Guest fde Posted January 9, 2003 Report Posted January 9, 2003 I guess most of us are "gadgeteers" like me, probably playing around with the bootloader 10 minutes after unpacking the SPV and in deep trouble 20 minutes later. However over years we have learnt how to "pull ourselves out of the shi* ". Do you think that the SPV is the ideal phone for a standard mobile phone user as you girlfriend is? I don't think so. My girlfriend couldn't stand a phone that is freezing, has a sluggish response on key clicks and as soon as you try to do something more special becomes complicated (accessing files from windows through Windows desktop). The manual supplied with the phone is ridiculous. If a "computer dummy" wants to master the SPV he has to read through a book of the size of the bible. If the dummy doesn't the phone is likely to master him. Probably we are kind of paying betatesters since also the helpline seems to have no clue about anything (no surprise, where should they get the skilled people for the salary they are paying). Anyway I doubt by far that this phone is ready for a mass market. There is no manual, no support and a sort of a test device called SPV. Most people are better off with a simple Nokia OS (the life expectancy of a mobile phone taken into account). Please don't get me wrong, I love my SPV and its one of the coolest gadgets I ever investigated. However, do you believe there is a mass market for the SPV? Regards, Frank
Guest spacemonkey Posted January 9, 2003 Report Posted January 9, 2003 I agree with what you've said but this has never stopped microsoft in the past. Windows on the PC isn't really mass market by similar definitions, most of my non technical friends muddle their way through on their desktops with the small tricks they've learnt from their techie friends and when the slightest thing goes wrong they call for help. The biggest help for these people would be quality support call centres but that doesn't seem to be a major priority for most business in the modern world. M$ will push it through and ultimately get market share as they always do and then a couple of years after they've dominated the market they'll actually make the product the best it could be. Still in the mean time, I've got a cool geek toy and I'm happy.
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted January 9, 2003 Report Posted January 9, 2003 got to agree with spacemonkey here, with mobile communications standard now and mobile pc's (lo tablet pc) becoming ever more powerful and small, this integration is probably a when as apposed to if event. ms dominate the home pc markets and now are working on the next natural progression- the mobile pc
Guest DJHope Posted January 9, 2003 Report Posted January 9, 2003 A new slogan is in order "smartphones - for smartpeople" maybe we will get a microsoft powered dummphone, wait hang on then microsoft would be using them!
Guest spacemonkey Posted January 9, 2003 Report Posted January 9, 2003 it's a microsoft powert smrt**o********....... oh wait just rebooting.....
Guest Emad Posted January 9, 2003 Report Posted January 9, 2003 The fact that this phone is pretty much a beta model is quite obvious - the os is so unpolished its almost funny. Still, with allll this feedback they're getting, it should become easier and easier to use - at the moment though the smartphone/symbian style phones are more pda/phone crossovers rather than phones themselves. There's still a hell of a lot of demand for them though.. Has anyone seen any spv ads btw? I've seen other phones, but the only place I've seen this is the Orange shop and the net.
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted January 9, 2003 Report Posted January 9, 2003 The "official" description of the spv is a "Mobile phone with PDA functions", which more people should bear in mind when complaining imho (not referring to you) as for adverts, the only one i have seen was in Computing magazine a week or two before xmas, just a pic of a bloke loaded down with pc's/cameras/fax machines etc to represent all of the spv's functions, no info or picture of the phone itself though, and no other adverts since, just that one
Guest Sunk Posted January 9, 2003 Report Posted January 9, 2003 I agree I definitely believe that we are beta testers for the phone, how else did we get such a piece of kit at such a low price.
Guest DJHope Posted January 9, 2003 Report Posted January 9, 2003 Battery isnt an issue for me i had been using a non-standard crippled battery for my old SL45 for over 5months, hardly any calls and a couple of texts, standby max of a day and than that used to die, if i can cope with that i can cope with anything, SPV is easierly better! Also look at the beautiful large color screen i bet the p800 will have poo battery life in flip down mode. As for us being beta testers quite possibliy but then orange do have (almost) the mononpoly on smartphones if they get it sorted before the p800 comes out (in my opion the best competetion) then its gonna do fine. As for the only other smartphone the 7650 dosnt cut it for me (others might find it perfectly adequate) with only 4mb of storage and no mp3 player (well whats the point you only have 4mb memory) Id have to take a music player out wiv me and a fone, not very smart. DJ Hope
Guest Shire29 Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 Just thought I'd point out that non technical people are not dumb. They may have little interest in how it works just that it works, and what it does. The smartphone is OK in my opinion for non technical users, however to get the best out of the phone u have to delve or play with it a bit. It's the same with a PC, some just use it and wouldn't know RAM from ROM, but if they can produce their presentations, documents that's all they need it for. With the SPV they make calls, play music, surf the net, I don't think any of these functions on the SPV are too difficult for the majority of phone users to master, and do work out of the box (well after a call to Orange). Bugs, yes loads, probably more than most new phones on the market, but then they just can't do what the SPV can do. Sorry, starting to ramble......what was the topic of this thread again ? Cheers, Shire
Guest pibrahim Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 Hmmm... in reference to the above, one function a lot of people might have difficulty with is playing video on the SPV. Taking a video clip and re-encoding it in a different format, changing the bitrate, framerate, etc., is more complex than whacking mp3s on a memory card :D
Guest casper508 Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 I think the market size will increase once the price goes down and lot more software becomes available and yes, more advertising. I remember when i bought my T68 in early Nov01, it took me some two odd months before i saw it in someone else's hands. But look at it now, T68i+MCA20Cam free on contract on nearly every network. Although more ppl have it now but most of em bought it cos its a COLOURED phone and thats all they're interested in. Ask em any technical stuff and most of em wont have a clue (well most of my mates with a T68 don't). So i'd say that give the SPV another 12-18 months and then we'll have a much better picture. Cas
Guest casper508 Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 Hmmm... in reference to the above, one function a lot of people might have difficulty with is playing video on the SPV. Taking a video clip and re-encoding it in a different format, changing the bitrate, framerate, etc., is more complex than whacking mp3s on a memory card :D Who knows there might be official MMC/SD card versions of movies in the future!
Guest HelloDave Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 Who knows there might be official MMC/SD card versions of movies in the future! Now there you would have great value movies. Let's see, at least £10 for the film and then another £25 odd for a 64mb SD card to put it on - £35 for a lower than web streaming quality movie! Although they might throw in the DVD for free - you never know... I think i'll stick to encoding my own! :D
Guest kevlar Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 Just to add my thoughts, this phone will never be mass market. Every person I have shown it to has been very impressed, but none of them will be getting one because they all say the same thing ' it's a bit complicated for me I think '. I'm talking of ppl who have always upgraded to the latest phone, ppl who have t68i's at the moment, and use none of the functionality of that phone. They admit the spv is incredible value for money, but at the end of the day, you have to be very computer litterate to stand a chance with it. The most amazing feature is the video playback, but unless microsoft release a completely user friedly, fully automatic video converter, your average joe won't even bother trying to get it working. Kevlar
Guest tricky Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 well i like my spv....mostly! although the battery life is pants on it! i used to charge my communicator up once a week and used that everyday! i am having to charge the spv almost every night! guess i will have to buy a bigger battery for it! i have the phone for the gprs and tri band functionality? and the camera on the spv wipes the floor with the 7650! but my biggest complaint is the keypad! its the worst keypad ever! very fiddly and difficult to use! give it a few months b4 we see any real improvement tricky
Guest Paul [MVP] Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 I've grown to like the keypad - might not be idle for you tricky with your love of exclamation marks :D P
Guest spacemonkey Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 I got used to the keypad after the first week and it's fine now... my only remaining problem with it is when you try to play a game that uses the joystick I'm always either bumping the middle click when wanting to move or bumping the two softkeys which invariably do "something" which interupts the game. This is why I can't play rebound... Wouldn't be a big prob as long as the game developers switch off the softkey and use a number button for fire... alternately they could just let you use 2,4,6 and 8 as direction keys like on old fashioned cellphones.
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 The space key is in the wrong place though, if it and the t9 selection button (0) were the other way round i'd be more happy. i'll get used to it eventually though :D
Guest spacemonkey Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 Yeah, that drove me nuts when I got mine... my previous phone was a Sony J70e so changing words in T9 was on the jog dial (Sony love jog dials) and 0 was space. I was always sending my mates cryptic sms's with long random strings of characters cos I wasn't using space. The other thing with T9 on this phone is all the places it doesn't have it switched on, It should just remember what you last used throughout the phone, instead there's loads of places where you back to normal multipress mode unless you explicitly change it. I find even for names and stuff it's easy to build them from short bit's of T9. The other one, If in IE you do a menu go to and starting keying in a URL but in T9 it runs INCREDIBLY SLOW and in fact using T9 in this field is the only total lockup, pull out the battery I've had.
Guest Monolithix [MVP] Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 all url input in PIE is incredably slow. I think its to do with the fack its searching the history files for matching text at the same time. And i also hate having to constantly change the text input back to t9 form normal input. another one for the wishlist methinks...
Guest kevlar Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 If you are going to manualy enter a url clear your history first. Kevlar
Guest SFMH3 Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 Market share: I only know one other person with an SPV: every other major phone on the market has at least two or three of my mates using it. Anybody else similar or am I in a technological backwater...?
Guest strathclydezero Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 None of my mates have an SPV. The closest any of them get is a T68i.
Guest Emad Posted January 10, 2003 Report Posted January 10, 2003 I doubt there's more than 5-6 thousand spvs around anyway in Britain - HTC isn't a bulk manufacturer. Compare that to the number of T68s floating around and that would help explain the rarity. On the OS complexity side, whenever I've given a friend my spv to fiddle around with and said 'joystick moves around, these two soft keys do those two functions, this is the home button, this is the back button, and the middle button in the joystick is return', they've been zooming quite happily around the phone within minutes - even people who can barely use a computer. Funny, as it took me a while to get the hang of it.. I'm probably just dumb or something..
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