[ Mobius Special ] First Seen 2 new Smartphone : Orange SPV E200 and Sierra Wireless VOQ
Updated: 9 Oct 2003 (page 1)

Microsoft Mobius Redmond 2003 took place in MS Campus in Redmond from 9th Oct and 10th Oct. Paul Matt, the webmaster of ThreeGMobile.net is pleasure to be invited. During the Mobius, several guests were there to present the latest Mobile technology, development and new devices by Microsoft. This year of Mobius Redmond was very special. It met the announcement days of 2 new MS Smartphones using Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphone platform: Orange SPV E200, and Sierra Wireless VOQ. Although we were not in the announcement places, we still got the detail and the first hand photos of all.

Besides two new phones, Microsoft also presented some latest products from new Pocket PC Phone Edition, SPOT technology and many more. We will continue reporting what was happened in the Mobius Redmond 2003, or say, sharing that great activity. What is Mobius? You can refer to our article about the previous event happened in Europe 2003 in April.

Sierra Wireless VOQ : First MS Smartphone with thumboard
The well known maker of wireless data cards and modules Sierra Wireless joins the family of MS Smartphone. The first product VOQ will hit the market in November 2003. The company positions VOQ as a professional phone, meaning that it targets more on business users. From this point, we can easily understand why VOQ incorporates a flip-open QWERTY thumboard for emails, and memo contents input. It is a clever design from our view. Just like Nokia 6800, users have the right to keep the size as normal mobile phone or strengthen it as text-centric device. We tried the thumboard live in the event, the respond was ok and felt easily to press the keys.


Sirerra Wireless VOQ MS Smartphone with thumboard

VOQ also comes with the newest Smartphone 2003 operating system with the enhancement of web browsing, IM client and emails clients to strengthen the features for the business users. (discuss later)

Comparing the size, VOQ is bigger and heavier than old MS Smartphones like Qtek 7070, The "8" shape helps to project a memorable outlook to users. Like all MS Smartphones, VOQ has a very good screen, having TFT 64k colours display. However, the detail specification has not released yet. We cannot know it is transflective or reflective type. During the live demo, we still felt that the colour and the brightness were good enough.
Considering the hardware side, VOQ uses a 200 MHz X-Scale PAX262 processor with 48 MB Flash Memory, and 32 MBRAM. It shows the great improvement in term of the processing speed. We tried the menu response; it gave the similar result too. Like all Smartphones, VOQ is also a GSM tri-band phone with GPRS, data speed up to around 50kbps.VOQ does have some disappointments. It includes a SD/MMC card slot, while not SD/IO compatible. Unlike all MS Smartphones, no camera plug-in accessory is designed.

Orange SPV E200 - First MS Smartphone with built-in bluetooth
Many users blame that when most Symbian Smartphones come with bluetooth, why MS Smartphone gets rid of it. In the specification of Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphone, bluetooth becomes the new standard. The first bluetooth enabled MS Smartphone is the Orange SPV E200.


Orange SPV E200 Smartphone with Blutooth

The same age Sierra Wireless VOQ is claimed as professional phone, The SPV E200 can be categorized as an entertainment device. It is the first MS bar shaped Smartphone equipped with a camera in the back. It can produce up to 640 x 480 pixels quality of pictures. or 10 seconds movie clip with sound. The embedded MMS client enables the users to send the pictures or movie clips to the friends immediately after taking the shots. We tried the camera live during the event; we felt that the users experience was different from the Orange SPV with plug in camera because you could take the shot in a short time regardingless the plugin procedure. However, the overall camera control is more or less the same as the previous third party designed interface.

(Editior Note: We finally proved that the SPV E200 could product 640 x 480 VGA quality of pictures)

Taking about the bluetooth, the test unit has not activated the service; we cannot try the flexibility of the design. We still got the claim from the staff that the SPV E200 supports bluetooth audio headset profile, object push and dial-up networking, quite a complete set. During the time we wrote the introduction no official specification was announced. We only know the Orange SPV E200 will hit the store in November 2003 across the Orange GSM network all over the world.

New Features for MS Smartphone 2003
Both Sierra Wireless VOQ and Orange SPV E200 uses Smartphone 2003 platform. So what are the differences between the old Smartphone 2002 and new Smartphone 2003? Microsoft prepared very clear presentation slides to show. We simply post it here so that everyone can easily understand. In short, it strengthens the internet experiences like the improvement of email client, IE web browser and IM client. It includes some new features for corporate users and programme developers too.

Click to view
the new features of MS Windows Mobile for Smartphone 2003
Presentation 1, Presentation 2, Presentation 3

Next Page VOQ and SPV E200 Handset Picture Gallery