I’ve never really felt the need too continually swap my mobile phone for the latest and greatest model, but when the navigation buttons on my old D500 finally packed up, I realised that it was time for an upgrade. Checking my Orange account online I was pretty surprised to see that they were offering me a decent spec smart-phone as a free upgrade, and I couldn’t really resist.
I’ve now been using the SPV e650 for a few weeks, and seem to be getting on with it pretty well. There is still a lot that I haven’t had a chance to play around with, but it seems like a good time to post my early impressions of this capable little smart-phone.
Looks
Looks great, doesn’t it? (try clicking the slideshow above to view larger - I haven’t yet worked out the best size to embed picasa slideshows at) I hadn’t seen the e650 in the flesh before buying it, and when it arrived through the post my first impression was that it was smaller than I expected. With a full QWERTY keyboard tucked away, I was expecting it to be a bit of a brick, but it’s a tidy and compact and easily small enough to keep in your pocket.
The e650 is also surprisingly good looking for a smart phone. Other phones in the SPV series look like smart phones, but with the keyboard tucked away and the screen powered down there is little to give away the extra functionality that the e650 hides.
Usability
My major concern about switching to a Windows Mobile powered device was responsiveness. I’d heard that they can be really laggy and frustrating to use. Flicking through common options, the e650 isn’t exactly spritely, but is perfectly adequate. Windows Mobile uses the trick of leaving applications open in the background to make it feel faster, which does seem to work pretty well. This seemed a little counter-intuitive at first, but once you put it out of your mind it works very well.
Generally, I’m finding the e650 fine to use. Admittedly, after struggling with the D500 for a long time I am probably easier to please in this respect than many, but all the usual phone functions are accessible from a few key presses as you would hope.
The QWERTY keyboard is a godsend. Although you can’t exactly touch type on it, it is much faster that using predictive text to put together messages / email. Oddly, even when using the keyboard the phone still offers you predictive text suggestions which is pretty off putting, but I’ll figure out how to disable that at some point.
Applications
The standard application suite on a Windows Mobile 6 smart-phone is enough to get you up and running. Their are viewers for office applications, plus Outlook Mobile, Internet Explorer and general utilities. None of these have really blown me away, but they do the job. The phone also comes with ActiveSync, a very handy utility for keeping files up to date between phone and PC.
Connectivity
For me, this is what it is all really about. There are various connectivity options available, all of which are proving pretty useful so far:
WiFi : Superb, who would have thought that there were so many open wireless networks around? Turn wifi on and the phone shows you available networks, which you can then easily connect to to check your email / browse the web without data charges. The only downside of this is that you find yourself scanning for networks habitually when in likely spots.
Bluetooth: OK, confession time. I fried my Bluetooth dongle, so haven’t used this at all yet. I can’t imagine that it holds many surprises though.
USB: Using the included Activesync software, the e650 connects seamlessly via USB. This is useful for three main purposes:
- Transfer files between PC and Phone, including active syncing of email and tasks
- Use your LAN to connect to the web on the phone. I can’t imagine this is all that useful for many people, although I can imagine that it is a feature I will use a lot if we are developing mobile websites.
- Use the phone as a wireless modem. This is hugely useful for me, allowing me to connect to the web on my laptop when a wired connection is not available. The phone connects via either GPRS or Edge. No 3G, but the resulting connection is good enough to do basic or emergency work online.
GPRS/WEB Connection: This is still more of a gimmick to me than a tool at the moment. Let’s face it, not many sites are that great to use at 320*240 resolution. I am though currently working on some in-house tools that are designed for mobile use. The plan is that these will allow me to perform a few tasks much more quickly and easier via the phone.
Email: At the moment I am only collecting mail from a single IMAP account on an irregular basis, so not a great deal to report on this other than “Yes - it works”.
Conclusion
I’m sold. As a phone the e650 is more usable than my old D500. On top of that you get a whole host of toys useful functionality. My main complaint at the moment is not with the phone, but with Microsoft. Rather strangely, despite Windows Mobile 6 being launched in Feb, all the content on the Microsoft website is still geared to users of version 5.
I’ve already been upgrading the phone and adding new applications, so I’ll post separately about that at another time. All in all, I’m not disappointed.
15 Comments
Hi I am trying to get my e650 to work as a wireless modem but not sure where to start and cant find much info about it anywhere. Can you help
Took me a few attempts to find this as well (still haven’t read the manual mind you!). The option isn’t quite where you think it is.
I’ll assume that you have already connected via either bluetooth of USB.
1. Click Start
2. Select accessories (yes.. I know it is a stupid place)
3. Select internet sharing
4. Select the connection type
5. Select the network connection to use
6. Click the left button to connect
I use this a lot now. GPRS connections are pretty slow, but if you are in an EDGE area then it isn’t too bad. Can’t say that I would do anything too intensive using the phone as a wireless modem, but it’s invaluable at times.
Let me know how you get on.
hi i am just waiting to receive my phone as above, i was just wondering , when i connect to the internet on the phone , will i be able to use my broadband account i have at home to connect to the internet, while i am away from home ? (hope that makes sense). or can i only use my home broadband will at home ? many thanks ann-marie xx
Ann Marie :: It’s very unlikely that you will be able to do that. To connect to your home broadband you will need to be in WiFi range (and of course have a wifi router at home.
You will be able to connect via GPRS or EDGE though. This is slower, but you can sort of struggle by with it.
Hi, I’m thinking of getting one of these as opposed to a blackberry. However, I have been told its not compatible with outlook express so I will probably view my emails via mail2web.com. Do you think this is a viable option? Also, I’m a bit confused because the guy in the orange shop said it did not have wi-fi which put me off but you say it has?
Thanks
hope you can help
how do i download the “driver” to connect phone to my pc
i lost the software disc ages ago
i would like to hook up to my laptop and back up my contacts etc
@Sheena
Definitely has wifi. Also seems pretty set-up for outlook to me using activesync (I don’t use outlook, so this is not something I have tried, but all the documentation assumes outlook or outlook express).
@chris
I think that you need activesync rather than a driver. I don’t recall setting up any additional drivers, although I’ll admit that could be my memory. Activesync is available on free download.
hello ‘ i have got and spv e650 but i thought it will be same as htc710 so as i can see there is no pocket msn on this phone and this is the thing i wanted on this phone and i try to connect to msn from mobile.live.com or mobile.msn.com but after i coneected first time i try to connect second time it doesnt coneect it says connecting but nothing hapens and i have to empty stroge to do it again do u think is there any problem? thanks in advance
Hello there, i have one of those phones, so does my brother and so does one of my friends.
All of us have had things wrong with it and we keep having to have to take it back to fix it!
It looks soo nice, it looks so sexy but thats about all its got going i think!
My brothers, my friends and my phone keeps changing then ringtone, keeps changing the background, it moves the icons around and when we start to text, it comes as numbers no matter what we do & so much more!
SO many things have gone wrong and i would recomend to get something that has had more years of it being around!
Because most of the stuff on this phone is all pretty snazzy but its the first of its kinda pretty much so there have to be things going wrong with it, if i was you and i wanted to buy this phone, i would wait for the next phone coming out by them because there should have found out whats wrong with this one and fixed it!!
is it possible to use this phone as a wifi dongle, in other words, to host a wireless entwork through it with my pc?
@George Potter
Really surprised to hear that. I’ve not had a singleproblem with my SPV e650. I’ve been using it continuously since this was first posted and not had any issues with it. Could it be something that you installed on it?
@polargimp
There may be a way to do that, but I have not seen it, sorry.
Hi,
I want to connect my E650 to my laptop via bluetooth in order to access internet on the phone. To clarify more, on my laptop I have internet connect via LAN, and I want to have it on the mobile phone. Any help please!!!
I’ve having trouble telling whether the device is accessing through GPRS (which is charged for) or the wifi in range. It shows it has connected to wifi but when it actually downloads a website or email which one is it using? Anyone help?
Please help me get predictive text off!! I hate it….