i-mate SPL Review

Messaging:

Like other Windows Mobile phones, all messages are in a common menu – Messaging. Here you can find all text, multimedia and e-mail messages. When you write a new message you can use the help of the T9 system, but the unhandy keypad has its effect.

Just a few steps away is the option to add your e-mail account (POP3 or IMAP) and to use your e-mail account on your mobile phone. Windows Mobile 6 already supports HTML formatted e-mails. The client is very similar to the Outlook on a computer, you can filter your inbox to see just some results, reply to message or forward it to other person. The support for attachments allows you to download or send one, in addition to the text body. The phone can be set to synchronise with your company Exchange Server.

As standard, Windows Mobile comes preloaded with the mobile version of Live! Messenger (MSN). Windows Live account will be added in Messaging when you add your e-mail account.


Connectivity:

i-mate SPL is a tri-band GSM phone, but there are two versions of the phone on the market – one for the American and another one for the European market. Its bigger problem is the slow Internet connection carried out by 2G GPRS than its faster upgrade (EDGE) or the third generation (UMTS/HSDPA). That means the internet connection will be pretty slow, both for browsing or e-mailing.

Internet Explorer:

As standard, all Windows Mobile phones come with Internet Explorer (Mobile) for internet browsing. Naturally SPL is not an exception.
Internet Explorer has the option „One Column View” for avoiding horizontal scrolling and in this mode everything is arranged one below another and therefore the original vision of the site is not longer preserved. The trouble is that in „Desktop” view, the browser does not render correctly most of the sites and they are again different from the PC view. And you need a lot of scrolling in both directions.

If you do not like this Explorer, you can change it for some of its alternatives. One perspective choice is Deepfish, which is a Microsoft development, but it is still in “Beta” stage and it is available only for a small group of consumers, who managed to register as testers.