Full Review and Specification for the O2 Xda Orbit II

We’ve said it before but GPS looks set to be the must-have accessory for smartphones in 2008. The O2 Xda Orbit II is the latest device to house sat nav, with ALK’s CoPilot Live 7 built-in.

O2 Xda Orbit II touch-screen

Effectively O2’s own-branded HTC Touch Cruise, the Orbit II is relatively small, particularly when you take into account the vast amount of features the Orbit houses. There’s no QWERTY keyboard, so you’ll have to get to grips with the large 2.8-inch touch-screen. But, thankfully, the handset comes with a stylus that neatly packs away in the bottom right-hand corner. We say thankfully as some of the menu icons are rather small and trying to press these with our fingers and thumbs proved tricky. So using the stylus will be your best bet.

Under the screen is a navigation wheel that rotates 360 degrees as you move through the various menu icons available. Find your chosen option and simply press the button in the middle of the wheel.  

The Orbit II runs the Windows Mobile 6 operating system and offers Word Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile and Excel Mobile, so you can read and send various documents while out of the office. Once again, the lack of QWERTY keyboard means you won’t be doing anything more than making the odd change to copy or writing a two or three-line email.

O2 Xda Orbit II sat nav

CoPilot Live 7 has been designed not just with the driver in mind, but also the pedestrian and cyclist. Choose your desired mode from the ‘routing’ settings and CoPilot will give you relevant instructions for each particular mode of transport. There are numerous map views, including 2D, 3D and night view, all of which look clear and sharp on the screen. As you are being navigated to your designated destination, a toolbar is displayed at the bottom of the screen which states your estimated time of arrival and how far you have left of your journey. Although we found it took a couple of minutes to pinpoint our GPS position, once it was fixed, it remained so. The O2 Xda Orbit II comes boxed with an attachable instrument that can stick to your car’s windscreen, and the voice instructions are both clear and easy to follow.

From April, ALK will be provide Mobile Live Search for free to all new and existing customers who have CoPilot Live 7 on a Windows Mobile device. 3G was lucky enough to receive our O2 Xda Orbit II with this feature already embedded. Once we logged onto the internet, we were able to simply type in the name of a well-known coffee shop and a list of the nearest establishments was brought up on the screen complete with the telephone numbers allowing us to call them directly.

O2 Xda Orbit II verdict

Add a 3.15-megapixel camera into the mix, as well as an FM radio, a built-in media player and HSDPA and Wi-Fi capabilities, the O2 Xda Orbit II is a definitely a powerhouse. Yet, the lack of a QWERTY keyboard is not helped by the perplexing touch-screen. However, with the excellent CoPilot 7 built-in, if you’re looking for a smartphone with a high-quality GPS sat nav system, the O2 Xda Orbit II could be the way to go.