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Hardware PDA
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Written by admin
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Thursday, 27 March 2008 |
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Page 2 of 2
Software/Features
O2 have done a great job of adding additional software and utilities to the Oribit 2, of course you get the standard suite of Windows software, including editable versions of Office Mobile (word, Excel, Powerpoint), but the highlight has to be the inclusion of the excellent CoPilot Live 7 software and the supplied car kit.
Some may argue that if you look at the monthly cost of the Orbit 2 - £40-£80 - it does work out expensive, but considering the sim-free price of the HTC Cruise which is about £400 and the cost of the GPS software - about £85 - then the Orbit does work out good value for money.
Obviously the only snag is that you have to get the device on an O2 contract.
However back to the GPS software for a second, you will be pleased to know that the signal acquisition time is helped by the supplied GPS Quickfix utility (downloads position data via the GPRS/3G network) and general route performance from the GPS receiver was good.
The only snag that we found was with the devices screen reflection, with no anti-glare screen we did notice a fair amount of reflection bouncing off the screen, whilst not a problem in the winter months, during the bright sunny periods it will be more noticeable.
Also the screen is hampered by the silver boarder that surrounds the screen - which also gives off reflections.
For multimedia you will find 80mb of free storage to play with (respectable), but you do get additional free storage via the supplied CoPilots 1GB microSD card.
Windows standard media player is used for playing back videos/MP3’s and you also get an alternative audio manager, video streaming software, radio and audio booster for your headphones.
Sound quality from the internal speakers/headphones was acceptable, but you can add your own headphones if you wish - via the 3.5mm adaptor - though you still need the main part attached to the mini USB port.
Its 3MP camera does lack flash support and images suffered as a result in low light conditions, but you do get an autofocus lens.
Connectivity/Performance
General performance was fine - even with the 400Mhz CPU - and we did not see any major problems accessing applications, watching videos or playing back music.
From a connectivity point of view the Orbit 2 excels, you have 3G HSDPA and Wi-Fi support, which made browsing the web a dream.
It was also useful when accessing the supplied RSS2 hub software and of course the video streaming software (YouTube etc) - though we did find the latter unable to work properly with 3G.
Doing some digging around the internet it seems this may be an issue with the O2 network rather than the device, people have also mentioned that the video streaming will only work with Wi-Fi, so we will keep our ears to the ground with any updates on this.
Generally battery life was also respectable, during a 30 minute GPS test with 3G enabled the battery drained by about 20%. It has a claimed stand-by of up to 400 h and 5h of talk time.
Editor review : Final thoughts
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
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| Overall rating |
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8.2 |
| Features |
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8.0 |
| Design |
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8.0 |
| Memory |
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8.0 |
| Connectivity |
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9.0 |
| Performance |
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8.0 |
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Last updated: Friday, 28 March 2008
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Last Updated ( Friday, 28 March 2008 )
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