News

The highly popular and well designed Orange SPV C500 SmartPhone looks like it's about to be replaced in the European market by a similar looking music oriented SmartPhone being dubbed the SPV C550.  The SPV C500 is sold in the U.S. as the Audiovox SMT5600 but there are currently no signs of this new phone jumping across the Atlantic.

Notice how the above picture of the SPV-C550 looks a whole lot like the T-Mobile SDA Music (Amadeus) SmartPhone currently available in Europe.  Obviously this is the same device but updated a little and with a new design.  The SDA Music is made by Taiwanese manufacturer HTC, HTC called its music phone "Amadeus".  HTC also made the SPV-C500 phone, dubbed "Typhoon" by HTC, and that phone was sold worldwide -- in the U.S. it is available now as the Audiovox SMT-5600.  Below is a picture of that phone that I currently own, and love!

The big news on the SPV-C550 is that it uses a QVGA screen, a first for a SmartPhone (240 x 320) and has a 1.3 MegaPixel camera built in.  Another cool thing about the SPV-C550 that I can see is that it ditches the silly directional control on the SPV-C500 and uses a joystick instead for easier screen navigation.  The music playback buttons would indicate this phone is designed for high-speed data networks for music downloads.  Good luck seeing this phone released in the U.S. with EDGE though, that would be really sweet but I know it won't happen due to carriers in this country dragging their heels on releasing decent phones compatible and usable on fast data networks such as EDGE.

It would be great if the SPV-C550 also updated the fact that using a mini-SD card is really hard in the C500 because you have to remove the battery to get it in.  Not sure on that though, let's look at the specs we do know thanks to CoolSmartPhones.com!

Orange SPV-C550 Specs

• 240 X 320 TFT color screen, 262,000 color support
• 64MB memory
• Min SD external Storage format
• BlueTooth built-in
• 1.3 MegaPixel camera built-in
• Java 2.0 support
• Same popular form factor and design as SPV-C500
• Estimated Orange network release of May 2005