News

Smartphone SPV gets unlocked, after all; run your own apps

The original concept of the Orange SPV Smartphone was that it would be very strictly controlled, and only "signed" applications would be approved. You could, if you knew how, run your own application on your own phone, but you couldn't send it to anybody else. Well ...

That's all changed with the "deliberate mistake" of the new Developer web site which Orange has set up. Right now, it's mostly an SPV site, but that will change, as other platforms of smartphone come online at Orange this year.

The deliberate mistake is that if you log onto the Orange site, you can unlock your phone.

Apparently, the day the site opened, 1,800 SPV users logged on to do this. It isn't an official change of policy, but it is deliberate, say sources.

"We need to make the signing process quick and simple," is the official policy, expressed by Nick Balderson, Vice-President of Product and Infrastructure at OrangeWorld. By "quick and simple" he means a one-click, Web based signing, for what he calls "pocket money" fees of around $20 per application.

And very much less officially, it is possible to undo the "SIM-lock" which ties your SPV to Orange. An application on this site will run on Windows XP and Windows 2000 and will allow you to put non-Orange SIMs in the phone.