I-mate SP5 ROM Release pushed back to April

[Guest ERN1824]

I-mate online tech support says release delayed until 1st week in April.

[Guest Tech]

wouldnt be surprised

what is the latest ROM improvements?

Im also surprised you were actually able to talk to them!! As everytime i try to, no matter what time and day it is - they never respond, I always get timed out

Edited March 21, 2006 by Tech

[Guest Ingvarr]

And I wouldnt hold the breath on "first week of April" too.

They showed already numerous times that they dont honor own "schedule dates". AKU2 was promised "officialy" at least 2 times already, for february first, then for march.

It means nothing.

[Guest nastassja]

yes, that's not the kind of support i expect from a 400 eur phone... next time i'll buy a damn nokia or sony ericsson LOL ;)

[Guest Ingvarr]

I would switch to Nokia as soon as they start putting decent batteries in their smartphones.

Having 950 mah and less battery in smartphone makes me laugh, I dont want to charge my phone daily.

[Guest rafael1119]

This is disappointing indeed as the main reason I bought the i-mate SP5 was email push and it seems like the release date is a moving target.

Any beta out there yet? I'm a risk taker ;)

[Guest nastassja]

isnt email push expensive? in my country you pay for downloaded/sent KBS, so i guess having push email sending packages constantly to see if I have new emails (i assume you have no wifi around) will be pretty expensive!

i think there was a leaked version that has a icon named "microsoft directpush" in the comm manager, but it's turned off. i guess you'll have to wait for the official update!

[Guest goatpunch]

isnt email push expensive? in my country you pay for downloaded/sent KBS, so i guess having push email sending packages constantly to see if I have new emails (i assume you have no wifi around) will be pretty expensive!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Push doesn't work like that- you open a a connection and try to read on it, but data is only sent as and when new mails come in. Push does use some small amount of data for the 'heartbeat' - you have to tell the server that you're still around every few minutes with an 'IDLE' command. I think this amounts to a few hundred kb/day. When I check my email using an IMAP send/receive, it uses about 40kb, even if there are no new mails. So push would actually be 'cheaper' than checking my email say, every 2 hours.

Edited March 22, 2006 by goatpunch

[Guest kam_]

Push works out to about 6 to 8 MB a month on heartbeat alone - i wouldn't consider that a small amount. Ok it would be alot more if you did a 'pull' that often, but at least you'd have the option to pull less often.

I guess you can turn on push email when you really need it and then turn it back off when you don't, but its hardly that much better than pull email all things considered.

Anyway its the price we pay for operator independant '''''push email''''' (plenty of inverted comma's!), because microsoft doesn't like to be dependant on anyone, or pay anyone unless they reallllly have to.

I don't think push email from microsoft is anywhere near the great feat its being hyped up as. Consider the 3 types of user:

- Thousands of emails a month = unlimited data plan, pull ever minute or push, who cares its all the same. The better solution all round is blackberry.

- 100 emails a month, the heartbeat almost equals my email data, its almost cheaper to do push using sms from my operator

- 10's emails a month, heartbeat data is >>> than email data. You're better of using pull a few times in the day, or use sms push.

Its a boring solution thats not very inovative or exciting. It could be implemented by anyone using a small app on the phone.

Edited March 22, 2006 by kam_

[Guest goatpunch]

Push works out to about 6 to 8 MB a month on heartbeat alone -  i wouldn't consider that a small amount. Ok it would be alot more if you did a 'pull' that often, but at least you'd have the option to pull less often.

I guess you can turn on push email when you really need it and then turn it back off when you don't, but its hardly that much better than pull email all things considered.

Yes, that's about the same as my estimate- a few hundred KB/day. This is equivalent to about 5 or 6 'Send/Receive' operations, so is a relatively small amount. The difference in experience between waiting four hours to be notified of new email and being notified instantly is huge.

Consider the 3 types of user:

- Thousands of emails a month = unlimited data plan, pull ever minute or push, who cares its all the same.  The better solution all round is blackberry.

- 100 emails a month, the heartbeat almost equals my email data, its almost cheaper to do push using sms from my operator

- 10's emails a month, heartbeat data is >>> than email data.  You're better of using pull a few times in the day, or use sms push.

All true, but here in Canada at least 'unlimited' plans don't really exist. They all have a *disclaimer which says something like $100 for 100MB/Month + $3/MB (Rogers). 100MB isn't enough to poll for new email every minute.

My provider offers plans with either 5MB/month or 25MB/month, nothing in-between. 5MB is barely enough to poll for new mail every hour, but 25MB could comfortably handle push with many hundreds or thousands of emails per month.

Its a boring solution thats not very inovative or exciting. It could be implemented by anyone using a small app on the phone.

Yes, but with data plans it's the missing piece that makes email usable on my phone, even if it doesn't match the usability of a Blackberry (which is too bulky for me to consider). You're right, it doesn't sound like the hardest thing in the world to implement, so why on earth is MS taking so long about it?

[Guest nastassja]

well, i find that pretty expensive as my provider will charge me 1,16 EUR for every MB, so that would like 8,12 EUR/month for the service.

also i travel a lot, and the price when roaming is 10 EUR/MB.. crazy.

[Guest team_edition]

I don't think you guys have got the data usage of push email right, but I don't know. Let me explain...

I use an SP5m and have it regularly checking for emails (for corporate emails and 4 separate personal email accounts). My total usage each month is about 4-5Mb and that includes a fair amount of daily internet pages (mainly WAP kind of pages admittedly). When I say "regularly" I mean probably at least 50-60 checks a day across all those email accounts.

Our Orange UK tariff costs us £45 a month for 400Mb (yes 400Mb!) GPRS pack and across 10 mobiles we tend to average a mere 40-50Mb a month of that used up.

I can't imagine Push email (which logically must use less data than a pull check) could use the kind of figures you mention in real use although of course it would depend how many emails you're getting each a day from the corporate server. I tend to get about 50-100 a day.

[Guest goatpunch]

I use an SP5m and have it regularly checking for emails (for corporate emails and 4 separate personal email accounts). My total usage each month is about 4-5Mb and that includes a fair amount of daily internet pages (mainly WAP kind of pages admittedly). When I say "regularly" I mean probably at least 50-60 checks a day across all those email accounts.

It's possible that your minimal IMAP Send/Receive is smaller than mine- I'm not sure exactly what Pocket Outlook does in a Send/Receive, but according to Smartphone GPRS Traffic Monitor v3.02 each Send/Receive uses about 40KB. Based on your numbers, each Send/Receive is using less than 3KB- maybe this varies depending on the IMAP server, how many folders you have, etc.

I can't imagine Push email (which logically must use less data than a pull check) could use the kind of figures you mention in real use although of course it would depend how many emails you're getting each a day from the corporate server. I tend to get about 50-100 a day.

Push can use more data or less data than Pull, depending on your heartbeat interval, how expensive a Pull check is, and how often you perform a Pull. The cost to actually download the messages is the same with both methods, and Push would be less expensive than doing a Pull every minute. If you only need your email updated once or twice per day, then Pull would be definately cheaper.

Edited March 22, 2006 by goatpunch