Orange SPV C550
Discontinued 12th July 2005
The Orange SPV C550 (pictured right)
is a version of the HTC Amadeus handset and it is functionally
very similar to the T-Mobile
SDA Music. In simple terms, this is the older C500
handset with some more bells and whistles under the
hood, plus a set of new controls on the front for multimedia
playback and an improved display.
First spotted way back in February 2005
by CoolSmartPhone
the original
snapshots were of a black C550, similar to
the C500 in colour. However, the production unit appears
to be silver which looks rather better.
This
is a Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition smartphone with
a 240x320 pixel display (QVGA) in 65,000 colours.
On the rear of the SPV C550 is a 1.3 megapixel
camera (with no flash, the blob next to the camera lens
in a self portrait mirror), Bluetooth, 64Mb of internal
memory, expandable memory on miniSD cards (128Mb card
included, 512Mb reported maximum) and tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900),
GPRS (but no EDGE or 3G) and a modest 108 grams in weight
which makes it reasonably light for a smartphone. Talktime
is quoted as up to 4-5 hours with a maximum of 6 days
standby time.
The C550's software bundle includes
Pocket Internet Explorer, Pocket Outlook (for email)
and Windows Media Player 10 - but no versions of Word,
Excel or PowerPoint are included. Other features are
pretty standard, including infra-red, speakerphone functions,
MMS, predictive text and Java.
None of the details we have seen for
the SPV C550 indicate that it has any kind of stereo
playback, but the handset the C550 is based on (the
HTC Amadeus) does come with a wired stereo headset.
If stereo playback is important to you, then check before
ordering.
When this handset was first rumoured,
back in February 2005 it looked pretty good, but since
then we've had some exceptionally impressive music handsets
such as the Sony
Ericsson W800i, Nokia
N91 and Samsung
SGH-I300 which tend to offer more interesting features.
Still, if you're in the market for a Windows smartphone,
but want a more traditional handset than a PDA-style
device, then the Orange SPV C550 looks promising.
The SPV C550 is already available in
some Orange territories in Europe.
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Orange
SPV C550 at a glance
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Available:
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Q3
2005
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Network:
|
Tri-band
GSM
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Data:
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GPRS
|
Screen:
|
240x320
pixels, 65,000 colours
|
Camera:
|
1.3
megapixels
|
Size:
|
Standard
candy bar 108x48x19mm
/ 108 grams
|
Bluetooth:
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Yes
|
Infra-red:
|
Yes
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Yes
|
Battery
life:
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4-5 hours talk /
6 days standby
|
|
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