C500 first impressions

[Guest cyrilthefish]

Had my C500 for a few hours so far

first off: OMG! it's even better than i expected

menus are amazingly fast, hardly any delays doing anything.

the camera is brilliant, speed-wise it's a few orders of magnitude better than the e100

and the best bit so far for me: i just installed pocket music, it was quite happy playing a 192k OGG file, with bass boost switched on and the phone still seemed more responsive than my e100 was in normal use! i'm simply amazed :shock:

(though playing music seems to go via the internal speaker rather than my bluetooth headset though :/)

i metioned the headset there. if you're getting a phone from a orange shop theres an offer for getting a bluetooth headset (i-mate) for £9.99 when buying/upgrading to a bluetooth phone. trust me and just buy it, it'll be the best £10 you ever spent (how did i ever survive withouth bluetooth headsets before? :) )

and i remember someone asking about emulation in another thread, the gnuboy gameboy emulator seems to run at silly speed (possibly faster than an actual gameboy) i need to go search out the actual commands/instructions for the emulator to make it work it properly (it's been that long since i've used it properly, i had an e100 before and it was basicly too slow to run it)

[Guest Dr Who]

Well for my two pen'neth. (Very, very early impressions)

Phone is small light but I am not terribly impressed by the speed. Takes *MUCH* longer to boot than the E200, more like an E100. Menu speeds don't seem any faster than the E200 to be honest.

Importing contacts from a Nokia was an absolute breeze, well done for including the contact wiz out of the box. Importing from my previous smartphone was more of a problem, mostly because backup/restore was dead in west london for a lot of last night.

Couple of niggles, like the timeout 'never' function not working - the rest is probably just unfamiliarity. I want to change my ringtone and background but haven't found where to drop them yet (haven't looked properly though). Not entirely impressed by the call quality on the one call I made so far. Sound had less clarity than the E200, more midrange but sounded somewhat fuzzy. Oh, and I could hear an echo on my voice. I was reminded of a review of a pre-production version where they criticised the call quality. Remains to be seen.

So far nice, with reservations.

[Guest cyrilthefish]

i've had the phone a few days now, and i thought i'd better do an update:

Phone is small light but I am not terribly impressed by the speed. Takes *MUCH* longer to boot than the E200

that i'm really suprised about, as the e200 is exactly the same as the SPV/e100 bar double RAM and newer OS. the c500 with a faster cpu and 32mb ram should technically be fastest... anyways, doing a simple power-on comparrison between my e100 and c500, the e100 takes approximatatly a third longer to boot. (though it should be noted i've never seen a e200 in real-life :oops: )

There are a few software bugs preset (the game graphics bug, certain-power saving options not being able to be disabled and so on) but will certainly be fixed in the next software update and are not major (well, except the games bug)

I want to change my ringtone and background but haven't found where to drop them yet (haven't looked properly though)

that i can help with, backgrounds go in StorageApplication DataHome and ringtones in StorageApplication DataSounds

as for battery life, i've had the phone 4 days and did a partial charge 2 days ago, battery seems approx twice the capacity of before in general use but the following has to be noted:

1. when idle, the c500 will last 2-3+ times longer than any pre-c500 SPV models (ie. the new CPU actually has decent power management for a change)

2. however, under load (ie. high resource apps like pocketmusic/video players) will use battery at exactly the same percentage per hour as older SPV's. so be carefull as the battery can still run out quickly.

the new mini-sd cards seem no different to standard models except the size, same speed and around the same price, nothing to get worried over (and it still annoys my p900 owning friend, as it cost him twice as much for a 128mb card for his phone than a 256mb mini-sd card for mine cost.) :)

all orange need to do now is fix the graphics/game bug and the odd power-saving bug to leave the C500 as the unequalled smartphone available 8)

[Guest Dr Who]

OK, so having put my phone through its paces over the weekend I can report..........

That I am exquisitely happy with it!

Still not blown away by menu speeds as many other people seem to be but you can see the extra speed in the internet explorer address bar. Previously as it bought up past addresses it would take AGES before you could enter a character on the same key (i.e. WWW, Grrrrr) and now it flies.

Call quality is actually very good, not quite as clear as the E200 but perhaps a little more natural sounding. SOund quality on MP3 playback is also very good. Just using Windows Media Player on my PC to rip a CD track to disk and then playing it on my phone (i.e. not phone optimised) it sounded great.

Battery life is amazing. Phone on ALL day and fiddling with it, i.e. screen almost permanently on, played a couple of MP3's, internet and about 80 minutes of calls and still 2 bars. Fab.

Setup activesync via bluetooth, took a little bit of ar*ing about but get there in under an hour. Also setup bluetooth modem which was also pretty easy. Transferred files via bluetooth, which is nice.

Some of the functions aren't terribly intuitive regarding camera and multimedia album. I think mainly 'cos they initially point to different places. And the Caller ID app was Pi**ing me off for a bit until I figured out to press 'next' rather than clicking a contact to insert my newly taken image. Doesn't seem to like inserting just ANY image though - haven't fully investigated.

Don't play too much in the way of games, just spvman, spvinvaders and smartris - I understand spvinvaders suffers but the others should be OK.

So, my assesment?

10/10!

[Guest Phil Lee]

I've had mine since Thursday and have been playing with it since then. I upgraded from an original SPV and haven't used the E100, E200 or MPx200 so don't know what they are like. Here are a few first impressions after 4 days using the phone.

I love the size of this phone. I find it hard to see how any phone with as much functionality could be any smaller than the C500 is. It is so light and fits perfectly into my trouser pocket.

In use the menus seem very fast and responsive. It makes the phone a joy to use compared with the SPV.

The keypad is way, way better than the SPV's. I could never manage to use the SPV one handed to write texts because the keys were so hard to press. The new keys on the C500 are just a joy to use.

I like the new T9 engine. It is much more intuitive to have a drop down menu of words to select. I also like being able to add words manually.

Web browsing seems a lot faster then on the SPV. Pages seem to download a lot quicker than on the SPV. The only thing I don't like in web browsing is that the / symbol isn't included in the symbols you get when pressing the 1 key in the address bar. This is a stupid oversight.

I love having Bluetooth on the phone. It is so much better to be able to use a Bluetooth headset compared with the wired one from the SPV.

The speakerphone sound quality seems to have improved over the SPV.

Call sound quality is much better than the SPV. There always seemed to be a small amount of buzzing on the SPV. This has gone completely on the C500.

The C500 seems to get a better signal too. At work I used to hover between 2 and 3 bars with the SPV. With the C500 I always get 4 bars.

I like the new front page layout although I do miss the MRUs on there. I think I may try to make my own homescreen based on the default.

Battery life is amazing on this phone. The phone was delivered on Thursday. After an initial charge I made about 80 minutes of voice calls and 2 hours of data calls until on Sunday evening I got my first battery warning. SP Task Manager reported that the battery was at 20%. This is so much better than the SPV.

One change I've noticed in how I use this phone is that I make use of the menu shortcut keys a lot more than on the SPV. It think there are two reasons for this. First I am still getting used to the rocker joystick and second I find the keys a lot easier to press than the SPV.

I've only briefly used the camera and will probably not use it very much. I have a proper digital camera for taking photos and don't know anyone with a photo messaging phone so don't really see the need for the camera in the phone.

Caller Photo ID is a nice toy to have on the phone. It certainly impressed my fiance when I got her to call my mobile and it had her photo pop up.

Voice dialling is a very good feature to have on the phone. It makes dialling a number when in a car a much safer thing to do. All I have to do is press and hold the main button on my Plantronics M3000 Bluetooth headset, wait for the phone to beep and speak the voice tag I want.

I've only installed a few programs on the phone. I've installed Binarys Smart Explorer and Task Manager, All Locations All-Explorer Lite, Calculator Lite and Traffic Counter SPE and they all work with no problem.

Active Synching is a lot faster than the SPV but this isn't really a surprise. My 100 odd contacts transferred from Outlook in no time at all. This was good since I couldn't get the Contacts Wizard to import contacts from my SPV. I suspect this is because I couldn't get the IR setup properly on the SPV but am not sure.

My only wish at the moment is that it was easier to toggle Bluetooth on and off. Please can someone develop a plugin to do this.

Finally I just tested the bootup time. The phone took 55 seconds from first press of the power button to having the Orange network id displayed.

All in all I love this phone. It is a joy to use and by far and away the best phone I've owned (not that I've had that many).

[Guest Dr Who]

You can press and hold the homekey which brings up the bluetooth setting tab, from which you can turn off the bluetooth. Still one keypress too many but better!

BTW I forgot to say that I LOVE the new 'joystick'!!!!! I liked the one on the E100, despised it on the E200 but this is amazing to use. No more accidental clicking, no more accidentally answered calls and no mistake in which way you are trying to click. Great.

And the size and the feel of the phone are perfect.

[Guest moviecut]

can someone test the snes-emulator? it was much too slow on any other phone, but with the new generation of phones (mpx220/c500) i think it must be possible to get 100% snes-speed. so please test it! is it ok to play games with the c500? the joystick isn´t good for gaming, right? so one has to use the keypad i think...what about a 3,5mm adapter for my sony-headphones? is there any chance to get them to work on this amazing phone?

[Guest Dr Who]

The headphone socket looks the same as the E200, although I haven't checked the shielding to find out which bit is which. If it is you could use the same adaptor to fit the E200 (there is a post in there on where to buy it - expansys do a 2.5-3.5 adaptor right angles adaptor for about £5).

[Guest agent.m]

I was gonna ask someone to convince me to by this phone. But with it not being able to be unlocked yet i'll wait :wink: plus whats it like to play games with???? do you use the keys?? or the pad??? I saw a dummy phone yesterday It does look good but i sort of broke the pad just by touching it :oops: hope the real phones arent that flimsy :)

[Guest Phil Lee]

I don't play games on my phone so I can't comment on that. As for the joystick, I don't think it is flimsy.

Posted from my SmartPhone!

[Guest dj_sea]

i should be getting this phone in a week or so. any ideas on what the best fetures are? what does the c500 have that the spv classic doesent?

[Guest martin]

i should be getting this phone in a week or so. any ideas on what the best fetures are? what does the c500 have that the spv classic doesent?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Fast processor 8)

[Guest dj_sea]

i heard the gaming issue in the c500 is fixed on the new rom now, is this true?