iMate Jasjar - 1 year later
I own an iMate Jasjar phone and have done for about 1 year. I recently returned from a snow holiday in the lovely snowy mountains here in New South Wales, Australia.
I took my phone along and given that I had some issues with it, thought I would give my feelings on the phone after an approximate year of usage. Normally you read reviews of the phone based on its paper specifications and after only a short time of using it. Well, here is the other end of that.
Its not going to be too long, don't worry.
So, the good stuff:
- It has a great set of features.
3G is one of my favorites. I use it all the time. Bluetooth works well, expandability is great, camera works well, swivel screen is good. - The Keyboard.
The keyboard is good because its bigger than most. It lights up automatically in dark environments. However, I thought I would use it a lot, but its actually a lot less than anticipated. Its not real good for one hand use. - Screen Size
Good size, clear, 640 x 480 resolution. - Swivel screen.
You can flip the screen in landscape or portrait mode easily. Nice.
The bad stuff:
- As a phone, its extremely poor
If you want a phone, don't buy this unit. It "can" act as a phone, but its really bad, bordering on the extremely frustrating to use to the extent I want to throw it. When I was down the snow, people were happily using their mobile phones to make and receive calls. Not me. Phone function was useless. Now some might say, yes but what carrier were you with. Vodafone is the carrier, which can be attributed to some of it, however my wife's phone is also with Vodafone and it worked fine. Its a $200 Sony-Ericsson toy in comparison, but at least it worked and we relied on that while down there. Its an important point. We *relied* on that far cheaper phone to make calls in a relatively remote location. My $1500+ all singing and dancing unit simply could not pull it off. - Slow, Slow, Slow.
Its as slow as a wet week. Its got a 500Mhz proc, and feels slower than all phones I have used to date. A lot of the time, I want to dial my voicemail which is 121. I press the numbers 121, and 4 seconds later, the display reads 112 or something stupid, getting the numbers out of order, and taking ages to display. Really poor. App performance is quite slow too. - Big and Heavy.
Its big and lugging it around requires big pockets. Pretty solid though. - One handed usage
Forget it. Its a 2 handed beast. You might be able to get away with some stuff, but not much, and not without hand gymnastics. - Flip closed usage
I answer calls with the flip closed generally. It has 2 buttons on the side which answer or hangup calls. These buttons feel unresponsive, sometimes they are either slow to activate (meaning you press the answer button multiple times, causing all weirdness with the call), sometimes you just don't hangup, meaning you better be careful what you say after you hang up, else you could get into some trouble..... - Usability
Poor. This is mostly because of Windows Mobile. Look at Nokia and Sony Ericsson (and perhaps iPhone). Those phones are designed to be phones and used like them. Direct and simple for the functions its intended for (in general). Windows Mobile phones try and shrink a desktop onto a phone. Sorry, doesn't work well.
Conclusion:
- Would I buy it again?
Nope. Too slow and unreliable. Core functions, like making and receiving calls are an afterthought. - Would I recommend it?
Only to a small percentage of people based on their requirements of course, but for general usage, nope. - So would I consider it a good unit?
Functionally impressive, some great features. Execution leaves a lot to be desired. Lots of promise, little in the way of delivery and implementation.