Making a phone rugged is just begging reviewers to beat the hell out of it, so when i-mate decided to coat its 810-F with rubber and make it impervious to cold, heat, and water, they should've known damn well what was coming next. CNET Asia had the distinct privilege of doing the honors with this one, and happily, the WinMo 6.1-powered set survived being packed in ice for an hour and being dropped onto carpet from a normal height (we would've preferred concrete, but beggars can't be choosers). Unfortunately, the phone has a non-removable battery to help meet its rugged aims, the keyboard's said to be ridiculously stiff, and the stylus is unusably small -- but if you need Windows Mobile, GPS, WiFi, and a magnetic compass in a package that won't let you down in any environment, you might be able to overlook the shortcomings when the phone's released next month.

[Via wmpoweruser.com]

Turns out the Centurion wasn't the only surprise out of i-mate at MWC last week. The troubled WinMo licensee looks poised for a possible resurgence with its new hardware lineup, reinforced by an interesting combo of devices uncovered by Pocket-lint during the course of the show. First up, the "Legionnaire," pictured, is your average mid- to high-end WinMo slate -- HSDPA, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, 800MHz core, Windows Mobile 6.5, yada yada. Where it gets interesting, though, is what you do with the Legionnare; turns out i-mate wants you to plug it in to a $200 netbook shell with a 10-inch display codenamed "Warrior," which will use the Legionnaire both as its guts and as its touchpad. i-mate wants the combo to launch at the end of summer, which could make for some fun drama with presumed competitor Redfly if nothing else -- but then again, the Legionnaire's a nice looking handset in its own right, is it not?

[Via WMPoweruser.com]

Technically, i-mate's only official announcement at MWC this year is the mega-rugged 810-F that'll withstand 140 degrees of heat, 14 degrees of cold, water resistance, and shock resistance courtesy of a nasty rubber casing, but it's certainly not going to appeal to the average consumer -- especially consumers who aren't wearing clown pants with one-liter pockets. So to that end, the company is also showing off a Windows Mobile Standard device codenamed "Centurion" -- and we're pretty sure this is the most compelling device i-mate has ever made. The version we saw was literally the first working prototype they've assembled, which meant it was creaky, wobbly, and felt like it could break at a moment's notice, but we're not taking too much stock in that; the more important thing to note is that it's freakin' tiny. The keyboard was too mushy from its overwhelming prototype-ness to take stock of whether it'll actually be usable in production, but our quick impression gives us hope that it might be wide enough to get the job done. The battery is absolutely tiny, so i-mate will be throwing in a battery wallet (remember the Upstage?) to help mitigate the problem -- they didn't have a wallet ready to show, but even with such an accessory tacked on, you're still looking at a smartphone leaps and bounds smaller than pretty much anything else you've used. There's no date on the Centurion's launch, but they're targeting mid-year -- and yes, both the 810-F and Centurion will get free Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrades. Cheers to that.

It's almost disturbing how many UI masks we have now for Windows Mobile 6.1, but even more frightening is the fact that Microsoft is sitting around rather than doing anything about it. All that aside, those frustrated with the aging OS can give i-mate Go a shot, which is a new UI for the company's WinMo 6.1 handsets that attempts to deliver "advanced capabilities and touch access to the user's favorite functions through a simple icon-based menu." It's available now as a free download for the Ultimate 9502, Ultimate 8502, Ultimate 8150, Ultimate 6150, and JAMA 101, and while you may be scared to give something like this a try, just ask yourself: what do you really have to lose?

[Via phoneArena]

Say, for a moment, that Windows Mobile is Planet Earth; if the Touch Diamond lies somewhere around the North Pole, then we think you'd find this one freezing its ass off down in Antarctica. It's a stretch of an analogy, we know, but it's difficult to express just how different (and by "different" we mean "less attractive") i-mate's rumored "Hummer" is than some of its Windows Mobile 6.1 contemporaries. Granted, it does HSDPA, WiFi, and it's supposed to be ruggedized -- but we're not really convinced that exposed screws were the right way to get that point across. Then again, most of the devices rumored out of the house of i-mate from last year didn't make it to production, and this one may very well not either, so why sweat it?

Even as we marvel at the HTC Touch Diamond's gorgeous VGA display, let's not forget that 640 x 480 resolution (buried within the larger context of a monster spec sheet, no less) is old hat for some Windows Mobile devices. i-mate's Ultimate line has been reppin' the high res displays for a while now, starting with the 6150 and 8150 models that were announced well over a year ago; more recently, the 9502 was added, offering shoppers a grand total of three distinct form factors from which to choose plus a more traditional QVGA setup with the 8502. Hate on Windows Mobile all you want, but you have to admit, it's hard to find this kind of hardware diversity with any other platform out there.

We just had an opportunity to play with all four models side by side -- an especially rare opportunity, considering that neither the 8502 nor 9502 are officially being sold in the US (despite their support for HSDPA 850 / 1900). Follow the break for some quick impressions with each of the fearsome foursome.

i-mate's "Sidekick for grown-ups" (our phrase, not theirs) is finally starting to ship, and Pocketnow's among the first to score an opportunity to put the beastly WinMo device through its paces. The Ultimate 9502's spec sheet is certainly enough to impress -- triband HSUPA, TV out, 3 megapixel autofocus cam, VGA display the list goes on -- but is it as good in practice as it is on paper? In a word, yeah, it looks like it is, as long as you're willing to pay the astronomical prices the first batch of 9502s are commanding on the open market. It's super quick, has a gorgeous display, and is built like a tank, although that last point could also be the phone's downfall -- with a boxy black shell and one of the chubbiest profiles of any WinMo device out there today, the 9502 isn't about to win any beauty contests. The GPS was a little finicky to operate and the keyboard's quite a bit smaller than that of its arch nemesis, the TyTN II, but otherwise, this looks like a winner for anyone who values extreme mobile productivity over making a fashion statement.

On a side note, we've learned from i-mate that the 8502 and 9502 are both affected by Qualcomm's chip ban, so availability in the US is limited strictly to gray market imports (though they'll be officially offered in Canada). In other words, if you want to play, bring cash -- lots of it -- and don't expect the price to plummet any time soon.

On paper, the Ultimate 8502 and 9502 from i-mate rock specs that rest at or near the pinnacle of what's available from a Windows Mobile device today: HSUPA, TV out, integrated GPS, QWERTY, and in the case of the 9502, a true VGA touchscreen. While it's historically not been terribly easy to track down i-mate hardware in the States, one thing that might make it just a little bit easier to do so is an honest to goodness FCC approval, and that's what we have here laid out before our very eyes. In this case, it's the 8502 that's been approved under manufacturer Mobinnova's name; we haven't spotted the 9502 yet, so it's probably only the form factor purists and traditionalists that are getting excited about this one. We can almost feel the stupid-fast upload speeds from here!

We've caught wind from a number of employees -- or ex-employees, as the case may be -- that i-mate's US division in Redmond, Washington has all but disintegrated after a Friday bloodbath that saw the entire engineering, QA, and tech writing departments laid off, among others. Several honchos who weren't cut left anyway, perhaps unwilling to work in a ghost town or as a show of solidarity to their fallen brethren; notably, the Chief Software Officer and VP of Sales and Marketing are both gone, leaving a sales director to be promoted to the lofty title of GM of what seems to be all US operations. Apparently, the Dubai-based firm is in the hurt locker after its inability to get the Ultimate line (also known as "the basket with all of i-mate's eggs in it") fully deployed to retail channels in the time frame it had hoped, and meeting massive resistance from US carriers to carry the devices, it's been left with no option but to leave behind just enough employees to set up and maintain a web-based portal for purchasing unlocked devices in the States. To those who've been handed your walking papers, we wish you the best of luck.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Not only has Telstra secured exclusive rights to i-mate's freshly minted 8502 and 9502 Windows Mobile superphones in Australia -- it turns out they'll also be the very first carrier to launch 'em anywhere in the world when they hit shelves early next month. The carrier has historically been an excellent customer of i-mate's, bringing a grand total of ten devices to its airwaves so far in a five-year deal. Lucky Aussies will see the 8502 landing for $999 AUD (about $898) while the Sidekick 9502 drops for a whopping $1099 AUD (about $988).

Those two rather dashing new models in i-mate's off-again, on-again Ultimate line that we peeped all the way back at CTIA last fall are finally official. The 9502, undoubtedly the more interesting of the pair, is almost Sidekick-ish in its design, featuring a VGA touchscreen that slides to the side to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. The 8502 meanwhile makes do with a more traditional form factor, sticking the QWERTY pad below the 2.6 inch QVGA display up front. Both models feature HSPA (yes, both HSDPA and HSUPA), TV out, and integrated GPS, hence earning their keep in the thin-but-growing Ultimate stable. Still no word on release or pricing, but since they've both been kicking around since CTIA, we imagine we'll see 'em in the pipe before too long.

We thought that HTC's bold venture into the direct-to-consumer space pretty much spelled doom for its once-burgeoning ODM business, but apparently not. We don't know if these guys are just exceptionally good at what they do, exceptionally cheap, exceptionally convincing, or some combination of the above, because a report out of Taiwan's Commercial Times claims that Palm, i-mate, and MWG -- all companies who've moved their manufacturing contracts solidly away from HTC in recent years -- have come back into the fold, ultimately bumping HTC's contracting business to account for more than 10 percent of its total business in the first quarter. We're skeptical that these three brands (all of whom compete with HTC at retail) would suddenly decide to throw up the white flag at roughly the same time, but considering the kinds of things that happen when other ODMs come into the picture, a little HTC TLC could be just what the doctor ordered.

[Via IntoMobile]

We saw these fellas announced this morning so thought it only reasonable to get down to i-mate's booth here at CTIA and get some shots of the 8502 and 9502. First thing we noticed about these handsets was the top shelf build quality and high-end heft factor -- if you're not feeling it both of these look and feel like a million bucks. The booth was positively swarming with curious onlookers peeking at the video out demonstration that these two were putting on and to their credit, both handsets looked grand on big plasma screens. Check the gallery for some more i-mate candy.

The last we heard about i-mate's Ultimate line, the company was allegedly planning on "staggering" the release of the WM 6 Pro handsets, but it's been over two months without any news to report -- and now suddenly the tubes are alive with i-mate news: not only did the company announce the Ultimate 9502 and 8502 handsets today, UberGizmo is reporting that i-mate is working on a Foleo-esque "shell" for the line, with 1024 x 768 display, larger keyboard, and 80-hour battery. Unlike Palm's charming folly, however, the i-mate shell won't contain any processing power of its own, instead serving more as an extended dock for the Ultimate devices themselves. It's a pretty sketchy rumor, to be sure, but given the i-mate's topsy-turvy handling of the Ultimates, it's as likely as anything else.

[Thanks, webon]