i-mate K-JAM smartphone

Posted by T3 Online on Fri 26 Oct 2007

The latest i-mate: a phone with an identity crisis.

This little gem is attempting to combine the size of a smart phone with the power and the qwerty keyboard of a top-class PDA.

Despite all the goodies crammed inside, this maintains the same light weight as the simpler JAM. The unassuming silver case won't exactly set the world on fire, but it has an inoffensive, no-nonsense look, and isn't quite chunky enough to get you laughed off the train when you hold the thing up to your ear.

However, it's checking and sending emails that this device turns out to be best for. When you slide open the keypad to compose a message, the screen automatically rotates to landscape mode and you can tuck your stylus away. The qwerty keypad is just about big enough for our fingers. It's also great for Word and Excel files, which can be edited without conversion or lost formatting.

For less serious times, you can browse the Web over a Wi-Fi or GPRS connection, kick back with Media Player 10, or download content from online music stores. We hooked it up to the Napster to Go service and had no trouble downloading tracks onto the device.

The screen is bright and crisp, though it lacked the depth of some more hi-res displays when we played a trailer for Domino. The battery life is respectable, and we used a mere 25 per cent of the juice playing MP3s for three hours.

Annoyingly, there's only 64MB of on-board memory, although as it runs Windows Mobile 5 you won't lose all your data if the battery dies. You also get a miniSD slot for extra storage.

This PDA won't be winning any style awards, and the price is steep, but it's a successful jack of all trades.