The Orange SPV (Sound, Pictures, Video) is a bit of a historical moment: it’s the world’s first Windows-powered smartphone. Produced by HTC but branded by Orange, it launched in late 2002 as a direct challenge to Nokia’s Symbian dominance. It looks and feels more like a PDA than a phone, featuring a massive 2.2-inch, 65k-colour reflective TFT display that is stunningly sharp. It runs Microsoft Smartphone 2002, meaning your mobile now looks exactly like your PC, complete with a Start menu and a version of Outlook that actually syncs properly.
On the technical side, it’s a beast, powered by a 132 MHz TI OMAP processor. It features an SD/MMC slot for expanding the memory—a massive advantage over the Nokia 7650—and it even comes with a clip-on camera in the box. It supports Windows Media Player, so you can actually listen to MP3s if you’ve got a big enough memory card, though navigating the interface with the joystick can feel a bit like trying to perform surgery with a spoon. The battery life is, frankly, abysmal; if you manage to make it through a workday without it dying, you’ve probably just left it in your pocket the whole time. It’s buggy, it’s slow to boot, and it’s clearly a “Version 1.0” product, but for the business user who wants their PC in their pocket, the SPV is a revolutionary, if frustrating, piece of kit.