News

No - the SPV isn't official. It's a hoax!

The new SPV will after all, be the Tanager, as we originally guessed. The idea that Orange may be testing another kind of smartphone will, we can safely predict, turn out to be true one day. But Orange says it isn't true now.

The Tanager will appear in mid July - we were right about the reason for stocks being low (though Orange hasn't said anything about whether the lawsuit has anything to do with it). But the trial (Orange insists) is nothing to do with Orange, nor with Julian Hope. He does exist, but he's on holiday!

Here's the official Orange statement:

A number of Orange customers have received an email which claims to be from Orange inviting them to participate in a trial of the new Orange SPV handset.

While this information appears to have been sent by the Orange trials team, it was not generated by Orange.

The next version of the SPV, the SPV E100 will be launched in the UK in July. All trials of this handset are now complete.

Orange very much regrets any disappointment caused to our customers by this misleading email and we are conducting a full investigation into its origin.

The Tanager is pretty much identical to the current SPV. It has a nicer keyboard, and a much nicer screen. But it still can't do Bluetooth; and it may still fall foul of Sendo's lawsuit. And the whole Microsoft Smartphone push could hiccup if that happens.