When you think of a phone PDA combo maybe the remote control look-alike that is the Nokia communicator comes to mind or perhaps the Ipaq look-alike XDAII, while the iMate Jam hasn't shrunk to mobile phone dimensions it is a good deal smaller than the XDA II.

At 5.8cm wide by 10.8cm deep by 1.81cm high and weighing 160g it is some 30 grams lighter than an XDA plus its only slightly bigger than a Sony Ericsson P910, with the 416MHz Intel XScale PXA272 processor and 64mb of RAM the iMate Jam runs the windows mobile OS and presents a now familiar user interface.

Connecting to the outside world is the forte of the iMate Jam and the tri band 850/1800/1900Mhz or 900/1800/1900Mhz mobile connectivity is complimented by GPRS data connection and mini USB connection plus Bluetooth for use of mobile accessories. There is no WiFi on this device which is a mistake but it can be added by use of the SIDO compatible SD card clot which also caters for MMC cards, but this take us the useful card slot and it is never as good as an inbuilt wifi option.

The 2.8" screen is a smaller than the XDA and most PDA's its bright enough and colours seem life like but its just a  bit on the small size, especially when you operate the on screen keyboard, but with the predictive text assistance you can still move at an acceptable speed but this device is not meant for lengthy reports just short reports and emails. Viewing should have been made easier by the Windows Mobile 2003 SE support for landscape mode, however getting an excel sheet into landscape took some six taps in various menus and just as many to get back to portrait again, which is a real shame as it put us off using this undoubtedly useful feature.

The battery life of the iMate was more than average with a looping MP3 managing a smidgen over 5 hours with the screen switched off and we managed a good 2 days in standard phone mode with sparing use of the PDA functions. It seems possible that a daily docking session in the supplied cradle with its trickle charge via USB would be enough to allow you to use the full PDA / Phone functions without worry.

In terms of applications you get the full MS mobile suite which includes email and pocket word and excel giving you the basic business tools, there is also windows media player 10 which has grown up to be a fully fledged MP3 / media player, of course you'll need a memory card to really use this as the 64mb of memory doesn't stretch beyond one album!  Of course being a windows OS there is a whole community out there writing little applications for everything from blue jacking to calculating the lights on time in Glasgow.

Just when you are thinking that the iMate Jam is a good combo of a PDA and Phone they throw in one last feature a 1.3 mega pixel camera which takes some very crisp looking pictures, we had a play with this and then using the images in MMS messages and emails which even enabled us to use a blogging tool.

The iMate Jam is a smaller version of the PDA2K we had our paws on 2 weeks ago and while we loved the PDA2K it was just bit too porky, this slimmer iMate Jam is a much better bet and only a tad bigger than a standard smartphone. SIM free it's available for £389.99 and that's a fair price given you get a smartphone and PDA in the space occupied by just one device.

More iMate Reviews

More Smartphones -

[ Up ] [ Treo 600 ] [ Nokia 6630 Smartphone ] [ iMate PDA2K Review ] [ Sony Ericsson P910 ] [ Nokia 7610 Multimedia Phone ] [ iMate Jam Review ] [ Asus P505 ] [ Nokia 7710 Review ] [ iMate SP5 Review ] [ Nokia N80 Review ] [ Sony Ericsson P990i ] [ Nokia E61 Review ] [ Blackberry 7130g Review ] [ Mio A701 GPS Smartphone ] [ Nokia N95 Review ] [ iMate PDAL Review ] [ Apple iPhone Review ] [ Samsung i600 Review ] [ Treo 680 Review ] [ Nokia N93i Review ] [ Nokia E60 Review ] [ Smartphones ] [ O2 XDA Exec Review ] [ Sony Ericsson M600i ] [ iMate JasJar Review ] [ iMate Kjam Review ] [ Nokia 6670 Review ] [ iMate SP3i Smartphone Review ] [ Sony Ericsson P900 ] [ Treo 650 Review ]