i-mate: Good PDAs, poor phones

[Guest team_edition]

I'm a user of an i-mate SP5m and before that I had an SP3i and within my company we have 15 of the Orange SPV C550.

After a lot of feedback we've come to the conclusion that the devices are all good in the PDA department and poor in the phone department! Would anyone agree or disagree with that?

For example, a standard bug that infuriates the hell out of all of us (me on the SP5m and before that the SP3i and all the other users with the SPV) is when you get a call and you can't answer it. You click "answer" and it just doesn't do it. It doesn't always do it but it does it often enough to bug the hell out of you.

Does anyone know why it does it?!

I'm assuming it's i-mate and now WM that's the problem because I'm not aware of other manufacturers having the same annoying problem.

Any input or fixes would be great, or simply to confirm that you have the same problem.

[Guest looeee]

Ha ha

yes it is annoying.

All WM phones ring for about 4 seconds after the caller has hung up.

If you try to answer in that time you get the message "Unable to answer call"

great !

[Guest nastassja]

i totally agree, when you first start using an smartphone or pda-phone, you feel like the "phone" part is poor compared to a standard nokia or SE.

that's in part because windows mobile sucks big time...

[Guest chaznet]

I really like the SP5m -- but that's just me -- check out all the reviews, PCMag Editors Choice, CNET, and a slew of others-- they all like it too.

i totally agree, when you first start using an smartphone or pda-phone, you feel like the "phone" part is poor compared to a standard nokia or SE.

that's in part because windows mobile sucks big time...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Guest xerxes]

I really like the SP5m -- but that's just me -- check out all the reviews, PCMag Editors Choice, CNET, and a slew of others-- they all like it too.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That's because most people who review smartphones (Symbian, WM, or Palm) only test the "smart" features not the regular phone stuff.

The fact is that pretty much all smartphones lack either the features or the performance of regular mobiles. For people who aren't heavy phone users that doesn't matter. The smartness is what they are buying.

Interestingly a recent thread on Modaco showed that most of the responders didn't actually make or receive many phone calls. Nearly all of them were more interested in mobile data services, at which WM excells, and only occasionally used their devices as phones. Admittedly Modaco readers may not be indicative of the average smartphone user.

Even for some people who are heavy users of the core phone function the trade of is worth while.

Being a very heavy user of both my phone and PDA, I made a decision some months ago to switch back to two devices, a K750i and a separate data enabled PDA, an XDA Exec in my case. In the 5 months since then I've seen nearly all the smartphone users at my company choose to go back to a feature phone + PDA setup and they pretty much all say its because the phone features on WM (or the syncing on Symbian) were not good enough.

[Guest team_edition]

I too think the i-mate SP5(m) is a great device and use all of it's PDA functionality with success most of the time.

However, my point is that as a phone it's poor and you have no option but to agree with this point (I jest but hear me out).

1) Sometimes and often, the phone rings and you just cannot answer the call. It carries on ringing no matter how many times you press "Answer". Is it because in the background it was perhaps doing a GPRS sync and that confuses it or something maybe? I don't believe it's what happens when people ring off because it only carries on ringing about one second further after the tests I did.

2) When you lose signal (inside a building or lift perhaps) and you step back outside it takes ages (Zzzzzzz) for the phone to say "oh the signal is back, you can make a call". You can try ringing the answerphone to wake it up and "find" the signal but in the end the quickest thing often is to switch it off and back on.

3) When you want to hang up after dialling a number (perhaps before the call is answered) it takes ages to get the phone to hang up and you nervously press it several times before you feel confident it genuinely has hung up.

There are loads more examples but these are starters.

In summary, it's a good all-round device but they (or MS) need to work on the phone functionality and improve that.

[Guest thenext1]

I too think the i-mate SP5(m) is a great device and use all of it's PDA functionality with success most of the time.

However, my point is that as a phone it's poor and you have no option but to agree with this point (I jest but hear me out).

1) Sometimes and often, the phone rings and you just cannot answer the call. It carries on ringing no matter how many times you press "Answer". Is it because in the background it was perhaps doing a GPRS sync and that confuses it or something maybe? I don't believe it's what happens when people ring off because it only carries on ringing about one second further after the tests I did.

2) When you lose signal (inside a building or lift perhaps) and you step back outside it takes ages (Zzzzzzz) for the phone to say "oh the signal is back, you can make a call". You can try ringing the answerphone to wake it up and "find" the signal but in the end the quickest thing often is to switch it off and back on.

3) When you want to hang up after dialling a number (perhaps before the call is answered) it takes ages to get the phone to hang up and you nervously press it several times before you feel confident it genuinely has hung up.

There are loads more examples but these are starters.

In summary, it's a good all-round device but they (or MS) need to work on the phone functionality and improve that.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I got an SP5m myself but I'm happy with it ... perhaps mine doesn't have these bugs?

1) I tried to call myself from my home and hung up the phone without answering ... there was a 1.5 second delay, longer than pure cell phones, but well shorter than 4 seconds (that would irritate me too)

2) No problem with signal reception whatsoever... Many points in my house are "null" in signal quality but my sp5m handles them very well.

3) I didn't encounter this bug neither....

Are you sure you're on the latest ROM for your imate device?

[Guest gilesjuk]

I must admit, the SP5 runs very slow with the anti-virus installed, removing that was the first thing I did.

Edited March 19, 2006 by gilesjuk