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| i-mate JASJAR |
| General |
| Network | Umts / Gsm 900 / Gsm 1800 / Gsm 1900 |
| Announced | 2005, August |
| Status | Available |
| Size |
| Dimensions | 127 X 81 X 25 Mm |
| Weight | 285 G |
| Display |
| Type | Tft Touchscreen, 65k Colors |
| Size | 640 X 480 Pixels, 73 X 55 Mm |
| | - Touchscreen Input And Qwerty Keyboard Input Modes
- Handwriting Recognition |
| Ringtones |
| Type | Polyphonic, Mp3, Aac |
| Customization | Download |
| Vibration | Yes |
| | - Dual Speakers |
| Memory |
| Phonebook | In Shared Memory, Photo Call |
| Call Records | Yes |
| Card Slot | Sdio/mmc, |
| | - 64mb Ram
- Intel Bulverde 520 Mhz Processor |
| Data |
| Gprs | Class 10 (4+1/3+2 Slots), 32 - 48 Kbps |
| Hscsd | No |
| Edge | No |
| 3g | Yes, 384 Kbps |
| Wlan | Wi-fi 802.11b |
| Bluetooth | Yes |
| Infrared Port | Yes |
| Usb | Yes |
| Features |
| Os | Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocketpc |
| Messaging | Sms, Mms, Email, Instant Messaging |
| Browser | Wap 2.0/xhtml, Html (pocketie) |
| Games | Yes, |
| Colors | Stylish Black |
| Camera | 1.3 Mp, 1280x960 Pixels, Video; Secondary Vga Videocall Camera |
| | - Pocket Office(word, Excel, Outlook)
- Java Midp 2.0
- Voice Memo
- Mp3/aac Player
- Video/audio Album
- T9
- Built-in Handsfree |
| Battery |
| | Standard Battery, Li-ion 1620 Mah |
| Stand-by | Up To 260 H |
| Talk Time | Up To 8 H |
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i-mate - JASJARi-mate JasJar / HTC Universal
If you are looking for a great, light-weight, and easily pocketable phone to toss into your shirt pocket - stop reading now. The i-mate JasJar is not that device, believe me. While it is indeed a triband GSM phone that also supports the 2100Mhz UMTS 3G band, the Windows Mobile 5.0 powered JasJar is simply too big and heavy to be considered a regular phone. That's not what it was meant to be. I think the JasJar would be better classified as "a data-centric PDA with voice capabilities." If you look at the device in that light, it begins to make sense. A lot of sense.
Thanks to Wireless Imports for loaning us the JasJar for review.
Sizing up the JasJar
Other HTC Universal based devices include the O2 XDA Exec, Orange SPV M5000, QTEK 9000, T-Mobile MDA Pro, and Vodafone VPA IV.
The i-mate JasJar is based on the reference design called the Universal that was developed by Taiwan based HTC. It weighs in at a massive 285g (10oz), making it heavier than even an old school Nokia 9210 Communicator. Its 81mm x 128mm x 25mm (3.2" x 5.0" x 1") dimensions are also way up there on the size scale. But the reason for much of that bulk, and I do mean bulk, is that there are a lot of things packed inside.
When closed, the JasJar looks like neither phone nor PDA. Apart from a series of buttons and ports that hint at the capabilities tucked away in side, the JasJar looks like a rounded, gray metal box. You'll find a volume control and backlight, voice dial, and camera buttons on one side, surrounded by a pair of stereo speakers. The other side houses the dual-action hinge, home to two call control buttons, as well as a headset jack, reset button, miniUSB port, two external antenna ports, and the stylus. The bottom of the device houses a SDIO card slot as well as the chromed power button. The front of the device is where you will find a few speaker holes for when the device is used as a phone when the display is hidden, and the back is home for the main camera's lens and assist light.
The JasJar's hinge is what gives the device much of its character. It allows the device to be configured like a regular PDA with the display in portrait mode, and, more importantly, opened up in landscape mode so that the built-in QWERTY keyboard is revealed. When opened in this manner, the large d-pad controller is located to the right of the JasJar's touch-screen display. Directly beneath the d-pad is the front-facing CIF resolution camera for video calls. On the other side of the display can be found the ear speaker, used when taking calls when the device is configured in the traditional portrait mode with the keyboard hidden.
The keyboard is quite large and full featured. There are 62 keys in total, comprised of the alphanumeric keys, cursor controls (4 arrow keys), as well as a number of shortcuts and the call control keys and two softkeys. The JasJar's keyboard has so many keys, in fact, that I only found one instance where I was required to use the touch screen, which was an error pop-up that I had to clear by tapping the screen with the stylus. It might take a bit of a learning curve, but, in general, the JasJar can be used almost entirely without the stylus and touch-screen thanks to the wide assortment of keys on its keyboard.
The keys themselves have a good feel, and are easy enough to read. I do find it odd that I had to use the red Fn ("function") key in order to access some common symbols, such as the apostrophe, but otherwise there was little required in terms of finger gymnastics. The keyboard has a very cool looking red-orange backlight that comes on when you are in a dark room - as determined by the small light sensor located above the i-mate logo. I found that the sensor was reluctant to turn on the backlight except in near total darkness. I would have liked to have had an option to manually enable it. Another minor issue is that the red-orange backlight makes it impossible to tell if a character printed on a key is in white or red, meaning that you are likely to make mistakes at first until you start to remember what characters and functions require the use of the red Fn key.
Multimedia on the JasJar
The JasJar has a wide assortment of multimedia features. To start off with, you can't go far wrong with a large 3.6" diagonal 640x480 (VGA) display. The 65k color TFT touch-screen display is very nice, being easy on the eyes in all types of light - even direct sunlight. The touch-screen surface seemed sensitive enough for me, and didn't seem to get marred too easily by the stylus.
The display acts as a rather large viewfinder for the JasJar's 2 megapixel camera, which can be activated through the normal menus, or by pressing on the dedicated camera shutter button. The camera takes reasonably nice photos, though they tend to look a bit grainy at times. The night mode goes a long way towards cleaning up color noise in lower lighting conditions, though. The camera can be used for capturing video as well as still photos. I should mention that although the i-mate website lists the camera as being a 1.3 megapixel unit, the settings for the camera in the device itself suggest otherwise - as do the actual photos. The forward facing CIF camera is only used for 3G video calls, and as such I was unable to test it properly since there are no UMTS networks available in my area yet.
With both a 3.5mm stereo headset jack and built-in stereo speakers, the JasJar is quite capable of keeping you entertained musically. The headset jack provided sufficiently clear and loud audio to drive headphones larger than the included ear buds. The built-in speakers proved loud enough, but not particularly good at pumping out high quality music. They might get you through the day in a pinch, but count on bringing those headphones with you.
The included Windows Media Player did an adequate job at playing music and video files. I still dislike the lack of playlists, but do appreciate the auto-scanning library function (even if it is a bit inaccurate at organizing your songs), and was happy that I could fall back onto selecting a folder for play.
The JasJar comes equipped with 64MB of RAM, 128MB of flash storage, and a SDIO card slot that can be used to add additional storage. Unlike older Pocket PC devices, Windows Mobile 5.0 does not use RAM for storage, meaning that you will not lose your data if the batteries go completely dead. On top of that, you will gain the full use of the battery's capacity, instead of the system forcefully shutting down when it has only enough power to last for 72 hours in sleep mode, which could mean anywhere from 25 to 50% of the actual battery capacity remains.
Windows Mobile 5.0 User Interface
The new Windows Mobile 5.0 user interface is based heavily on the previous generation's Pocket PC interface. There is the same start menu, you still have the ability to long-tap the display to get context sensitive menus, and apps can make use of the typical drop down boxes and tabbed page motif we've seen before. The highly customizable Today Screen is also present, providing the user with an overview of the day's appointments and the device's status.
The ability to rotate the display for use in both landscape and portrait modes is now an integral part of the system, and support for larger and more varied displays has also been added. The display rotation system seems to work quite well, and I found no instances of applications not handling the transformation properly. Also new is the use of softkeys. The bottom of the display now has two items that can either be tapped upon or accessed with hardware softkeys when, in the case of the JasJar, the display is used with the keyboard.
Dedicated keyboard buttons for "OK", the button that appears in the top right hand corner of most windows, let's you navigate quite easily without the stylus, as do buttons that bring up the context-sensitive (long-tap) menus and the standard Start menu. Four arrow keys and a tab key make navigating forms quite simple, and the dedicated IE and Inbox buttons can save you some time as well.
I like the changes to the user interface that WinMobile 5.0 offers, but it still seems clear to me that the software is rather new. The JasJar runs a 520Mhz Bulverde CPU, which is no slouch, but I still find the system to be a bit laggy at times. Perhaps it is the CPU, perhaps just the UI widgets, or maybe the delays are caused by the reliance on flash storage instead of faster RAM, but whatever the case, the JasJar just doesn't always have the snappy response that I have come to expect from Pocket PC devices. Most of the time it does, just not always.
The JasJar as a phone
Another way that the system falls somewhat short is in dealing with phone functions. As with prior Pocket PC "Phone Edition" devices, the JasJar has the needed phone functionality, it just doesn't make it all that easy to access and use. The most obvious shortcoming for the JasJar as a phone has to be the lack of an external display when the device is folded closed in the communicator style. You can answer calls by pressing the answer key located on the hinge, and speak and listen normally, but you won't know who is calling. Also, there is no way to dial a number without the display, though you can use voice dialing for any contacts that you have recorded voice tags for. When a call is coming in, you could open the device to look at the display briefly, then re-close and answer the call, but that's not exactly an elegant solution. It is also a bit difficult to tell the call and end call buttons apart when not in a dark room where their red and green lights are easily seen. It would have been far better if the buttons themselves were red and green instead of just the handset shaped cutouts in them.
If you have the display exposed in the traditional PDA fashion, using the phone becomes easier, but still a far cry from a dedicated phone or even many other Palm OS or Symbian devices. Pressing the green call button on the keyboard or hinge brings up the phone dialer app, with its on-screen number keys. An easier way to dial is to use the contacts system, assuming that you are calling a person you have listed in there. The contact lookup function is quite speedy when used with the keyboard. You just start typing a first or last name, and the JasJar starts listing potential matches, thinning the list as you enter more letters or numbers.
The profiles system in the JasJar is pretty much non-existant. Taping on the speaker icon at the top of the display lets you change the ring and call audio volume levels, as well as turn on the vibrate function and silent modes. To edit the ring profile at all, you need to access the menu in the phone dialer app. There you can specify how you would like the device to ring (with vibration or not), the ringtone/MP3 to use, and adjust the keypad tones.
The core parts of the phone functionality are good enough to take care of business. The triband GSM radio will work on the 900 and 1800Mhz bands found in most of the world, as well as the 1900Mhz band found in North America and some other parts of the world. On top of that, the JasJar is a 3G capable device that will work on 2100Mhz UMTS networks that can be found in many parts of the world. Our JasJar managed 10 hours of talk time on our test, which left it with 5% of battery capacity still in its main, user changeable battery. The JasJar should be capable of anywhere from 220 to 260 hours of standby time in GSM mode, and good for 2 to 4 hours of talk time and 1290 to 250 hours of standby time in UMTS mode. The battery can be charged with the include wall charger or through the included miniUSB cable when connected to a PC.
Call audio quality was good in general, but I found the 1900Mhz reception to be a bit weaker than I would have hoped for. I was also a bit under whelmed by the voice dialing system, which requires pre-recorded voice tags for individual contacts instead of the speaker independent systems (ie. VoiceSignal) used on many other similar devices. The JasJar's voice dialing will, however, work perfectly well in any language, regardless of any accent, so it does have that going for it.
Connectivity
The JasJar could well have more connectivity options than just about any other device on the planet. Not only does the device support both Bluetooth and WiFi wireless connections, but it has the GPRS and WCDMA data options from the phone system. Heck, there's even a miniUSB port and an infrared port to round things out. About all that is missing is satellite connectivity.
The Wireless Data Manager app that i-mate supplies with the JasJar makes working with the phone, Bluetooth, and WiFi data options virtually pain-free. Unlike the Samsung SCH-i730 that I recently reviewed, the JasJar can make use of all of its connectivity options at the same time. A quick tap or two on the display or keyboard will enable or disable the various wireless functions. The setup screens are also close at hand, and require that fewer hoops be jumped through to get things working.
Getting the WiFi working on my office WEP enabled network took me no more than 2 minutes - including the time I spent looking around to find the settings and apps. The network worked right off the bat and I was able to surf and pick up email without having to go through any of the normal configuration machinations that Pocket PC devices of the past have required.
Bluetooth configuration was nearly equally painless. I was able to find and connect with other devices without trouble. I was not able to connect over Bluetooth with ActiveSync, though. The Bluetooth manager on the JasJar never recognized that my laptop had ActiveSync 4 loaded on it. I was able to use the miniUSB connection to synch the device once I got past a few annoying snags that kept ActiveSync from recognizing my Outlook 2003 installation. It appears that you have to define a main account in Outlook and enable Outlook as the default mail program before ActiveSync will detect it. After you have done this, and ActiveSync is happy, you can make you existing mail program the default again and not have to bother with Outlook mail again.
Bluetooth headset support worked flawlessly, though. In fact, using a Bluetooth headset such as the Sony Ericsson HBH-660 or Jabra BT800, with their LCD caller ID displays, is one of the best ways to get around the lack of an external display on the JasJar.
Getting the JasJar to work with GPRS data was as simple as possible. The device never had any trouble figuring out which connections were live, and had no trouble switching back and forth between WiFi and mobile networks. Browsing with the built-in IE web browser was passable, but still no match for the Opera browser I have used in other devices. Pocket IE still doesn't do a very good job of rendering full sized websites, even when it has a large VGA display to work with.
One thing that all of this connectivity is good for, especially the WiFi, is VOIP. To that end, the JasJar comes with the Skype VOIP client pre-installed. I was able to make and take Skype calls with relative ease on the JasJar. The process is no more or less complicated than placing a regular voice call on the JasJar once you have logged into the Skype service. Now that Skype offers a number of services that include international calling to regular phone lines, as well as receiving calls with a regular phone number, some people will find the JasJar a very good platform for talking to their friends over free WiFi connections in the home, office, or Internet cafe.
Messaging on the JasJar
The JasJar has a lot of messaging options, as you might expect. The Inbox application, part of the Pocket Outlook suite, offers a unified front end for text messaging and email. Even the included MSN application has its MSN/Hotmail email integrated into the Inbox application. You can access mail from a POP3 or IMAP4 mail server just as easily.
The text messaging system is very simple and straight forward. You can easily look up a contact's phone number in the contacts app by tapping on the "to:" field header. Then just enter in your message and hit send. While i-mate claims that the JasJar has MMS support in it, I saw no evidence of that in the Inbox, so I can't comment on whether it works or not.
The email client has all of the setting that you probably need, including the ability to limit how much of each message is downloaded, and the option to download only the headers of messages. It can be a bit awkward to change from one email account to the next, but you get use to it and won't think twice about it eventually. Email account setup was quite simple, and I experienced no snags in the actual downloading and sending of messages.
As part of the MSN client that I mentioned earlier, the JasJar also has MSN Messenger support for instant messaging. The Messenger application required virtually no configuration and worked rather flawlessly. The keyboard makes IM quite easy to deal with. No complaints at all.
The JasJar's applications
As is typical for a PDA type device, the JasJar comes with a large assortment of OS based and 3rd party applications pre-installed. It is beyond the scope of this review to go into details on each and every one of them, but you can see all of the applications that are pre-installed by looking at the screen shots above.
The main organizer applications that make up the Pocket Outlook suite of apps are all of very good quality. The Calendar, Task List, Notes and such all synch up well with a desktop Outlook application. If you can do something on the desktop version of Outlook, chances are quite good that you can do it on the Windows Mobile 5.0 version as well.
Other highlights include Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, Word Mobile, ClearVue PDF viewer, a Zip manager, and the aforementioned Wireless Data Manager, MSN, and Skype apps.
Conclusion
The i-mate JasJar is not a fantastic phone. It's simply too large and heavy to be practical for most people. But for the mobile warrior and those that value bits and bytes more than spoken words, the JasJar offers more functionality than most any other device available today. The large display is very nice, the keyboard works well, and the various wireless systems are easy to configure - and work perfectly.
The JasJar might seem a bit slow at responding to commands from time to time, and it is certainly possible that it will give you a hernia, but in spite of my quite negative initial impressions, I rather like the device after having lived with it for a couple of weeks. You might, too, if its capabilities match up well with your needs. I give the JasJar a "Recommended" rating.
HTC's other new QWERTY keyboard equipped device, the Wizard (aka i-mate K-Jam), offers much of the same functionality as the JasJar, but in a far smaller and lighter package, and might make a good alternative for those that can't deal with the JasJar's size. |
| Common misspellings on this brand: oi-mate , i-kate , i-mates , i-amte |
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