MICROSOFT-BACKED PHONE OFFERS MULTIMEDIA ENTERTAINMENT
New cellphone and service from Microsoft and U.K. mobile telco Orange can double as portable CE entertainment device -- but one that might not be welcome on aircraft. Orange SPV Smartphone that will make U.K. debut next month at ?180 ($279) is made by Taiwan’s High Tech Computer, maker of Compaq’s iPAQ. Similar models are coming from Samsung and Sendo. SPV acronym stands for Sound, Picture and Video.
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All SPV Smartphones work as ordinary GSM phone, but also use GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) with Windows and Internet Explorer to surf Web, send and receive e-mail, exchange snapshots, remotely synchronize contacts and calendar information with home or office PC. Phone has built-in digital camera and LCD color screen. At pan-European launch event this week in London, Microsoft and Orange showed how phone also used Windows Media Player to play music or view pictures, movies and games that had been downloaded into SD (Secure Digital) memory card.
Multimedia entertainment capabilities of Smartphone make it good for use on planes, OrangeWorld Exec. Vp Richard Brennan said. Microsoft’s Technical Co-ordinator Ian Ferrell explained afterwards how that was achieved safely. Smartphone has menu with option to turn off its radio circuitry. Phone then becomes electronic organizer, AV player and handheld game console, with no risk that radiation will interfere with plane’s navigation electronics, he said.
Question remains whether users will activate turn-off option and whether airlines will understand it. British passenger was jailed recently for refusing to switch off his cellphone during flight. Microsoft and Orange are spending more than $100 million to promote new SPV Smartphone service. But they admitted to us that they were relying on trade and press to educate airlines, so people who innocently used SPV phones for work or entertainment in air didn’t land behind bars when they got back to Earth.
“I understand the problem only too well,” Ferrell told us: “I had big trouble on a Lufthansa flight coming over here [London]. I was playing a game and in the end I had to turn it off to keep the crew happy. But in 6 months or a year the airlines will have seen enough of these phones to know the score. And that’s where you guys come in. You can spread the message.”
SPV Smartphone is neat and small with clear color LCD, but SMS (Short Messaging System)-style keypad is tiny and battery works for only 3 hours. Some Web sites, such Encyclopedia Britannica, have been tailored for small-screen display and show mainly text. Others, such as AOL e-mail access site, can be called up but then are unusable because they're intended for large-screen display. Navigating AOL site is very difficult, as is entering names and passwords. In practical test, Smartphone failed to access any of AOL e-mail waiting to be read. Orange and Microsoft suggest people use Microsoft’s Hotmail e-mail site, which is easier to negotiate.
Smartphone uses GSM with GPRS, not now-stalled 3G service, and Orange will tack extra ?6 ($9.30) monthly onto other tariffs for using it. Phone’s digital camera can send pictures to other picture phones, but only if they're on Orange network. Brennan said networks wouldn’t be able to exchange picture messages until after Christmas and into next year.