Orange's various SPVs have been getting better all the time in terms of hardware and features, but the lack of memory, less-than-great battery life and somewhat clunky hardware have not really drawn us. We liked Orange's previous model - the SPV E200 - at first, but it soon became a weight in our pocket, and we found it more alluring to carry heavier but better data-managing PDAs and a smaller phone. More weight, more size, more useful. Ho hum.

The SPV C500 is Orange's fourth attempt at the product line, and it's a big improvement pretty much all round. Most importantly, it no longer feels too large or heavy to carry around when pocket space is all that's available, and its battery life is very good.

When we tested the SPV E200's battery late last year we were disappointed. The usual MP3 looping test run on Windows-powered handheld computers delivered just three hours of music and five hours of battery life. But under the same test conditions the SPV C500 managed a little over nine hours of life, playing music right to the end. Real world usage has seen us take the SPV C500 away for weekends without its charger and not need to compromise on use.

As for the rest, the hardware is intuitive to use. A long thin lozenge of a navigation button is rocked in four directions and pressed for selection, while a thinner rocker takes you 'home' and 'back'. The combination works well.

Orange has produced its own 'Home' screen which arranges icons for five commonly used applications in a vertical strip (Contacts, call history, Inbox, Calendar, Camera and Orange World - aka Internet Explorer). Choose one and options relating to it become available. It's fast and easy, and beats rooting around using the Windows Mobile Start button.

In general the software is improved, but this is more to do with added extras than the standard Windows Mobile fare. There are tools for managing memory and files, for example, which don't come as part of the operating system but are on ROM. Orange's Signature Phone applications are here too, including their backup and Orange World Internet-based services.

Bluetooth is included, though turning it on and off requires stepping through an annoyingly large number of menu options (seven steps by our reckoning to get from Home screen to Home screen). And one further grumble - a Mini SD card slot sits under the battery. Two gripes here - you need to power down to swap cards, and will have to invest in yet another card format if you want to build on the 28MB of provided internal memory.

Verdict
In the end, the SPV C500 is a good phone, and a big improvement over previous Orange Windows Mobile smartphones. It's not a PDA replacement, but it does offer more than its predecessors did, and copes well away from mains power.

Company: Orange

Contact: 0800 801080

Tags: mobile phone microsoft windows battery (electricity) windows windows mobile read-only memory android iphone