Please note - We managed to get the iMate Ultimate 8150 and iMate Ultimate 6150 handsets recently. Both of these phones are gold in colour and are early production builds. Although we've taken up-close shots of these phones, we've now received the following images of the final black builds. These are constructed to a higher build quality than you'll see in the close-up pictures of the gold units used in this review.

Final Unit Pictures
Here's the iMate Ultimate 6150 in black as you'll receive it if you buy one..

Imagine your perfect phone. Some may want a small phone, some may want a thin phone, others want a feature-packed handset. If that's you then imagine a phone with 3G, HSPDA, WiFi, touch screen, numeric keypad, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, FM radio, 2 megapixel camera with auto-focus, video output, loads of memory and a blistering 520Mhz processor complete with an NVIDIA graphics accelerator to push things even faster.

Interested?

Meet the iMate 8150.

Up Close

iMate have thrown (almost) everything at this handset. Sure, there's no QWERTY keyboard and no GPS, but one thing that instantly jumps out at you is the speed. If you open up the "Programs" window and scroll down the motion is so fluid you'd be forgiven for thinking that you're using a real PC. The graphics accelerator and extremely fast CPU really show through - the phone just charges into every application and game with venom.

The device, let's admit, is a little large. The design is, if I'm kind, not to everyones taste.

The main screen is surrounded by a fairly heavy black frame, making it seem smaller than it actually is. At the top there's the flashing LED's for network activity, plus your earpiece and the face-mounting camera.
 

The numeric keypad at the bottom cleverly integrates the joystick for navugation. Each number key is wide but, for reasons I don't quite understand, both the numbers and the letters seem to be the same height and font-size.

The soft keys at the top are awkwardly positioned and it feels like they should be seperated from the main keypad. When I tried pressing either of the black softkeys I sometimes hit the "call" and "drop" keys below, which was a little annoying.

On the right side of the handset is a the camera button - it activates the auto-focus camera. Press this down and it'll focus on what you're pointing at - press it down further and you'll snap it. Next to it is the rubber flap covering the VGA output slot. Don't get too attached to this rubber flap because it's not actually attached to anything. Pull it a bit and it simply drops out. There's nothing holding it in, it's nothing more than a cork.

The miniUSB plug is also here, as is another hole (you may have seen another on next to the camera button) which is covered by a small rubber gromit. I'm not totally sure what these are for to be honest.

At the top is a power button and the IR window.

On the left you can see the retractable stylus which fits snugly in the phone when you're not using it. The wheel below is a great addition - it's not the full roller-wheel, rather a "rocker" type with a knob to signify the centre. Below that is the OK button and the microSD card slot ....

At the bottom left of the phone is a WiFi button. This takes you into the Wireless Manager where you can control the phone, Bluetooth and WiFi capabilities. This button does get pressed quite a bit when you're using the camera as, when your finger is all ready to hit the camera button, your thumb is invariably on top of this wireless button. Press the camera button in and you'll end up pressing both keys at once by accident, firing off a shot and then dumping you into the Wireless Manager, or perhaps one or the other. The only way around this is to watch how you hold the phone whilst taking shots.

The reset button is also on this side.

At the back there's a camera / mirror / flash / speaker arrangement which is arranged in a strip. It's like the headlight on an old American car. Next to this is the 2 megapixel camera whilst below we have the battery cover. Below that the battery is, frankly, pretty bloody big. The battery cover itself is metal and can bend easily at times. I think this one has already started bending at the edges here.

Inside

The iMate 8150 is a phone of two halves. It's fair to say that we weren't too impressed with the outside of it, but inside it's a totally different story.  I've already noted down some of my highlights...

- The screen, for example, is bright and colourful. The resolution is excellent.

- When browsing pages the resolution really shows through - as does the speed. Web pages are rendered quicker than I've ever seen on any other Windows Mobile handset.

- Videos are smooth, sharp and quick. The video output works, and it works well.

- The camera produces excellent shots and the preview window is just like looking through glass.

- This phone is quick, seriously quick. Software runs well, images fire onto the screen instantly, searches are performed in an instant.

- Applications like "Remote Desktop" become even better due to the higher resolution.

- Plug it into your PC or laptop to sync and it'll ask you if you'd like "Fast Charging"
 

First up thought, I have to show you the resolution off this phone. Here's a shot directly from the screen at thr 640x480 resolution. Obviously I can't do all screen-grabs this size, else the review would be massive, but here's one to give you an idea of the resolution and pixel difference. A higher resolution does mean slightly smaller text though, but you can adjust this in applications like Internet Explorer.

My next idea was to give you a look at the specs within this phone. I fired up the Device Information from the iMate 8150 and took some shots...

There, plain as day, is the powerful XScale CPU running at 520Mhz along with the extra memory and 640x480 LCD. You'll see that these are the shots from the 6150, which we haven't looked at until now. However, after putting them side-by-side I started to notice some distinct similarities..

Here's the iMate Ultimate 6150...

This hit me a little too slowly. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I've been reviewing lots of phones at the minute and hadn't really looked at the other iMate, but on closer inspection it does indeed seem that these handsets are pretty much identical in every way. The only difference between the two is the screen-size and keypad. The iMate 8150 that I started reviewing here has a numeric keypad and a normal-sized touch-screen. However, withn the iMate 6150 they simply binned the keypad and put a bigger screen in. Even the joystick is in pretty much the same place.

Have a look at my evidence. Here's the two devices side-by-side. You can see already how similar the designs are and, while this was probably intentional, it's interesting to note that both devices are probably using the same motherboard. 

At the back you can see that both phones are identical in every way..

On the top left we've got the same stylus, same wheel, same keys and holes - all in exactly the same position..

The only difference here is the position of the soft-keys, which are moved down on the 6150 to accommodate the bigger screen.

On the top is the iMate 6150 whilst on the bottom is the 8150.. err.. no, wait - I think it's the other way around possibly. :)

Here's a few comparison shots with the HTC Touch..

Inside (continued!)

 Due to the fact that both phones are the pretty much the same in every way, I decided to include screenshots from just one of the handsets, however the capability and responsiveness is the same on either phone. First I tried out browsing. This was extremely quick. The WiFi was picked up and I fire up Internet Explorer. The text on IE is smaller than perhaps you're used to on other Windows Mobile phones - this us because of the increased resolution on the phone. You can alter this if you like, however I found that pages looked fine and were perfectly readable even on the smaller 8150 screen.

I felt that the best way to show how quick the browser was would be through a YouTube video which you can see below..

Video and camera modes are available on this, plus you can switch to the face-pointing camera if you want to take a snap of yourself in lower resolution. Let's not forget that the camera also has a flash for those low-light situations. I took some shots with the camera on its' highest setting - you can see what they look like by clicking the thumbnails below..

There was something else I wanted to test though, and that was the VGA out. Both handsets offer VGA / TV Out capabilities so I grabbed the phone and plugged it into our TV at home. The result is below. Apologies in advance for the darkness, but you should be able to see how the screen of the iMate 8150 suddenly feels like a tablet interface when you switch across to TV output.

The FM radio needs the headset plugged in to act as an aerial and works rather well. I couldn't take a shot of it in action, however this is how it looks when you load it up...

The FM radio allows you to have resets and it'll even let you record stations too! Handy huh ? :)

Next we move onto the Windows Media Player. Everything about it is quicker and smoother with the CPU and graphics accelerator. When you're updating the library for example, this is done in seconds instead of minutes, and when you do watch a video it's able to handle much higher frame-rates and higher quality videos. I've included a video to show this with a live news channel broadcasting via the WiFi...

Talking about WiFi, here's a look at the connection manager, which is triggered either from the menu or with the button on the lower-left of the handset as we saw earlier. iMate have included the on / off controls plus they've added the relevant settings buttons right next door so you can easily tweak details like the WiFi Access Point.

If you're on a WiFi point you can make use of the resolution and log into servers or other PC's with the Remote Desktop client, which has thankfully been left in (a lot of builds now seem to be dropping this tool, which is a real shame because I find it invaluable).

iMate have also included several tools to Backup your device, check email or you can remotely access files using 1-View. 1-View lets you access any file on any PC from where-ever you are. This is also a very valuable tool when you're looking for that all-important presentation, Word or Excel file back at the office or on your home PC.

These tools form part of the iMate Suite, and you can get more details about them or try them out yourself here.

Phone calls and video calls work well and voice quality is fine. Video calls look great in the new resolution too..

A quick look through the Programs list reveals ClearVue PDF viewer, the ever-useful File Explorer, Messenger, a Streaming Player and we've also got Office Mobile (which is accessible from the main screen) to open and create Microsoft Office files too.

Conclusion

Both the iMate Ultimate 6150 and the iMate Ultimate 8150 are very capable handsets with lots of power on tap. The specs are excellent and both phones operate far faster than anything I've seen before. Videos are smooth, Office documents open quickly and complex Excel spreadsheets are handled without stress. The VGA output turns the device into a real mobile work-horse which lets you arrive anywhere and present a demonstration with nothing more than your iMate Ultimate and its' included VGA cable.

Although the somewhat angular lines and portly dimensions could make this a turn-off, it should be remembered that the final handsets will be built to a much higher quality and may be curvier and perhaps even a little sexier than these test units. Keep an eye out on iMate.com for further information.