E650 Moblog

Orange to keep the SPV brand

2007-06-08T08:46:00.000+02:00

Apparently Orange has no plans to drop the SPV brand in favor of the HTC brand in any of their markets - as reported in the post below.

Orange will continue to launch SPV devices, as part of the Signature Series, some of which will be from HTC. As HTC are increasing the number of devices they launch Orange has decided that not all of them will be Signature Series and therefore not always SPV:

For this reason we are launching the HTC Touch under the HTC brand. The Orange mark will still appear on the HTC Touch, as it does on lots of other devices", said an to an Orange spokesperson on Thursday.

Longer term, Orange plans to only use the Orange mark on Signature devices:

Our aim is for the Orange mark to stand for an assured quality level plus value added features and for the Signature Series - which comprises devices from many manufacturers - to be a higher level of quality still", the Orange spokesperson added.

Good to know that Orange continues with the SPV brand but the information above also hints, that Orange might work with other ODMs in future.

[via the::unwired]

RIP SPV

2007-06-06T01:20:00.000+02:00

With the announcement of the Orange HTC Touch, Orange have confirmed that the SPV line of devices, that was conceived to encompass our beloved Smartphones, is no more.

Future SPV type devices will be marketed under the HTC name, with HTC's retail brand now taking the same status enjoyed by other manufacturers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc.

R.I.P. SPV, welcome HTC! Shouldn't it have been like this from the start?

[via MoDaCo]

HTC Touch announced

2007-06-05T15:26:00.000+02:00

I don't really talk about other phones as this blog is dedicated to the E650, but the Touch is made by HTC so you can forgive me this time.

HTC announces "...the world’s first phone to feature intuitive touch screen technology." HTC calls the technology TouchFLO™ - and it looks as though the info is being released now to remind potential iPhone buyers that there may be a better, cheaper alternative just around the corner.

The phone, for all the hype, is not any better than the current offering S70 or E650. It doesn't have 3G (which will be the first thing that gets noted in the critical press) and it only has a 2 mega-pixel camera, but it does have WM6 pro.

Not quite a one-button phone: it has 3 on the front, a camera button on one side and volume control on the other side.

Not only for fingers: it also has a stylus too - just in case you fingers are too thick I suppose or you don't like getting greasy streaks on the nice big screen. Perhaps some pocket pc guys just can't get away from their little writing and tapping tools.

So perhaps it isn't the iPhone killer after all, but it does look nice all the same.

Highlights

Feel the difference with intuitive TouchFLO™ screen technology for finger and stylus input.
Simple user interface for quick dialing, navigation and launching applications.
Surf the web with ease on the large 2.8” touch screen with Internet Explorer®.
Enjoy music and movie clips with HTC’s Audio Manager and Windows Media® Player.
Chat on Messenger, send and receive Hotmail® and send photos to Windows Live™ Spaces.

Key Features

TouchFLO™ screen technology
Windows Mobile® 6 Professional
Direct Push Outlook® email
Compact at H: 99.9mm, W: 58mm, D: 13.9mm and lightweight at only 112g
Tri-band GSM with GPRS/EDGE
2.0 mega-pixel camera
Stereo Bluetooth® 2.0 and Wi-Fi®
HTC ExtUSB™ cable for PC

Check out the HTC Touch minisite here

Download the product sheet for further insight into key features and specifications here

Proporta Alu-Leather Case

2007-05-30T14:14:00.000+02:00

Proporta have released their first accessory for the HTC S710 (SPV E650), an alu-leather case which meets all of the usual Proporta quality standards.

The Proporta HTC s710 / Vox Series Alu-Leather Case is beautifully hand crafted to meet the exact specifications of your HTC s710 / Vox handheld. It features our trademark ‘Screen Saver System’ which uses a sheet of rigid, lightweight aircraft grade aluminium to line the case, protecting your delicate device screen from crushing and impact shocks.

The Proporta HTC s710 / Vox Series Alu-Leather Case also gives the option of a removable belt clip which allows you to wear your device whilst on the move, for quick and easy access to your mobile device.

Check it out: Proporta

Vodafone Germany released the VDA V aka HTC Vox

2007-05-17T16:25:00.000+02:00

After the HTC S710, the Orange SPV E650, now we have the Vodafone VDA V. With a 24 months contract, the VDA V is available from 169,50 to 249,50 Euro. Without a contract, the SIM free and net-unlocked device is available for 429,90 Euro.

The VDA V has a German QWERTZ keyboard and as with the other phones the operating system language can be changed between the main European languages.

More info on the Vodafone site.

[via The Unwired]

HTC S710 / SPV E650 case

2007-05-15T17:18:00.000+02:00

To protect my E650, I have the phone in a nice little synthetic cloth pouch with a drawstring. It is scratch-free and relatively clean, but it's not the most practical of solutions.

If you call up HTC Europe and politely ask for a case for your HTC S710 or Orange SPV E650, they will ask for your name, address, phone number and you mobile's IMEI number - type *#06# into the keypad.

They promise to have it sent off in two weeks. Cool! HTC link on the right.

[Info via Smartphone France]

E650 Review at Trusted Reviews

2007-04-27T16:04:00.000+02:00

Trusted Reviews has a review of the SPV E650 by Riyad Emeran. Most of the info on the phone is already mentioned in this moblog. The author does get quite a bit of battery life out of the device, he obviously is not using the Wi-Fi much... ;-)

Some nice photos of the phone from all angles. Rave results:

Features
Usability
Value
Overall

Click here for the review.

Bluetooth GPS working with the SPV E650

2007-05-10T19:30:00.000+02:00

First I unlocked the phone by requesting Orange to send me an unlock script. You do that by filling in the info here.

Then I paired the Bluetooth GPS receiver that I have. It is a solar powered MediaTek 32ch BT2.3MR device. Its quite chunky as you see, but its designed to live on the dash of my car, not in my other pocket.

After running the unlock script sent via email from Orange, you have to modify the system registry as specified here in the HTC Wiki. I ran the gps6.CAB file (linked to on the page or here if you can't find it) so all the changes were done for me. It worked fine.

Then you reboot the device: Switch off then back on.

Google maps is installed by pointing the browser of your mobile device to www.google.com/gmm.

Open Google Maps and turn on GPS tracking. Works fine :-)

From phone

2007-04-02T13:56:00.000+02:00

Hello from the old Nokia...

Firefox will move to mobile phones... eventually

2007-05-10T09:00:00.000+02:00

Mitchell Baker, CEO of Mozilla, has said in an interview with APC that it is the intention of Mozilla to develop a mobile version of Firefox for mobile phones.

She said: it is not in the next weeks or months. The Mozilla Foundation's mission in life is to improve Internet experience and that is increasingly on devices other than PCs. If we're not there then we won't be able to live the kind of vision that we helped grow.

So that needs to happen. We had a small project looking at it but we decided that the right thing to do is to look first at the technology and look at our core technology and really tune it so that it's best suited for that. We are at work on that now, however it will take a while.

We are also looking at how to reflect the richness of the entire web on a small device with the current constraints and that one we don't know. There is no easy answer for that because the web is growing and the functionalities of the web are growing. We're looking closely at that one.

Read the full interview at APC

businessMOBILE.fr review the HTC S710 / SPV E650

2007-05-05T11:25:00.000+02:00

businessMOBILE.fr reviews HTC S710 / SPV E650 - at least that's what they say. I get the impression from the text and the stock images that they are writing the review after reading one or two others and looking at the official spec sheet.

They give it 8/10 and complain that it is too heavy, has a slow processor and doesn't have 3G.

They do like the design, the PDA functionality, the keyboard and WM6.

Here is the review

MobileTechReview - reviews the HTC S710

2007-05-03T14:41:00.000+02:00

Editor's rating (1-5):

Lisa Gade, Editor in Chief of MobileTechReview, concludes:

HTC's first Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition offering is a strong one with an ingenious design. It's an ergonomic near-delight that offers the best of candybar phone ease of use and a QWERTY keyboard. We wish the slider stayed more firmly shut, but overall we're still very pleased with the design. Windows Mobile 6 itself brings improvements that are worthwhile, though some of them require Exchange Server, so we're not saying you need rush out and buy this phone just to get the new OS. Though the networking improvements do make us mighty happy, especially on the IE and data transfer fronts. The phone has excellent battery life, a great display, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi and a camera that's actually worth using. If the HTC S710 had 3G, our star rating would have been higher.

Read the full review after the jump to: MobileTechReview .

Nearly two weeks old and going fine

2007-05-02T16:54:00.000+02:00

A couple of weeks on and I'm still happy with the SPV E650. I'm using it obviously as a phone, but also doing a little browsing, emailing and taking a few photos. Likes and dislikes, two weeks on...

Likes: Size, build quality, sound quality, connectivity.

Dislikes: Having to use Outlook to sync contacts, with Bluetooth and Wi-fi, battery limited.

I honestly have not showed this phone to any of my friends so it's not getting hyped by pride or envy. I am happy that I've got a good quality phone that works well. It does what I expected it to.

Regarding the damn sync thing though... I've twice now erased the contacts that I have on the phone. The first time, is documented below. The second time, I think that I did exactly the same thing. I didn't want the same info on the sim card and the phone, do I don't have anything on the sim card. I had re-entered all my contacts onto the phone - eventually giving in and installing Outlook on the PC. It didn't sync as it said there was a conflict of profiles. I deleted the old sync profile, and let it create a new one. It promptly then deleted my phone contacts as the default setting for the profile is do overwrite the contents of the device with the desktop items.

I now have re-entered and backed-up the contacts. Exported them to text files so I can dump outlook if anything else comes along.

Questions

2007-04-24T04:09:00.000+02:00

Some questions that I have about WM6 and this SPV E650. I have no prior experience with smartphones or WM so the answers maybe simple. If you can help, please email me or comment here.

Q: Why don't many programs on the device have exit or close options. I found the task manager and that closes open programs, but is this the best way to do it? Programs like Skype require plenty of memory so it is not helpful to have a whole bunch of other programs or utilities open.

Q: Is there any substitute for Outlook? I would like to Sync with my Google calender, or is that not possible? Is there any other software out there that will Sync with the contacts on the phone?

Q: I can't install Skype on the MicroSD card (I have added a 2GB card). When trying to start it says: Can't start Skype - Can't find some files... Is this normal? I install it on the device without a problem, but it uses up 5MB of space. Some programs can be installed on the card, some not... right?

Publishing photos to the web

2007-04-26T01:00:00.000+02:00

Two ways that I'm publishing photos. The first is to this blog using Blogger. To do this with Blogger, send an email from your phone to go@blogger.com; Blogger sets up a moblog account for you and you can either use it as you mobile blog or you can assign the moblog features to an existing Blogger blog.

Second method is to use flickr. You can set up an email address to send photos to within your flickr account. You can specify tags for the emailed photos by default or you can add tags when emailing the photo. Photos can be public or private, set from the email.

Change of scenery

2007-04-25T14:49:00.000+02:00

I changed from green to blue on the phone and thought why not on the site too. so I modified the logo into a web 2.0 thing. Blue on the screen is as calm as the green. Blue is not supported in landscape mode though for the homescreen. We'll see how it works out.

You see, there is a new Gmail email waiting in the inbox too. Skype is online and working fine. If anyone is interested in trying out Skype, use this version on the smartphone.

I have added pictures fro most of my contacts I use a 150 x 180 jpg image that looks quite good on the phone. Great for seeing who you are calling.

Pocket Controller Pro

2007-04-24T17:03:00.000+02:00

I'm trying out the Soti Pocket Controller Pro program that allows control of the mobile device from the PC desktop. It has screen capture and video capture as well as a host of other features.

Designed for WM5, it still has to be upgraded to the WM6 and also to include the SPV E650 skin and controls, but the basic SPV controls work fine.

Hopefully it will allow a little more understanding on how the mobile works and functions.

My E650 J+4

2007-04-24T00:21:00.000+02:00

4 days with the SPV E650 and I'm quite happy with the phone.

There are so many ways to connect to the Internet and the computer network. I wasn't sure which is best or easiest.

The Camera has no zoom if you use the largest image setting. You need to select a smaller final image if you want to zoom at all. I suppose that as the final photo is bigger, you can 'zoom' in with Photoshop. This info wasn't written anywhere and took a bit of hunting to find.

It seems that Wi-Fi consumes battery juice like no other service so it is best to keep that on auto cut-off. It comes on or is easy to turn on from the home screen when needed. I'm not sure if the Wi-Fi is being used for the web browsing. There is no indicator that tells you if the phone is using Wi-Fi or Edge/GSM when on the web.

I can't get the mobile phone to show up on the PC network via Wi-Fi, but it can be accessed with the USB connection.

The sync system uses ActiveSync and syncs with Microsoft Outlook. I don't use that and don't really want to start. What options do I have?

I installed Skype, it works - so my Wi-Fi must be working too. I also installed Google Maps and Gmail. Maps work fine. Gmail Java program doesn't seem to work, but Gmail is set up as a messaging service and pulls email from Google every 15 minutes without my having to pull up a browser.

I managed to erase all my contacts. Dumb huh! I transferred all contacts from Sim to phone contacts, deleted all contacts on Sim then did a Sync to PC where the PC overwrote all contacts with my empty Outlook contacts folder. Great - now I see that there was a config option to prevent that. Anyway, out of all the contacts that I had, most were old contacts that probably should have been deleted long ago. I can re-enter the important ones.

So, the phone quality is good, I can use my MBR-100 Bluetooth receiver (more on that later), my Bluetooth headset and hopefully the soon-to-come Bluetooth GPS receiver.

I can moblog and easily send and receive emails. I think the look and feel is great and I hope that I get to fully understand the workings of WM6 in the near future.

Orange [UK] to drop prices of data options

2007-04-24T00:08:00.000+02:00

Orange UK lances new cheaper deals for mobile data packages including unlimited option.

I'm not sure of the UK data rates, but here in France the first rate is 6€ per month for 10MB and then next is 20€ per month for 60MB. What happens after that is anybody's guess.

Orange UK is looking to simplify the offering in the hope of bringing in new clients that are perhaps put-off buy the itemised billing. Apparently '96 per cent of mobile revenues are still generated by plain calls and texting'

I've used 40% of my 10MB per month in less than 4 days doing some very basic web surfing... lets hope that the price drop comes this way too.

[via TimesOnline]

Claudia

2007-04-21T18:21:00.000+02:00

Claudia working on the preparations for the Saturday evening BBQ

This just shows how I can snap a shot and get it published to the moblog a couple of minutes later.

Orange has blocked access to Blogger from it's mail servers for some reason - perhaps because it wants to tie clients in to it's own blogging system, but I can send the blog post quite happily to go@blogger.com via my Gmail account which I'm using on the phone. I have a Gmail Java applet installed in the phone so it searches for new mail every few minutes. I don't have to open up a browser and do it through the web.

My SPV E650 has arrived

2007-04-21T01:14:00.000+02:00

Is this the first photo on the Net of the SPV E650 with a AZERTY French keyboard?

I went into town Friday afternoon to go buy it. I was amazed that the agency had it - I sort of expected it not to be there... The sales person was very helpful and I even found a car charger for less than 5 bucks. I bought it for a good price. With all the upgrade points that I had and a bonus thrown in by the shop, my wallet didn't suffer at all and I came out smiling.

Busy figuring out how this WM6 works. Some issues are a little tricky. I can get the WEP or WPA security settings on my Wi-Fi to work so it's working with a now open system with local MAC address authentication.

I'm amazed to have switched it into English. I thought that perhaps as a Windows device, it is blocked in the lingo of the country of purchase. I'm in France, but I am English so the AZERTY keyboard is what I'm used to and the language is now perfect.

Test from phone with photo attachment

2007-04-21T14:39:00.000+02:00

Hello, this is a post from the phone with a little photo attached. I'm still trying to figure out all the ways in which to connect to the net from the phone. Some issues are a little confusing...

First post from E650

2007-04-21T14:03:00.000+02:00

This is coming from the phone!

HTC unveils official Windows Mobile 6 upgrade strategy

2007-04-20T09:45:00.000+02:00

Windows Mobile 6: upgrade strategy statement

Microsoft recently unveiled Windows Mobile® 6, which offers improved usability and more PC-like functionality than previously available. Enhancements include the ability to view emails in rich HTML format, and to manage emails quickly and easily through new shortcuts and new calendar views.

The HTC S710 is one of the first Windows Mobile® 6 devices to ship, and will be followed by a range of products based on the new operating system in the coming months.

HTC is also offering WM6 upgrades for the most popular devices in its current range. This includes recently launched “messaging” products, which will enjoy the greatest benefits of Windows Mobile 6, such as the HTC Advantage, the HTC TyTN, the HTC S620, and the HTC P4350. The upgrade will also be available for the award-winning HTC P3300, plus some of our operator-branded devices.

The upgrades will be rolled out from June, in line with our operator partners’ strategies.

You’ll be able to find the latest releases as they’re made available at: http://downloads.europe.htc.com

Some Q & A:

Why have these devices been chosen? We have chosen devices with a particular focus on “messaging”, where users will enjoy the greatest benefits of Windows Mobile 6 (the HTC Advantage, the HTC TyTN, the HTC S620, and the HTC P4350). The upgrade will also be available for the award-winning HTC P3300.

Will other devices be added? Potentially. We’re in constant discussions with our operator partners, and if they’re seeing significant demand from their customers for a specific device then we will always consider it.

When will the upgrade be available? The upgrades will be rolled out from April.

I’ve heard that [operator] is not offering the upgrade. Why is that? Can their customers get the upgrade from HTC direct? It’s really up to the operators to decide how, or indeed whether, to offer the upgrade, so you’d need to speak to them. HTC is only directly offering upgrades for its own brand devices.

Will consumers have to pay upgrade license fees? No – the usual licence upgrade fees are being waived.

How much of a difference will users notice with the new operating system? Windows Mobile 6 delivers the ability to view e-mails in their original rich HTML format with live links to Web and SharePoint® sites, which means text and images are displayed as they would be on a PC, and are available from a corporate e-mail server such as Exchange Server 2007, from Web-based accounts such as Windows Live™ Hotmail or from a myriad of other popular service providers. Windows Mobile 6 also includes Windows Live for Windows Mobile, which provides customers with a rich set of Windows Live services. For example, now through Windows Live Messenger, people can chat with more than one person at one time, express themselves through animated figures, quickly send a file or image, or record and send voice notes.

The newest version of the platform offers the most genuine Microsoft Office system experience in the mobile versions of Office Outlook®, Office Word, Office Excel® and Office PowerPoint® by bringing capabilities once available only on the PC versions of these products to the small screen. This allows users to neatly view, navigate and edit Word documents and Excel spreadsheets in their original formatting, without affecting tables, images or text, and to view PowerPoint presentations on their device.

All Windows Mobile 6 powered devices include Direct Push Technology for up-to-date e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization of Outlook calendars, tasks and contacts through Microsoft Exchange Server. Windows Mobile 6 also offers a set of important device security and management features that include the capability to remotely wipe all data from a device should it be lost or stolen, helping ensure that confidential information remains that way.

France Telecom update

2007-04-18T16:26:00.000+02:00

An updated screen-shot above is from the France Telecom website.

They now have added a little stock photo of the device. Still no news on the Orange France sites. Waiting until tomorrow when the new catalogue is due out. I called them earlier in the week and they still try and sell me the SPV M650 instead of the E650. One little letter makes all the difference ;-)