Orange Videophone
The videophone finally hits the streets. Beam me up, Scotty.
Price £1299.99
By Niall Magennis [20-06-2001]
It's taken two years and the co-operation of Orange, Microsoft and Nokia to finally get this product out of the labs, but that staple of sci-fi, the videophone, can finally be yours - albeit at an astronomically high price.
The first thing you'll notice about the unit is its large size. It's about the same size as a video cassette and quite heavy at just over 300g. The weight and size make it uncomfortable to hold and its angular styling isn't appealing to the eye.
The main selling point, of course, is the camera mounted on the top-left corner. This can be tilted up or down through an arc of 270 degrees and has a resolution of 640 x 480, although you can't fit this size image on the colour TFT, touch-sensitive screen as it only has a resolution 160 x 120.
At the bottom of the screen is a four-way rocker switch with the Enter key next to it, which are both used to navigate through menus. To the left of the rocker switch a Record button triggers the memo recorder and beneath this, four buttons act as hot keys for making and ending calls, launching the phone dialler and opening the address book.
There is a docking cradle that has both USB and serial connectors for syncing with a PC and it also acts as a charger, with a full charge taking roughly two hours.
The Videophone is essentially a PDA running Microsoft's Pocket PC, with the addition of a camera and the innards of an HSCSD phone uploading and downloading at 28.8Kbps. The core processor is an ARM SA1110 running at 200Mhz. This is backed by 16Mb of Rom to store the built-in apps and a further 16Mb of Ram used for storing your own files and apps. Unfortunately, the phone doesn't have any expansion slots so there's no way to upgrade the Ram or attach any additional devices.
The user interface is pen driven and the usual Microsoft apps, such as Pocket Word and Excel, are present. Wap and HTML browsing are taken care of by Internet Explorer, and Outlook is used for sending and receiving SMS messages. Microsoft's Media Player is also included, but as the Videophone only has mono audio support it's not ideal for listening to music files.
There's also an app to grab contacts from your SIM and store them in the main system Ram, and another app called Orange Video for recording video or taking snapshots. Up to six hours of video can be stored on the device. Turn the device on and you'll be greeted with the Pocket PC home page.
The only give away that the Videophone isn't a run-of-the-mill Pocket PC is the addition of a shortcut to the Orange Telephone Dialler. Double-click on this and you'll be presented with a dialling pad for making calls.
The Videophone works as a standard GSM phone, but if the person you get through to also has a Videophone you will be given the option to start a video call. Calls always begin as audio calls and both parties must click a video button on the dialler to switch to video-conferencing mode.
During a video call you'll see both a postage stamp-sized display of your outgoing video as well as a much larger image of the person you're talking to. You can adjust the camera's zoom using three pre-set levels which is handy for showing your caller detailed documents or maps, for example. A freeze-frame function captures an image from the incoming video stream.
The video runs at a roughly 12 frames per second, which isn't exactly fluid but is good enough to give a fairly convincing sense of movement.
If the person you're talking to remains relatively stationary then the video looks quite good, but once there's a lot of movement, the frame rate begins to drop off. During a video call we found there was a delay of about half a second between the two units. At times this was quite disconcerting and led to disjointed conversations.
It's a problem that affects many video-conferencing systems, but we had hoped that Orange would have been able to alleviate this on such a specialised device. Video talk time for the device is also quite low at one hour 30 minutes or 30 hours on standby.
At its current price the Videophone is way out of the reach of the average consumer, but we think it's also going to be too expensive and unwieldy for business use. However, you've got to admire Orange's perseverance in getting the device to market.
CONTACT: Orange
0800 801 080
www.orange.co.uk
Verdict
It's impressive to see the Videophone in action, but we can't help feeling that the unit is just too big; the battery life too short; and the price too high for it to find any real customers. As a demonstration of what can be done with HSCSD it's excellent, but as a really useful product it falls some way short of the mark.
Good Points
The first commercially available device of its type; integrates several functions well; operates over fast HSCSD.
Bad Points
Very expensive; noticeable delay on video calls; very large and unwieldy unit.
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