Looking for a great deal on a WinMo device? Expansys have two cracking deals on at present - the i-mate Ultimate 8502 for £109.99 and the Benq E72 for £69.99.

Hit up the links below to find out more... and let us know if you've used either of these devices! I know Paul had a E72 a while back and was a big fan of the form factor...

• i-mate Ultimate 8502 Windows Mobile Professional Device @ £109.99
• BenQ E72 Smartphone Windows Mobile Standard Device "@£69.99

I purchased an Ultimate 8502 the other day as I really can't live with just a bog standard phone ( and I've recently sold my HD).

It's a little cracker and will tide me over till my contract is due for renewal in a couple of months and there's some Android 2.0 handsets available.

Ok, so the screen's a little small compared to the HD (QVGA rather than WVGA) but it's clear and bright. The keyboard is a joy and the inclusion of a little joystick/D-pad is great.

It's got lots of nice features as you would expect to find on much more expensive handsets, including GPS, Wifi, 3G and TV OUT. The camera is crap of course but that's par for the course on WinMo PPCs.

It's only WinMo 6.0 out of the box but can be upgraded to 6.1 which sorts out a few bugs such as SDHC support. Unfortunatley the I-mate website is down so updates etc aren't available there, but the ROM is available from the Expansys support forum. Lastly although the phone doesn't show any carrier branding the ROM does show Telstra on the splash screen (perhaps someone with a bit of knowledge can advise how to get rid of it).

Nice mini-review. I was considering one of these, but thought they looked a bit ugly. Ended up buying a 2nd hand Samsun i780 instead - similar, but I thought it looked nicer. Also the i780 has a 320x320 screen which is nice for emails, etc. No TV out, but not a major concern for most I suspect

I've just bought the Ultimate 8502 myself. A little treat after my Str:Trk has started to look a little long in the tooth.

First inpressions are good, it's a while since I owned a PPC based device and it seems much faster than the TyTn.
Built in GPS seems to work well, and the tiny keyboard is surprisingly easy to use.

My only gripe is that there seems to be no ROM cookers out there but maybe this might take off with the device available at what is essentially a steal.

On a side note - what are all the cool kids using to customise the Today screen nowadays? The Vanilla WM6.1 is a little drab!

I'm a big fan of SPB Mobile Shell. It gives a certain amount of finger friendliness and with the 3.5 version there's some nifty new widgets including some for Twitter (yay!) and Facebook (meh!)

Good choice with the i780 - it's certainly the fastest / most responsive qwerty PPC I've ever used and very well built. Make sure you upgrade to WM6.1.

But, seeing as we're in an 8502 thread, it does have a few downsides though - mainly because Samsung use quirky hardware (not just on the i780) which can cause compatability issues, e.g.

Optical control, 4-way emulation is hit & miss & slow, mouse mode is good but that makes page scrolling a pain as there's no no d-pad/scroll wheel.
GPS - only works out of the box with Garmin/CoPilot, and even then takes ages to lock and loses signal frequently,
Charging/headset connector - proprietary connector, often doesn't charge at all from PC USB, in car only works with Samsung's dedicated lead, can't charge and use headset at same time.
Display - 320x320 defaults to 240x240, has issues with some software, have to use RealVGA which breaks other apps (e.g. SPB Mobile Shell) and is too small, reflectlive layer makes visiblity outside poor.
Touch screen -insensitive, calibration & pressure required inconsistent, varies across screen and with temperature.
Battery life - the small battery and 624MHz CPU means that if you're a heavy user, you'll need both supplied batteries to get though a day (especially with 3G and Pushmail enabled)
Audio - earpiece and loudspeaker volume are low and can be insufficent in noisy environments.

The 8502 on the other hand is built from bog-standard components in WM terms -real joystick/scroll wheel, Qualcomm chipset, mini-USB and QVGA display, so suffers non of these issues - making it more of an all round but cheap workhorse. Certainly I didn't have to spend hours messing with 3rd party GPS drivers to get it to work with TomTom like I did (unsuccessfully) on the Samsung. Incidentally, the speaker is one of the loudest I've heard on any WM phone - great for conf calls and SatNav.

Note that these don't make the i780 a bad phone by any means if you can live with its quirks (and in the looks and speed departments it blows the 8502 away) - but they do illustrate just what good value the 8502 is, providing, of course, that you can live without a warranty or repair facility!

Can't see any cooking happening - mainly because unlike most other devices, each ROM is locked with an individual security code (so don't lose that number in the box in case you need to restore!).

+1 on Mobile Shell for tarting it up. Or PointUI if you want something cheaper + simpler. Then again I end up playing with them for a while then after a few days I'm inevitably back at the default Today screen. To me widgets just waste screen space but add bloat and instability, so for me as a veteran WM user, Today is still the most efficient way of displaying the most information with the fastest speed and least chance of lockup.