Review of the I-Mate JasJam
I first heard of the HTC Hermes device back in March of 2006, and it was the first new device to really get my interest since I purchased the O2 Xda II in December 2003. Sure, the Xda II was a loyal servant and was very reliable, but I craved the need for in-built WiFi and a slightly smaller footprint.
Once rumors of the HTC Hermes started to spread, my desire started to increase. Initial photos gave me cause to drool and I spent many a lunch hour reading the same reports again and again just to read up about the device.
In June of 2006, HTC announced their intention to market and sell their own devices with the HTC TyTN to be available in July. At around the same time there were announcements by T-Mobile, Vodafone, QTek, Dopod, O2 and more to release there own flavours of the device in varying different colour schemes and slightly differing button layouts. The HTC Hermes sure was going to be popular but the was still no indication that it was going to be available in Australia much to the disgust of the faithful PDA Phone users here.
Finally, an announcement was made in late August that i-Mate was to release the HTC Hermes as the i-Mate JasJam and we have been informed that it is going to be made available to Australian & New Zealand customers with an official announcement due from i-Mate in the coming weeks regarding their JasJam launch intentions here. Lucky for us, expansys ANZ was selling them to our Kiwi friends and I managed to get a hold of one for $1450.00 including delivery.
In recent days there have been rumours that the carrier '3' may be releasing the Dopod 838 Pro as part of Dopod's breakout into the Australian market, which could help improve competition and speed up the time taken to bring this device to the open market in Australia.
Note: This thread in the forum provides a photo of each rendition of the HTC Hermes device.
The Device
So let's get down to the nitty-gritty. The device itself has the following features:
Samsung 400MHz processor (rumoured to be equivalent to a 520MHz Intel X-Scale processor),
WiFi 802.11 b and g,
Bluetooth (Note: still awaiting confirmation if this is BT 2.0 as included in other HTC Hermes models),
Proper Jog wheel,
QVGA (320x240) screen,
Quad band GSM with UMTS,
2 mega-pixel camera (on rear including flash),
Forward facing camera (for video calls),
Slide out QWERTY keyboard (with back light),
1300 mAh Lithium Ion Polymer battery,
A multiplex of different buttons (to control the device), and
Windows Mobile 5.0 (with AKU 2.0).
Upon first starting the JasJam, the i-Mate bundled software is installed and customised for the Australian region. This includes the selection of your phone provider, which seemed to include all of the Australian networks such as Optus, Vodafone, Telstra and more.
The device comes pre-loaded with all of the normal Windows Mobile bells and whistles including:
...and some other i-Mate bundled software, including:
i-Mate Pool (play pool on your JasJam),
i-Mate BlackJack (for when you can't get to the casino),
i-Mate Suite (which I removed straight away),
Cyberon Voice Speed Dial (which works, but you have to tag each contact),
i-Mate WMP Today (a Windows Media Player plugin for the Today screen),
IMAGiNET XMS (a special type of SMS composer/reader that include smiley's and handwritten text, more on this later), and
CA eTrust Anti-Virus (which I also removed straight away).
A full list of features is provided on JasJam product page of the i-Mate website.
I find it really annoying that devices come pre-loaded with software which I later have to remove. Ideally, a device would come pre-installed with the base Windows Mobile 5 and a CD for adding the bundled software, rather than wasting the space on the device itself.
The Operating System
Since I purchased the Xda II with Windows Mobile 2003 there have been two revisions to the Windows Mobile Operating System. The first, Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition brought the idea of screen rotation to us and was a simply evolutionary step from what I can gather. However, from my experience so far with the JasJam, the introduction of Windows Mobile 5 was a revolution!
I am no Microsoft 'fan-boy', however, I have found Windows Mobile 5 a true pleasure to use. I have been heavily using the device now for 5 days and have only had to soft-reset twice, the first time on the first night and the second time last night when it locked up after switching it on (although I didn't give the poort thing much time to actually wake up before just biting the bullet and pulling out the stylus).
The included core software, such as the Mobile Office suite has come on a long way since Windows Mobile 2003 and I imagine there will be less need to purchase add-ons to the PIM software for me. Furthermore, the usability of the JasJam is phenomenal, especially with all of the provided buttons, but more on that later on.
The JasJam includes the AKU 2.0 update for Windows Mobile 5, which includes Microsoft's DirectPush email, improvements to the bluetooth stack including the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) and other improvements. AKU 2.0 is also known as the Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP).
The Keyboard
The keyboard slides out to the left of the screen and the slider feels very secure. It clicks into each position to indicate that it is where it should be and remains there. It sits well-balanced in your hands and I was able to continue typing on the keyboard for extended periods of time (i.e. exceeding 20 minutes) to write this review. I was able to comfortably reach to all keys on the keyboard, with my average sized hands and rarely struck multiple keys accidentally.
The backlight is nice and bright but only comes on in the dark to conserve battery life. The blue glowing colour is very much the colour of the time, but sure does look good. Whenever you can find a dark moment, you crack open the keyboard and instantly hear whispers around you as people start to discuss the magic you have in your hands.
The one annoying feature of the backlight is that you have to press a key to activate it. I understand that is should not be left on whenever the keyboard is exposed as this could waste the battery, however, it should be smart enough to know that it is dark and it has just been exposed so should light up.
Bluetooth
The device uses Microsoft's own bluetooth stack, including the Windows Mobile 5 AKU 2.0 update that includes A2DP.
The bluetooth management software is not all that great when you compare it to the much more functional Widdcom stack I hacked up on my Xda II. There is no screen for seeing which external devices are currently connected to the JasJam and nor is there any setup wizard to hold your hand through the connection setup process.
I have tested the JasJam with my Motorola HT820 A2DP compatible headset for both music streaming and GSM voice calls. The sound quality was as good as I experienced with my Xda II although the JasJam appears to allow for much greater volume which is brilliant.
There is a nice little notification icon that pops up when you connect the headset each time and the dialling screen shows an icon to indicate the headset is active.
After first connecting the headset and starting the audio playback using Windows Media Player Mobile, there seems to be an issue using the headset to pause playback. To resolve this, I find if I stop play back using my headset, I then have full control. This must be a niggly bug in the MS bluetooth stack as it never happened on the Xda II and although it is annoying it is no where near a show-stopper. One nice feature of A2DP playback is that when you do resume playback after a phone call or manually selecting pause, the volume fades in as opposed to blowing your ears out.
Using my Motorola headset I was able to make and receive calls including using the voice dial feature with the included voice dial software, all initiated from the headset. After using an Xda II it is nice to see a full suite of bluetooth profiles. I am hoping to look into getting Microsoft's Voice Command as I hate the idea of having to 'tag' all of my contacts, however, I am unsure as to the availability here in Australia.
I also paired the JasJam with a bluetooth GPS unit although I have been unable to fully test it as I don't possess any GPS software. I can confirm that the connection was easy to establish however.
I have been unable to use ActiveSync over bluetooth as this seems to require some setup. I have every confidence that it is possible, however, I haven't had the time to perform the required steps.
I also haven't been able to work out how to beam a file via bluetooth, however, I can confirm the Infrared port works fine to send and receive data to and from my laptop.
Using Skype
I have given the latest beta version of Skype a test on the JasJam and came to four separate conclusions:
The JasJam is plenty quick enough to run Skype.
The WiFi module of the JasJam is plenty fast enough to handle Skype conversations.
Using Skype over UMTS isn't that good an idea. I chewed through my data and the conversation wasn't that clear. I am sure if I had the data allowances to play around a little, I would find a suitable UMTS setup, however, I would never have a Skype call over UMTS here in Australia so I am not too bothered.
The latest beta version of Skype for Windows Mobile is very, very polished. I was unable to connect to the Skype network using ActiveSync, which is annoying, however, the core functionality of the software is sparkling.
WiFi
As noted above, I used Skype as a test of the WiFi module that is onboard the JasJam and I found it to be plenty fast enough. I also performed some other small tests to verify how well the WiFi works.
I was able to connect the JasJam to both my 11b and 11g wireless routers at home, using basic 64-bit WEP encryption. I was surprised with the transfer speed that I was able to achieve and even managed to stream DivX video from my media server and watch it on the JasJam. This is truly brilliant when your having a 'quiet moment' in the smallest room of the house.
For further testing, I downloaded some MP3's across my wireless network and managed to download 5MB files in approximately 15 seconds, which I thought was good. Although this sounds slow when compared to a laptop (my laptop did the same download in 2 seconds) you must remember that the 11g module is purely for compatability reasons and should not be expected to provide full 11g speeds.
The other important thing to note is that while performing a download the JasJam was able to continue working as normal. With my Xda II and it's SanDisk WiFi card, I used to find that I could not stream music as playback would stutter, whereas the JasJam can play much more intensive data, such as the video discussed above, all from across the network.
The JasJam as a Phone
Obviously, one of the major uses of the JasJam is as a mobile phone and so far my experiences with it are generally positive. I found that the Phone application is much more responsive to the version I have on the Xda II.
The JasJam uses two separate speakers, one small internal one for private calls and a second (very) loud speaker which is on the back and can be used for the speaker phone. I found the internal speaker to be adequate for normal surroundings, but it is no better than the one on my Xda II and it can be a struggle to hear people when in a noisey area. The loud speaker is extremely loud and switching to the speaker phone is easy.
As far as call quality is concerned, I have had no issue thus far. I have found everyone I have spoken to comes through clear and crackle free and I have received no complaints from people on the other end.
All of the connectivity of the device can be enabled or disabled using the Comm Manager application. You may even use this application to enable or disable a cellular data connection, which I found to be a nice feature. The screenshot to the right shows the options, which are listed below going from left to right, top to bottom:
- Phone,
- Bluetooth,
- WLAN,
- Microsoft DirectPush,
- Data Connection,
- Ringer (switches between vibrate and ring), and
- ActiveSync.
Using the JasJam One Handed
One of the main features of the JasJam is the JOG wheel that is provided on the left hand side of the device. At first, I was skeptical as to how useful such a wheel could be, however, I have been blown away as to how dependent you become on it. Today I picked up my Xda II to grab a couple of files off of it, and I found it frustrating at how much I had to use the stylus.
The navigation D-Pad is much better to the one on the Xda II as the 'select' button is separate from the actual direction buttons so you don't move the cursor when trying to select an item. The up and down portions of the D-Pad are a little small and sometime tricky to press, but overall I like the D-Pad. When you press each of the buttons on the JasJam, there is definate tactile feedback, which I also like.
In the previous section above on the Operating System I mentioned how much I thought Windows Mobile had progressed with the introduction of version 5, however, it is only when you think about how usable this device is with just one hand that you realise how much of an improvement the OS is.
So, do I manage to use the JasJam one handed? Absolutely!
I decided that the best way for me to show you just how usable the JasJam is with one hand is to actually show you. I recorded some video with my camera and have uploaded them to Google Video, for the whole world to see. Because I recorded with one hand and used the device with the other, the video is a little shaky, therefore, I have provided a transcript of each video to help you out.
Windows Media Player