a free copy of Outlook XP 2002), has a great screen, great battery life - more comparable to a regular mobile phone than a PDA / PDA phone. It uses a standard mini USB cable, and trickle charges through USB too. I hate to say it, but Microsoft has really pulled out all the stops with this OS - when I come to replace this phone, I'll find it hard, and will definitely want another Windows device (probably made by HTC).
Rating:
4 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Henry, Oxford
Date Posted: 29 January 2005
Review: This is a great little device but it would be even better if there was the option to switch the phone on without loading the OS. This would get over the problem of it being very slow to switch on when you want to make a quick call.
Rating:
3 people have rated this review helpful
Reader review
User: Stuart, Kent UK
Date Posted: 19 January 2005
Review: This phone is excellent in the same way that a new PC is excellent. It's smaller, lighter, faster, and sexier than the previous SPV's, but the phone really comes into it's own when you start adding software to it. I don't mean "Wow, I can change the picture on my wallpaper!" (which you obviously can do), but we're talking "Hey, I've added a DivX player and memory card, and I can now watch the entire Lord of the Rings series in perfect quality". In case you think I'm exaggerating, I've done it - with room to spare on a £50 512Mb card! In short, the phone comes out the box very, very good. Get it, and you will never be able to look at a Nokia again without smirking at how you used to think they were cool!
Rating:
3 people have rated this review helpful
>> Sign up or Log in to write a reader review
