The iMate PDAL comes from a good stable and follows hot on the heals of the iMate successes like the SP range and the Jam / Kjam, so good that Orange and other mobile operators badged up the design for themselves. So we had high hopes that the PDAL would build on the SP5 which we tested over a year ago. The PDAL is a quad band smartphone running on Windows 5.0 and a 200Mhz processor it does not support 3G but does handle GPRS and has inbuilt wireless LAN 802.11b/g.

All sounds great and so he had high hopes when the unit arrived at Lordpercy towers. First impressions were mixed the PDAL looks a like a cross between the old SP5 and the Sony Ericsson P910, it seems to take the worst from both designs and ends up without the large screen of the P910 and a less rich user interface than the old SP5i. Build quality has also taken a nose dive and the PDAL felt distinctly loose and the plastic not only felt cheap but it looked quite dull too. Despite this poor start we fitted it with our SIM card and set off for a normal day at work with the unit fully charged.

Day one started with the normal onslaught of calls, the iMate PDAL coped well to start with and call quality seemed ok and the RF performance seemed about par for the office environment. We paired a Bluetooth headset and set out for a quick lunch trip and made a call while on the move, again this went well although we did note the effect that enabling BT had had on the battery which dropped its first bar. We did note that the PDAL supports AD2P which means that you can use it as an MP3 player over BT with stereo sound. However our tests with a cable proved that the sound quality is pretty poor when listening to MP3 tracks transferred to the phones memory and also onto the Micro SD card.

As we got back into the office the PDAL suffered its first crash and required the battery to be removed and the unit restarted to bring it back to life. It is at this point that you realise how long it takes the 200Mhz processor to get the Windows OS back up again. We used the afternoon to get the iMate hooked up to the office wireless network, it handled the WEP and WPA2 simply and we were soon connected. Web browsing while easy enough is limited by the smallish screen for a smartphone, the 2.4" touch screen and stylus mode sees the PDAL in its most useful form.

However the touch screen also doubles as the main keypad which led to us pushing keys whilst on the phone and general greasy paw prints all over the surface after just one days use. Still as we drove home at the end of day one there was still over 60% battery left and the PDAL had performed averagely if not exactly living up the the smart in smartphone. Day 2 and we decided to try and sync the iMate with MS outlook running on an office machine, now we could have tried OTA (over the air) but instead opted for the safety of a cabled USB 1.1 link and followed the wizard to set-up the synchronisation. All looked good until we checked at the end of the sync and not only had contacts not flowed to the iMate but they had gone from the PC, luckily we had taken our customary backup but this would have been a serious disaster for most users. A quick flick through the lightweight and poorly written manual didn't reveal much either.

So we went to the iMate club where users are directed to get support all we found was more poorly written info and a few suggestions that sync may have executed in reverse. So more by luck than judgement we managed a successful sync and had the MS outlook data pushed to the phone whereby we were able to confirm that by running MS Mobile 5.0 you do get all of the expected office applications (viewers) plus WM10 for audio and video playback.

The only problem with all this PIM functionality combined with WiFi and the rich UI of the PDAL is that the whole thing runs like a dog when you have more than one application open, to say its slow is an understatement, working the iMate through the second day was like racing milk floats. It put us off trying to load any applications for fear of a complete slow down or worse another crash. A constant source of annoyance is that way that application do not close when you exit them, instead you have to correctly shut them down or they will hang around sapping the limited 64mb memory.

Battery life is rated at 4 days but as we reached the end of day 2 the battery was down to just over 20% left which mean't it wasn't going to make it through the night and would have to go on charge. The morning of day three brought a big shock, LP was late stuck on the M25 and called in, when we say called in we mean he tried too, but it seemed that the PDAL touch screen wasn't responding in the middle and subsequently was taking a big hard press to get the 5 key to activate (remember this is a touch screen phone) by the time he got in we all tried the same test using both finger and stylus and sure enough the sensitivity had decreased. Despite a re calibration the keypad was becoming tricky to use and this affected everything we tried to do that needed a keypad or keyboard.

So reliability gremlins already and a less then impressive performance and we had even started to dislike the normally excellent iMate GUI which while not bad at all has become stuck with a lack of development, it feels like this is just a rehash inside a new shell. Sadly for iMate it isn't a good shell and isn't exactly going to appeal to those who chase after the Razr or other style phones, while the business man is more likely to be packing a blackberry or high end Nokia.

By day 4 of life with the PDAL a new joke had surfaced in the office, it went something like who is going to use the PeDALbin today? not that the iMate was unusable but it had lost almost all of its attraction since the screen had started to play up and this only served to enhance our doubts in both build quality and reliability. The iMate PDAL manages to fall between two stalls it is not a PDA and so the touch screen is too small to be of real use even in portrait mode and yet the removal of the keypad and the small processor and memory make it a poorly equipped smartphone. This is in essence a re badged SP5i with the keypad taken off and things have moved on in 12 months.

If you are intent on buying an iMate PDAL then we urge you to visit a shop and try it for yourself and make sure you try the competition too. iMate have taken their eye of the ball with the PDAL and we can only hope the rest of the range has moved forward and not stagnated.

Published - 28/05/2007

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