With support for USB OTG, you can copy files to and from flash drives using the File Explorer application.

Installed on the O2 are many applications that make the handheld more user-friendly. These include O2 Phone Plus, which makes it easy to find contacts when in the phone application, and O2 SMS Plus which lists both received and sent text messages in the same page for more convenient viewing. One particularly useful application is the O2 Menu. When running in the background, it can be brought up by pressing and holding the top right corner of the display. You will then be able to quickly perform tasks like connect to the Internet, reset the device, and most importantly, quickly close active programs to free up memory.

The VGA display on the Flame does not disappoint. It may not be as large as Dopod’s 5-inch U1000, but does well to display Web pages in a browser. It also helps in Excel Mobile to view more cells than what is possible on a regular QVGA display. We did find that the screen was not terribly bright. While we don’t need a handheld’s screen to be retina-scorching, the maximum brightness of the Flame just isn’t as bright as we would have liked–especially when there’s a need to use it under the noonday sun.

Powering the display is the Nvidia GoForce 5500 graphics processor. This is supposed to improve the graphical prowess of the Flame, but at press time, O2 was not able to provide any applications that make specific use of it. Like the ATI GPU on the Dopod U1000, this Nvidia GPU is supposed to help when processing graphically-intensive applications like videos and games. While this is not something we can benchmark objectively at the moment, we can say that the videos and games we tried on the Flame ran smoothly.

	With the provided cable, users can output the display and audio from the Flame to a TV or projector.

Also built into this O2 is an FM radio. This has to be used with a stereo headset, a pair of which is included with the Flame. We found no major flaws in the radio and were able to find and listen to the popular radio stations without hiccups. The stereo headset provided has earbuds that go into the ears. O2 has even provided replaceable earbuds of different sizes, a detail we appreciated. While this 2.5mm audio headset won’t replace your high-end in-ear earphones, it sure is a step up from the horrible earphones that usually come with PDAs.

Performance
An Intel 520MHz processor powers the Flame. In our daily use, we found it to be snappy in menus and applications. However, we did notice that it took us about 2 seconds for the Flame’s display to turn on after pressing the power button. While not a deal-breaker, it certainly is annoying and will take some getting used to.

Voice connections were all right. We experienced clear audio quality and no dropped calls in our use. The video call quality wasn’t that good, though–the other party found our video image fuzzy. While the front camera may not be great, the main 2-megapixel camera did very well to provide sharp images and, even in indoor conditions, image noise remained at a tolerable level.

Battery life is always a concern for products with high-resolution displays. We got only about a day’s use on a single charge of the Flame’s 1,620mAh battery. The rated cell life of this handheld is 4 hours of talktime when connected to the 3G network.

Our review unit came with Windows Mobile 5.0. O2 said it is testing Windows Mobile 6 on it, but at the time of writing this, there was still no confirmation as to whether there would be an upgrade. More information on that development to follow as it becomes available.