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Review of the thinnest Pocket PC phone in the world - UBiQUiO 501 aka i-mate JAQ3 November 08, 2006 [Pocket PC phone] | By Edward J. R. Officially it is 13.5 mm thin but our measurements show a bit more: 
... but nonetheless it is a very impressive ultra-slim phone! Read on! This phone is one of only 2 Windows Mobile phones with touch screen (i.e. Pocket PC) that support both single handed QWERTY keyboard and fast Wi-Fi (802.11g): 
The other one is Fujitsu-Siemens T830 but it is almost 2 times as expensive! Yes, this phone - UBiQUiO 501 aka i-mate JAQ3 - is in a cheap category! It costs approximately the same as HTC Excalibur but it adds additionally touch screen + full Pocket PC compatibility. What is "UBiQUiO"? It is a company that owns Expansys and Mobile Planet - retailers that are selling online a lot of Windows Mobile phones. This phone has been manufactured by TechFaith Wireless company from Taiwan and it will be available shortly also as i-mate JAQ3. Obviously despite the claims of i-mate that it will have exclusive handsets, in reality original manufacturers will put on their handsets name of anybody who is able to sell some bigger amount of them... Apparently Expansys/Mobile Planet were tired of waiting for i-mate, so they started to brand some handsets by themselves... To see detailed visual comparison of this handset with Treo 750v click here. Yes, indeed it is slightly larger than Treo 750v (but much thinner!), but it offers something more - built-in Wi-Fi + higher resolution display, and it is smaller than HTC Universal: 
UBiQUiO 501 aka i-mate JAQ3 is approximately as thin as lower (keyboard) part of HTC Universal: 
... but in reality it is even thinner than keyboard of HTC Universal: 
Above you can see that on the right side of this handset one can find: 2.5 mm socket for headphones, mini-USB connector and reset mini-button. The USB socket is absolutely industry standard mini-USB compatible and synchronization with foreign mini-USB cables works fine (charging and synchronization through the same cable works too). We have also used universal worldwide USB charger and it works with this handset too. Clearly having industry standard USB connector is a big advantage because you can reuse other cables and you don't have to worry that once you lose your cable you will not be able to charge your handset (as it is for example with Samsung phones) - because you can get mini-USB cable in any computer or electronics shop. On the left side of the phone one can find 2 buttons for volume contorol, camera button and power switch: 
Now let's take a look at software! The phone is powered by Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition, and at home screen one can see nicely whether Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are activated: 
The phone application is not spoiled by customization but it has original Microsoft looks: 
If you fancy voice command, then Voice Speed Dial form Cyberon is included in the ROM: 
Hard reset is possible only through software, with use of "Master Clear" application: 
... what is interesting and probably intentional, because if the phone is password protected (it's also possible with included software) and if you don't know the password, then you can't hard reset the phone! In other words: there is no point in stealing of this phone if it is password protected, because hard reset is impossible then. This phone is powered by 200 Mhz processor OMAP750 from Texas Instrumetns: 
Below you can see exactly what ROM versions we were testing: 
... and as far as we know there is no new ROM image available for download anywhere yet. This phone has enough of internal memory: 
... but it also features mini-SD card slot that is accessible externally and covered safely at the same time. After tapping on the mini-icon in lower right corner of the home screen one can switch on Wi-Fi and Push Email: 
By tapping on the Bluetooth/Wi-Fi home screen plugin one can get all wireless settings for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the phone: 
The .NET Compact Framework embedded in ROM of this phone is still 1.0: 
... what indicates that this phone has no AKU3 yet. AKU3 brings .NET Compact Framework 2.0 in the ROM and many other new features. In other words: WPA2-TKIP is not supported. Interestingly HTC Excalibur has already AKU3 and supports WPA2-TKIP. Since WPA2-TKIP is a contemporary Wi-Fi security standard - other standards are already breakable easily - this is disadvantage. There is hope that ROM upgrade with AKU3 will be available for this phone from UBiQUiO or at least that i-mate will launch it with AKU3. Otherwise users who need access to WPA2-TKIP - very often used at companies and in corporate environments - have practically no access! Of course one can set Wi-Fi hotspot to WPA-TKIP (aka WPA1-TKIP) but it may be possible at home but not at the office. Speaking of Wi-Fi: to test whether this phone really supports 802.11g we have configured our hotspot to "G-only" mode: 
... and indeed this phone is connecting fine, thus proving that it is indeed 802.11g compatible: 
Interestingly user can control how much power Wi-Fi should use: 
This phone has Java virtual machine from Esmertec on board: 
... but this machine is rather poor because stand-alone Gmail Mobile client is not working with it at all. Including this machine was a mistake. Anyway there is no reason to worry, because one can donwload another (and for free!) Java virtual machine and run Gmail Mobile in this phone comfortably - to see how to do it, click here. We have also tested this handset with Stereo Bluetooth Headsets: 
... and it works nicely with them! The only problem is that when MP3 file is encoded with high rate (over 100 kbps) then listening to it and doing something else at the same time in the phone - becomes impossible. The reason is slow processor of only 200 MHz, that however allows for longer battery life. If you have Flash player installed in your Internet browser you can see how generaly this phone looks like from the software standpoint: We have tested this handset with Skype and Skype works - at least for textual chatting, but to make phone calls one needs to use hack that accelerates processor to 240 MHz. Clearly the processor is not good enough for Skype voice calls, but for Skype chatting and for short phone calls it may suffice. Disadvantages:
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