I’ve been using this for more than a year now & never felt the need for a new handset. Prior to this I used to change handsets nearly every month. So I guess that says a lot about how good this handset is.
It has some very useful applications, including msn messenger, skype & my favorite: windows remote desktop client (using which it’s possible to connect back home or to my server via gprs).
I purchased the voice command (https://microsoft.com/windowsmobile/voicecommand/default.mspx) software and it’s great, I absolutely love it. There are several free softwares available as well, pretty much anything that will work with windows mobile 2003. If you use a *nix machine, this is a very handy software to connect to your machine: https://pocketputty.duxy.net/, basically a pocketpc version of putty.
It took me a while to figure out how to activate the speaker-phone during a call, there is absolutely no documentation of this in the usermanual or on the i-mate website, rather, I came across several posts in the club imate forum about the same issue. I discovered how to activate the speakerphone accidentally, you need to keep the call button (the one on the left) pressed continuously for 3-4 seconds to activate the speaker during a call.
You can’t have mp3 files as ringtones. So you need to convert a ringtone to wav on your pc using some convertor software and then copy it into the Windows\Rings folder of the system storage.
Theres a bug with the bluetooth stack, you can’t use a blue tooth headset properly. It gets disconnected after 10 minutes of idling. There is however a patch available for this on the clubimate.com site.
On to the THE biggest problem; it resets itself everytime it runs out of (battery) power. Unless you configure the handset to use the storage card for most important data and check the "permanent save" feature, you are screwed every time it resets. I try to prevent this from happening by voluntarily switching off the phone when the battery is close to dying.
This handset may have it’s shortcomings, but it suits most of my needs,
and I love the big screen for me to watch (guess what) stuff on, and
looks pretty good.
Hope this review helps you.
Cheers