My new toy, i-Mate Jam PDA Phone

Just got my new phone from expansys.ie, an I-Mate Jam and I am delighted with it. Its far and away better than the old iPAQ I was using and is marketed as a "convergence" device which can act as a PDA, GSM phone, MP3 player etc.etc.


The imate is make by HTC Corp and is also branded as the o2 XDA II Mini and T-Mobile

Its one of the smallest pocket pc devices around (about the same height as my old Nokia 6100, and 1.5 times as wide) so I can easily carry it around in my pocket and don't feel like a plonker holding a brick to my ear when taking a call.

There are lots of good reviews of this device worth checking out:

Victory is ours: T-Mobile MDA Compact (aka HTC Magician) is the best PDA phone of them all !

Pocket Now Review

i-mate Jam Pocket PC Phone Edition review

ZDNet review

GeekZone Review

Here are some of my observations:

- A phone theme would be useful such as on a nokia phone to assign preferences for ring tone, vibrate alert etc. I mostly miss the ability to set a "Silent" Profile when going into a meeting so it only vibrates instead of ringing. This can be accomplished by clicking with the stylus on the Audio speaker icon on the title bar and choosing "Vibrate" but its cumbersome. An "Outside" and "Car" profiles could also be useful for turning up volume to Max etc.

- Bluetooth stack is Microsoft's own which is far inferior to the WidComm (now BroadCom) stack. This means I have a lot of difficulty getting ActiveSync or any other comms working with the Targus USB bluetooth adapter on my laptop.

- The new version of the Pocket PC OS, codenamed Magneto promises a few improvements including the same OS for smartphone and PocketPC devices which should provide more phone friendly software apps from Microsoft and 3rd party developers.

More to follow on using:

- WiFi using SanDisk 256MB SDIO WiFi