Not everybody can justify spending hundreds of pounds on the latest high-spec mobile gadgetry, especially if basic emailing is your only requirement. At just £99 plus the cost of the top-up charge, the Orange SPV E610 provides an ideal platform for this task. For this price, you'll get a rebranded Amoi 6711 with a customised Windows Mobile 5 interface and a Qwerty keyboard as standard. It's available to buy now from the Orange Shop.
Strengths
The Orange SPV E610 won't win any awards for cutting edge style. It does offer a lightweight 125g profile and is coated in a rubberised material to ensure the device won't slip from your hand. Its 64mm (2.5-inch) screen supports a QVGA resolution of 320x240 pixels. To the side you can utilise a handy jog wheel for navigating around the Windows Mobile OS. There are also additional shortcut buttons, including one for accessing the 2-megapixel camera software, on the right side.
Beneath the screen lies standard phone buttons, a directional pad and a Qwerty keyboard with evenly-spaced, angled keys. The keys themselves are plasticky, but they do offer good feedback when composing emails and texts.
The camera possess an LED light with a self-portrait mirror at the back. Its image quality -- especially on outdoor shots -- really impressed us.
With a 260MHz CPU, 28MB of free system memory and 77MB of storage space, the SPV E610 performs reasonably well, though our test video in Windows Media player did have a problem playing back in full screen mode. Thankfully, Orange has supplied an alternative video player that can handle 3GPP movie files.
Despite the phone's Windows Mobile 5 OS, Orange has also done a good job of disguising the interface with its own custom theme. Additionally, the network provides flexible pay as you go data bolt-on packages for emailing/Web browsing. Daily and weekly data bundles are available and a fair usage policy will apply.
Battery life gave us just under two days of moderate use and call quality was respectable.
Weaknesses
Despite the cosmetic changes to the OS, it's still Windows Mobile 5 underneath. This means the OS won't support HTML emails and much of the software is out of date; you won't find Windows Live services or the latest Internet Explorer supplied. No document viewers are installed either, so receiving email attachments will be difficult, although you can buy other, inexpensive programmes to help with this issue.
We didn't really expect to find Wi-Fi or 3G support on the device, but for basic emailing, its GPRS/EDGE was adequate. However, Web browsing was more of a challenge, especially as we only ever seemed to pick up GPRS connectivity during testing.
While its camera quality is good, it has long shot times and almost grinds to a halt when the view screen is set to full (with the highest resolution chosen). The supplied headphones were basic and not as comfortable to wear for longer periods. You'll also need to connect them via the mini-USB port, as no 3.5mm socket is available.
Conclusion
The SPV E610 may not be cutting edge in terms of modern standards, but for £99 plus the top-up charge, you can't really complain. Orange has done a good job of glossing over the Windows Mobile 5 interface. If basic emailing is your main requirement, the SPV E610 should prove ideal.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday
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1charlie1 21 September 2009
Good: QWERTY keyboard
Bad: Camera
Comment: I bought this phone about a year ago. I previously had a old Treo but had "upgraded to a flashy Nokia, however I badly missed my QWERTY keyboard so, having read a review, I bought the SPV from an Orange shop for a good price of £99.00.
I am not a techie so when I couldn't run the link to my PC I just gave up and entered my contacts manually. Initially I couldn't get the email on Orange.net to work and after numerous phone calls Orange said it was a network problem. After waiting for 3 months I finally got email. It is OK if a bit slow. Surfing is also slow and you can only access simple stuff. I took the SPV to the US having read on the web-site that all Orange PayAsYouGo phones work abroad - but it didn't, and when I got back not only could Orange not explain why they couldn't guarantee it would work anywhere else outside the UK. Despite this I took it to Sweden two months ago (with a spare phone as well) and it was fine. I tried to import useful documents by email from my PC and although they arrived there isn't a reader installed so they just sat there.(I use the Contacts file for notes!) The camera is fine outside as is the video function but forget indoors unless there is lots of light, as the flash is useless.
The phone looks good and the sound quality on calls is fine however there are things that you can't change/adjust on PAYG as these are only supported by Orange on a contract basis.
For the money it is more than fair value but I would have happily paid another £30 or so for a bit more functionality. .
fed up 20 July 2008
Good: what it could be
Bad: it
Comment: 1st time it lasted 3 weeks then took orange over 2 months to replace it because it could not be repaired.
this time 6 days died again what a pile of junk unreliable, likes to crash and when it dies it dies.
when collecting last time they had had a few back for same problem.
should be taken of the shelf DO NOT BUY!!!!!
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