The PR Blogger himself, Stephen Davies, was given an XDA Orbit 2 a week ago and he’s quite enjoying the experience. I asked him if he’d write an overview to tell us what he thought of it — and here it is:
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I’ve been playing around with the Xda Orbit 2 given to me by VCCP on behalf of their client, O2, for just over a week now and I’ve got to admit, it’s a pretty impressive phone. In all honesty, I’ve never been particularly fond of phones that come with a stylus. To me, they appear as an additional thing I just don’t need. Besides, I’m a master of predictive text (using either hand I might add) so the idea of using a little rod to poke in my letters is a complete turn off and, knowing me, I’d probably lose it within a matter of days.
So, as you might imagine, my first thoughts were I wasn’t really going to favour the phone from a usability point of view. However, after playing around with it on the first and second day I found the stylus is not really needed as you can change the option to TouchFLO and a much bigger touch keyboard is provided in QWERTY style. As fat as my fingers are (and they are pretty fat) I was able use them pretty easily to write text messages or input web addresses in the mobile browser.
The touch screen seems very similar to the iPhone and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Apple product was an inspiration for the Orbit 2. It’s definitely a selling point of the phone.
Next up is the mobile browsing. Being a frequent user of the mobile web, the mobile browsing experience plays a significant part in my mobile phone purchasing decisions. The Orbit 2 runs on Windows Mobile 6 Professional so uses Internet Explorer. Admittedly, I’m not a user of Internet Explorer on a PC but I have used it on an Orange SPV I used to own a few years ago. It was pretty useful then and still is today in my opinion. All my favourite mobile sites (Gmail, Bloglines, Twitter, BBC, Sky News etc) work fine on it. Although it did take some time to get used to the way it’s operated but I think this has more to do with me being more familiar with the browser on my Nokia n73.
The Orbit 2 also comes with ‘News Hub’ installed. Basically, News Hub allows you to subscribe and read RSS feeds on the move. You can also listen to and download podcasts, watch video blogs and schedule downloads. You can also import an OPML file too. Pretty cool.
I tested the internet browsing using wifi and was very impressed also. Believe it or not, this is the first phone with wifi capabilities I’ve actually used (how very old fashioned of me) so maybe it was the novelty of it that impressed me so much. Either way, it was quick and responsive and the next phone I have will definitely be wifi enabled.
Syncing the phone to a computer is a doddle and transferring music over was easy too. The phone comes with a 1GB memory card but the memory can be expanded up to 32GB apparently. Windows Media Player performs well as does the built in radio. A good radio is always a plus point to me. You just never know when you’ll want to hear a bit of Chris Moyles.
The phone’s 3 mega-pixel camera is adequate, although it doesn’t have a flash. What’s more impressive is the camera album which (again like the iPhone) can be used to sweep the photo thumbnails side to side. In all honesty, I think the camera could have been a bit more powerful given that Nokia’s producing 5 mega-pixels these days. Maybe I’m just being picky, I don’t know?
Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to play around with the sat nav yet. Will probably do so in due course and report on it later, but so far so good. Like all new phones it takes some getting used to but I’m liking the Orbit 2. In the beginning I wasn’t so sure.
Definitely a grower.
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Thank you for that Stephen. I’ve always had a place in my mobile heart for the XDA. I got the very first XDA from o2 ages ago when the data rates were 4 quid a meg. Heh. No, wait! Four or five years later and… Oops, they’re still 4 quid a meg (unless you manage to persuade o2 to give you an unlimited option… or buy an iPhone). But anyway, I’ve always had a place in my mobile heart for the XDA so it’s good to see the next iteration, keeping the faith.