i-mate's is known for selling Windows Mobile phones developed by HTC. However their latest JAQ is the first of their phones that isn't from HTC. It's made by a relatively new company called Inventec, based out of Taiwan.
The device is rather odd looking. This is mainly because the keypad area is raised along with battery compartment at the rear side, making it look like extra additions to the phone. This makes it look bulky. However it is surprisingly light making it look cheap and empty.
Its display is nice, with 2.8-inch QVGA TFT capable of 64k colors. The display is bright and readable indoors. But it loses its shine and gets completely washed out in bright sunlight. There is also no light sensor in the device that can automatically adjust the brightness of the screen based on ambient lighting conditions. The display is a touch-screen, so you can use your fingernails or the included stylus which is oddly located below the device on the left side. This positioning also gives the impression that the device was intended to be left-handed. The screen is inaccurate towards the bottom right hand side. Above the display, there are three dedicated LED notifications that inform you the status of incoming mail, Bluetooth and the battery level. This is useful when the device is in stand-by mode and the screen is turned off.
Below the screen is a full QWERTY keypad for messaging on the phone. The keypad featured on the i-mate JAQ is probably the device's most redeeming quality. This is truly one of the best QWERTY keypads on a handheld device. In comparison to similar phones like the Palm Treo or Nokia E60, the keys appear quite small, but the excellent spacing and tactile feedback offered makes up for this. The keys have an orange backlight, which is not a wise choice, as it makes seeing the keypad in well-lit areas rather difficult.
Above the keypad you have normal phone function keys such as the call and end keys, the two soft keys and the Windows key. Between the two soft keys there is the five-way joystick too. The joystick, like the keypad, is indeed wonderful. It is firm, easy to work with, and unlike many joysticks on devices seems to be like it will be durable and last along with the rest of the device. However, due to its raised surrounding sometimes, it isn't very easy to operate by nudging it with fingers.
Multimedia
The phone has the common set of multimedia features with Windows Media player along with support for audio and video playback, but the sound from the speaker phone is not loud enough in moderately noisy environments. The quality of the earphones that come along with it is average, and even those aren't too loud. There is no camera since it is meant to be a business smart phone.
Tech
The phone is a quad-band GSM phone with support for GRPS and EDGE networks. The phone has a Bluetooth 1.2 support with no A2DP stereo profile, slow USB 1.1 via a mini-USB jack and an infrared port. However there is no support for WiFi, which is always considered or preferred in any business communication offering.
Internally, the phone runs on a 200MHz TI OMAP processor. It has 128MB of ROM and around 64MB of ram. Though this processor is not uncommon, here its performance was slow. It also runs Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Edition AKU 2.5. Here they offer the usual suite of Windows Mobile software that includes Outlook, Internet Explorer Mobile, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player Mobile and Pocket Office.
Battery
Generally a device that doesn't include excessive power consuming features such as a camera and WiFi should offer good battery life, However, in JAQ the battery only lasts around 2-2.5 days on low to moderate use. If you use the phone regularly you have to recharge this phone every night.
Conclusion
At a price of Rs. 18,000 off the street, the JAQ doesn't substantially give a reason to choose it over the Nokia E61. |
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