i-mate Ultimate 8502

Connectivity and Features

The Ultimate 8502 is based on the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional OS. The UI is good in terms of easy accessibility of menus. A Windows-based OS can often try your patience, but I found the startup on this to be good and fast.

Moving on to connectivity, the phone supports HSDPA, which means it's not just 3G enabled but 3.5G compatible as well. That’s not all; the Ultimate also boasts India's first HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) for the best upload speed. We're still awaiting 3G in India, so it may be a while before we can use all these nifty features.

The best part is that the phone comes with a video out. You can display slide shows or demo videos using the output cable; just attach the device to any laptop or projector. No more wasted time on file transfers! The plug-and-play options are impressive too. On the flip side, I felt that a feature-rich phone such as this deserved more RAM. With just 128MB RAM it sometimes becomes slow, but admittedly this didn't happen too often.

Internet and Mail

Since the phone supports HSDPA, if you are travelling abroad you can definitely use this feature (and even HSUPA, as many countries do offer these services). All you need is a compatible handset. Do bear in mind, however, that data charges for international roaming tend to be expensive. You might want to get a local SIM card, unless you're the CEO and your company takes care of all your bills!

Wi-Fi on the 8502 was a breeze and I got connected in a matter of seconds. Data transfer rate while accessing the Internet was quite decent and I felt that Internet Explorer worked quite well with this phone. However, I was not able to install my favorite Opera Mini as this seems to be restricted. After extensive tweaks it connected, but speeds were not satisfactory. So if IE is working fine, please do not attempt a switch.

The mailing agent was quite intelligent, and I could easily configure both my personal and enterprise mails. Windows Live Sync got my Hotmail up and running in a trice. Of course, the more mailboxes you configure, the more your data usage, and the higher your bills will be. There's a patch to upgrade the OS from Windows Mobile 6 to Windows Mobile 6.1, but you need to be registered with the Windows Owners' circle and have Windows Mobile Professional Edition on the phone.

I tried using Fring and a couple of other freeware available on the Internet, and the results were good. Fring worked perfectly; my Yahoo, Gtalk and MSN Messenger contacts were all loaded promptly and the application was quite stable on this device.