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Another day, another smartphone. The i-mate Ultimate 9502 ($1,348) is one of the latest to land on our shores and it sure is one heck of a Mr Do-It-All.
Every mobile-related acronym in the geek dictionary has been baked into the device, including GPS, HSDPA, HSUPA and WiFi.
This powerhouse runs on the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional operating system, although that might be more a curse than a blessing, depending on whom you talk to.
The first thing that strikes you about the 9502 is its size — all 116x60x17.8mm and 200g of it. It’s a monster and not a terribly pretty one.
The next thing you’ll notice is the stupefying number of buttons adorning its surface. We did a count — there are 15, excluding a scrollwheel on the left spine and a fiveway directional pad on the front.
Some of the buttons, such as the camera and Internet shortcuts, are handy and even necessary, but others appear to overlap in function — the most obvious of which are the two ‘OK’ buttons.
The front is dominated by a 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen that switches orientation mode automatically. We love the screen — it’s bright, clear and responsive. It slides up when held horizontally to reveal a Qwerty keypad with 39 tiny keys that are surprisingly easy to use thanks to good tactile feedback.
The tri-band 9502 has no lack of connectivity options — HSDPA, HSUPA (but note that the M1 network currently does not support HSUPA), 802.11g/b WiFi and Bluetooth.
You can activate the GPS system with the wireless manager on the 9502. But we don’t advise it, until you install some third-party mapping software — i-mate has inexplicably chosen to omit mapping data from the 9502’s otherwise-robust software suite.
A star feature of the 9502 is its video-out facility. An RCA component output cable is included in the box to let you connect the phone to a projector or a TV for a quick presentation.
The multimedia prowess of the phone is unexceptional. You’ll find a 3-megapixel autofocus camera with LED light and basic image-editing tools. Image quality is acceptable, but colour reproduction is far from accurate.
A VGA camera on the front enables video calls.
You can play songs and videos on Windows Media Player 10 Mobile. A string of playback formats is supported, including AAC, AAC+, MP3, Midi, AMR, ASF, WMA, MPEG4 and WMV.
There’s a 2.5-mm earphone jack on the right side of the phone and the package includes a run-of-themill stereo headset with microphone.
A bevy of software, such as Windows Outlook Mobile, Word/Excel/PowerPoint Mobile, Windows Live Messenger and ClearVue PDF viewer, has been pumped into the phone.
The phone houses a fast 400MHz Qualcomm MSM 7200 processor, 256MB ROM and 128MB RAM. To beef up storage, remove the battery cover to insert a microSD card.
Battery life is fantastic and that’s not surprising considering the battery is the size of some phones. The mighty 1,620mAH lithium ion-polymer cell powers the phone for four days of average use on a single charge.
VERDICT
The i-mate Ultimate 9502 has an incredible raft of functions and connectivity options that would thrill the geekiest of geeks.
We would not call it the Ultimate smartphone though, not with its Frankenstein proportions and hefty price tag. - TODAY/fa
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