iMate Shutters Operations, Closes Offices

[Ed Hansberry]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.itp.net/573861-i-mate-shuts-down' target='_blank'>http://www.itp.net/573861-i-mate-shuts-down</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"UAE mobile phone company i-mate has gone out of business, according to market sources. The company, which mainly sold branded smartphones, has closed its office in Dubai Internet City and founder and CEO Jim Morrison is believed to have left the country."</em></p><p>iMate came on the scene really strongly with the Windows Mobile 2003 SE devices like the PDA2K which had a keyboard that slid out from the bottom. They really hit their stride with WinMo 5 with the K-Jam, JasJar and many others. These were HTC devices, but iMate was selling them unlocked to consumers through various retail outlets, and this made them popular with a lot of users. When things soured between them and HTC, iMate contracted to have their own devices made, but it was never really the same. It also didn't help that they rarely provided OS upgrades for their devices, free or otherwise. Even their updates often proved buggy. More than once I had to rely on XDA Developers for a fix to some new bug introduced in an updated ROM. Even with 100% reproducible bugs confirmed by dozens of posts at various sites, they just shrugged it of saying they couldn't repro so it must not be their problem.</p><p>I hate to see anyone lose their job and feel for all of the iMate employees that have been let go recently, but as far as I can tell, the main culprit is upper management that favored profit over customer satisfaction. I hope any of you with a device under warranty have no problems with it.</p>

[Fritzly]

The only surprising thing here is the amount of time it took. i-mate died years ago IMO.

[fone_fanatic]

I agree with Fritzly, they died after they stopped selling HTC devices.

My first winmo phone was an i-Mate. After seeing my friend with the PDA2K (HTC BlueAngel) i had to get one and purchased the JAM (HTC Magician) then i got the k-Jam (HTC Wizard), then the JasJam (HTC Hermes). I Still have my k-Jam and JasJam!

i wish i still had the Jam because that was one solid device! all metal casing was a nice touch.

[mmidgley]

I just browsed to imate's site. No news listed directly--however, I did notice that after selecting my location and then browsing their online Store something curious: every hardware product (phone/accessory) was shown as out of stock! That's a pretty good indicator they aren't accepting orders for anything... because they probably aren't there anymore.

m.

[Craig Horlacher]

After buying their Ultimate 6150 I'm not surprised. Here are problems that I consider to be basic failures in the device:

1. The back/battery cover clip glue only holds for a few weeks. I've found that I super glue it it lasts many months. I replaced it with a new back cover one time. Since that glue was just as bad as the first I've super glued it since then.

2. The OS bug in windows mobile since pocket pc 2003/2003se time where you can't have files open off the storage card though a suspend is not fixed. At least I could fix this with a registry change on my e830 but no luck with this. I figured they'd fix it with the WinMo 6.1 update. At least they did release WinMo 6.1 but it did not fix the problem! This is a huge pain!!! I can't believe any company would release a pda/phone, advertise it as a high end device, and have this bug.

3. Does not support MicroSDHC. It's sad that I'm stuck with only a 2GB card in this. My e830 had 6GB of storage with a 4GB CompactFlash and a 2GB SD.

4. One reason I got it was because it has an nvidia GoForce 5500 - which is a gpu with a lot of power for video, 3d graphics, enhanced audio, and more. There is no software that supports it!!! I even downloaded a call of duty demo or something that was supposed to support the GoForce 5500 and that doesn't run on it. The only plus from the graphics adapter is that the phone came with the vga out cable and that does work well. I have a projector at home so it's cool to use it there but I haven't had much need for that. It is impressive when you're using it to do web browsing with Opera on a full monitor. It looks like desktop PC doing web browsing. Last time I tried this it didn't work though. I don't know if a newer version of opera broke the fact that it worked with the vga out or what.

So now I guess I'm stuck. It's still a good device and it runs everything I want it to. It's just a real pain that I have to be extra careful with the back cover and I need to shut down any apps that run off the storage card, or apps with files open from the storage card, before I suspend the device. It would really be nice if it could take MicroSDHC cards. I can't believe they didn't fix that with some software patch.

[yawanag]

The only surprising thing here is the amount of time it took. i-mate died years ago IMO.

I got my iMate in 2003 unlocked, I paid $799 for it. The most I ever paid for a PDA and I had more trouble with it than those I paid $199 for. I will never do it again. I stayed on the phone with customer support.

I stopped trying to have it repaired when I had to send it for the second time to Dubai. The connector pulled out where you insert the USB plug to sync it and said that's it!