O2 XDA Orbit

Well, I don't usually do reviews on mobile phones and computers. I just got a feel that it is about time that I do one for a start. Well then, let's start off with O2's XDA Orbit then. It is a chic phone, honestly. I have never thought that a PDA/phone will be so light as the O2 XDA Orbit. One can argue that the smartphone is actually a HTC by-product. It is not a HTC by-product.It is actually a HTC product in O2's name!

I have the opportunity to have a go at the machine for a week and guess what? Out of 10, I will give it a 9.5. Why is it so? It should be a perfect 10 but no attached keyboard, that is why. Other than that, it is marvellous!

To start of with it, it is a PDA phone which runs on Windows Mobile 5 OS. I do understand that there is WM6 at the moment but O2 have not updated their Orbit to support WM6 yet. I wonder why. Anyway, it is the review that matters, right?

It is a quad-band phone with EDGE and WLAN (802.11b/g). You can use the phone with any sim card in the UK provided your phone is sim free. The exception to it is '3' network because the phone does not support CDMA. It has a 2.0MP digital camera on the back of the PDA which produces reasonable pictures under normal exposure. Pictures taken under low light or over-exposed will suffer greatly. One more thing is that it does not have auto-focus like the cyber shot phones made by Sony Ericsson (e.g. K800,K810 and etc.).

Besides that, you can also store mp3 files or other microsoft office applications on it and sync it with your computer either using the provided cable or wireless. Please take note that one would have to use the cable to sync the PDA with their copmuter for the first time. Otherwise the sync will not work. One can also use the Orbit to store contacts and appointments (PIM). It works perfectly.

The main attraction about the Orbit is that it has a build in GPS receiver. That is very useful as one would not need to buy a bluetooth GPS receiver which is really troublesome. Just load up the GPS software (e.g. Tom Tom 6 or Copilot 6 Live) and the programme will run! Just to be safe is that one must stop before loading the GPS sofware. Otherwise, the GPS will take ages to load.

The Orbit's battery is not the heaviest but yet it lasted me for two days standby. Well, I do use quite a lot for text and bluetooth not mentioning WLAN. It is brillant! The X factor is that the XDA Orbit is light compared to many PDA phone. I do like the shape of the Orbit compared to the HTC counterpart. The HTC P3350 is more rectangular but the Orbit is just nice to hold on to. Excellent!