The iMate SP5 is one of the first Smartphones to arrive with us for review sporting the latest Windows Mobile 5 smartphone edition operating system and providing inbuilt WiFi. As we said another cutting edge product from the team at iMate!  Measuring 107 x 17 x 46.2mm and weighing 106g the SP5 is an average size mobile and a small smartphone, it easily sits in a pocket without making you too aware that its there, but it's no V3 Razr.

The design is striking rather than outright ugly, a mixture of black plastic with silver highlights and a rather utilitarian design save for the rounded top edge. The phone says more function than form and this is a device designed for use rather than snazzy swivelling keyboards or rotating screens, there is no danger of the SP5 being mistaken for anything but a mobile.

The real estate of the iMate is split 50 / 50 between screen and keypad, the 2.2 inch 240 by 320 pixel QVGA LCD screen with LED backlighting is certainly a major plus point making the Windows Mobile GUI look great but it leaves little room for a full keypad. The keys are surprisingly well spaced and they have a raised lip which makes finding them without looking a bit easier, but the overall build quality is not enhanced by the feel when you depress a key. Those who intend to do a lot of typing may either want to invest in a little Bluetooth keypad or choose a larger device with a more Qwerty style keypad. There are a number of quick access keys immediately under the screen for common tasks such as browsing or getting to your contacts.

Our biggest concern is the joystick / nipple which seemed to be the same construction as the one on the SP3i, iMate have had to replace many SP3i's for the failure of the joystick which stops responding in one direction after moderate use. Clearly is not something we can test in just 2 days but the feel of the SP5 joystick did not inspire confidence.

A nice touch is the side button for switching wifi and Bluetooth on, this is very handy given the drain any form of wireless connection places on a Smartphones battery. The Wifi capability of the SP5 must be one of its key selling points, we managed to hook it up to our office network with ease and the 802.11b connection was solid if not the fastest. We were able to run a number of tests from basic web surfing (more on that later) and connecting a Skype client. Skype is not installed as standard but its easy to add and worked well on the WiFi LAN allowing us free calls in the office. We also tried WiFi sync to keep our device up to date with outlook running on a desktop machine, this has always been a sod to get working via Bluetooth so we were prepared for a fight. A fight was just what we got until the eventual discovery that Microsoft active sync does not yet support Active sync over WiFi Doh!

Once mobile, the iMate SP5 relies on Quad band GSM 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 Mhz RF for connectivity making it a truly global companion, it also supports EDGE data but not WCDMA (UMTS). We were able to make calls and also download data during our 2 days without issue. The RF performance was average with the phone struggling on some parts of our daily commute, but audio quality, both for us and our callers was good, even when using a Bluetooth headset.

Mobile web surfing is possible via the inbuilt pocket internet explorer and it works fine in terms of function, but the 2.2" screen is just too small to make most web pages accessible. We could only really work with mobile optimised or WAP sites which does limit the use of mobile browsing. There is also a lack of office applications that we had become accustomed to on Windows Smartphones, gone is pocket work / excel and now only pocket outlook remains. This is fine for storing contacts, reading email and managing your calendar but it does feel like a backwards step. A bonus the cut down windows media player 10, which works a treat and we managed to transfer some MP3 files and also some WMA's to listen too via the 2.5mm jack. Should you insist on the missing applications you'll need to look at the all silver iMate SP5m.

Storage is adequate if not generous, the SP5 has 64mb of onboard storage after which you'll need to rely on the Mini SD slot which has handily been placed inside the phone under the battery! this is a pet hate of ours and we wish they would stop doing it. The only solution is to buy a big Mini SD card 512mb and just slot it in and forget about it, you'd almost think iMate had their own branded SD cards for sale!

Battery life is a quoted 5 hours talk time and 250 hours on standby, but if our old SP3i is anything to go by that's about 2 days of real life use. In the short time we had the SP5 we played a lot of MP3 tracks and made a fair few calls and by the end of day 2 it needed a charge via the mini USB port which is the main means of charging.

Overall the iMate SP5 is a worthy smartphone offering almost al the features you could ask for, the inclusion of WiFi is the icing on the cake and makes it competitive with the forthcoming Nokia N80. There are doubts over build quality and we hope the joystick is more robust than that on the SP3i. We can't quite figure why there are 2 models (SP5 and SP5m) with minimal differences between them (the SP5m has a music button and the pocket office applications). However they are both selling SIM free for around £300 which is likely to be £150 cheaper than the N80 when it arrives in a few months time. Once again it seems iMate have successfully walked the tightrope between leading and bleeding edge, only time will tell if the build quality will hold up.

Published - 12/02/2006

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