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i-mate SP5
1 min read

i-mate SP5

I recently sold my Sony Ericsson K750i and purchased an i-mate SP5, which probably won’t arrive for at least another week — consider this a pre[re]view. As some of you may recall, I had an i-mate SP3i a few months back and loved it — there was literally nothing wrong with it. Now, take everything I liked about that phone and square it. Seriously. Pretty much nothing comes close to the specs on the SP5. A brief list of notable features:

  • Tiny, candy-bar form factor (107x46x17mm; 106g)
  • QVGA screen (320×240 pixels shoved into 2.2 inches)
  • Wi-Fi (802.11b)
  • EDGE (class 10)
  • MiniSD
  • Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900)
  • 1.3 MP camera (yes, a step down from the K750i’s 2MPs, but I could not care less)
  • FirstWindows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Edition phone
  • Bluetooth¹

If the construction of this phone is as solid as that of the SP3i, I have a feeling I’ll be keeping it for a while. In fact, I’m pretty sure that even the Motorola Q won’t be able to pry me away from it, if only because the Q will not have Wi-Fi (and possibly not even EDGE), nor will the Treo 700w, which was also on my radar. However, the Nokia E61, which was announced subsequent to my ordering of the SP5, has really got my attention. It will have everything the SP5 does, save Windows Mobile (Symbian OS v9.1 will be the platform), plus, if past support is any indication, it will sync with Macs.&sup2


FOOTNOTES
  1. Unfortunately, it’s a Bluetooth 1.1 stack — this is perhaps my only technical qualm with the phone.
  2. I am a bit bummed that no one (including me) has been able to get a Windows Mobile device to function as a Bluetooth modem under Mac OS X, something I’ve written about before. I received a lot of feedback from that post, but no solutions.
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