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October 24, 2005
JASJAR - Best... gadget... ever
Last week I took the practical decision to buy a tool to improve my productivity - that is, the i-mate JASJAR phone / PDA / MP3 player / movie player / internet terminal / Handheld MS Office PC...
The JASJAR is actually produced by a highly secretive Taiwanese company called HTC, and is code-named the 'Universal'. It is also sold as the O2 XDA Exec, Orange SPV M5000, QTEK 9000, T-Mobile MDA Pro, and Vodafone VPA IV. The O2 is the only other brand sold in Australia, as far as I know - and should be available later this year or early next year. The only difference between the brands is the software pre-installed.
So, here are the highlights of what's in this unit:
- Incredibly sharp VGA screen (640x480)
- Very usable keyboard - I type with about 5 fingers on it, at around 60-70% of my speed on a full-size keyboard
- Amazing connectivity - wifi, 3G, and Bluetooth
- The best Bluetooth support I've seen - it supports wireless keyboards, voice dialling, headsets, and PC sync
- The screen can flip around and lie flat so it's just like a normal PDA, and supports Graffiti, or cursive writing
And the major downside: it costs $1700 (!). Well, at least, it cost me $1700 because I bought it from Calculator King. If I was prepared to wait 4 days for it to be delivered I could have saved $120 by buying it from Expansys. Patience is a virtue...
(There's lots more information in this review - click "Continue Reading..." below to read the rest)
The fast processor, sharp screen, and better-than-average headphones mean that movies, music, and ebooks are a real pleasure. I've done all of my fiction reading on Ebooks for the last couple of years (using a Treo 600, and then an XDA mini) - but the JASJAR's screen makes the experience much more pleasurable. The latest beta of Mobipocket fully supports the high-resolution screen, including single-button access to a full-screen mode which fits more on the screen at once. The free TCPMP media player works perfectly - I spent Saturday morning lying in bed watching "XXX 2: The Next Level" (not a great movie by the way) while Evelyn enjoyed a sleep-in, undisturbed, since I could use the included stereo headphones. The headphones also work as a phone headset, including volume control and phone answer/hang-up button. There is an SD card slot, where you can insert up to 2GB of storage - enough for 4 movies, or 30 albums of music.
The keyboard combined with the high-res screen make the JASJAR much more useful as a business tool than previous PDAs. MS Excel is really usable - and the latest version (included with the device) includes charting functionality. MS Word handles tables now too. I'm a keen user of the powerful mathematical programming language and interactive analysis tool called J, and using it to hack at maths problems wherever I am is a real pleasure. I expect that each user of this PDA will find their own interesting applications - there's nearly 15,000 applications at Handango to choose from!
I've found the wifi and 3G networking both genuinely useful. The only local company that provides a compatible 3G network is 3 Australia, who are, unfortunately, completely insane. More on that in a later post. However, if you manage to defeat their system (which seems 100% focussed on ensuring that customers can't purchase anything useful from them) and actually get connected, you will find yourself with a handheld device with 150kbps (10 times faster than GPRS, which is what most phones use) internet access in every major city in Australia. Furthermore, it's quite reasonably priced (well, reasonable by Australian standards - anywhere else in the world and it would be considered quite ludicrously priced) - it costs around $0.30 per megabyte, which is around 20x cheaper than GPRS. I have used both wifi and 3G to remotely maintain my servers (using both Remote Desktop for Windows servers, and SSH for Linux servers), read my email, get the latest weather radar to decide when I can stay dry on my motorbike, and play networked computer games.
The most commonly heard problem with the JASJAR that I've heard is its size. Personally, I haven't found the size a problem at all. It fits just fine in my jeans pocket, my suit pocket, or my motorbike jacket pocket. I use a Bluetooth headset, so there's no issues with the size when using it as a phone - although even when I don't have the headset I still don't find it a problem.
For those that want something smaller, I highly recommend the i-mate K-JAM. As well as having a slightly less stoopid name than the JASJAR, it is also much smaller (it's thicker than the average phone, but width and height are a bit smaller than average). The screen resolution is 4x lower than the JASJAR, and whilst it does have a little slide-out keyboard, its only good enough for pecking at with one's thumbs. It does not have 3G, but it does have wifi, which is truly impressive for such a small gadget.
The K-JAM and JASJAR both have a 1.3 mega-pixel camera - I didn't test out the K-JAM's in much detail, but I have taken a few shots with the JASJAR's and it's much better than previous phone-cameras I've tried. It even has a powerful light for night shots, and a video mode which worked very well in my testing.
Unfortunately, the K-JAM and JASJAR use Windows Mobile, which compares very poorly to PalmOS. They do sport the latest version (v5.0), which is much improved, including allowing access to most functions using the keyboard or thumb-buttons, but PalmOS is still much more responsive and carefully thought-out. Having said that, it's still usable enough - it just takes a little longer than it should to do most things.
Posted by at October 24, 2005 09:27 PM
Comments
I have a JJ and it has many problems. The BT is not as good as some of the Symbian devices (e.g. SE P910i which supports three BT devices at the same time and the handsfree profile to enable CLI for BT headsets like the HBH-662).
Posted by: Jah at October 24, 2005 09:53 PM
I purchased an i-mate JASJAR (from Expansys - I couldn't wait!) as well and I am reasonably happy with it. MS WM 5.0 is much better, however Active Sync 4.0 that comes with it can be a real pain at times as it is much more difficult to set up than the old 3.8 and has not been nearly as stable. Mobipocket is also excellent (I use it for eMedicine.com books mainly), but I have not yet figured out how to get The Age and the Guardian to automatically download. As of last week Avantgo just does not work with MS WM 5.0. There are a few other programs that are still not MS WM 5.0 Norton Antivirus for PDA (Symantec did reimburse me the cost of the program, but it would have been better to stay with the one suite for all protection) and ePocrates Pro (a medication database from the USA which should update automatically but does not) for example.
I already have a phone with 3G and find the retail outlets friendly, helpful and very easy to deal with. However the two major issues I have with them is the contractual obligation (which they seem very keen to tell me about) that they only permit the customer connect with a device purchased from 3G and the difficulty in dealing with the people at the 133320 helpline. So I ended up going with GPRS from Telstra- now if you want to talk about pricing and retail staff that don’t know their products!! Although the technical people at Telstra were helpful in a “but you didn’t buy it from us sort of way”.
Overall the JASJAR is an excellent product.
Posted by: Chris Hawkins at October 25, 2005 07:42 AM
Chris, there's a unofficial version of ActiveSync 4.1 floating around that may resolve your problems. Personally, I haven't had any problems with ActiveSync however.
The JASJAR does work fine on the 3 network - although as you say their staff are not exactly helpful when it comes to supporting non-3 phones.
Saying the 3 Australia provide better service than Telstra is not the highest compliment I could conceive of!...
Posted by: Jeremy Howard at October 25, 2005 08:56 AM
Hello, Iam in Adelaide and have aJJ... Can anyone help me with settings for the MMS to work please ?? 3 cant or wont help as you have all found out. HOWEVER, I did speak to three's head office in Sydney and they were playing with 2 or 3 O2 exec's about 2 months ago..... The whisper from the horses mouth was that they were looking at bringing them or the jasjar online and avaliable to customers in the 1st quater 2006.... Anyway, still looking for help re Settings....Thanks Harry
Posted by: harrycrum at November 14, 2005 07:57 PM
Great review of the JJ, ThankYou! Your favoring of the Palm OS leads me to ask if they have a JJ similar device coming up? Their only drawback is the lack of connectivity to the MS programs or am I misinformed? I use Outlook, Excel and Word extensively and enjoy a large format screen which even my 2003 T-Mobiile PocketPC and Ipaq affords me. Any suggestions for something other than the JasJar?
Many thanks.
Peter
Posted by: Peter Basralian at November 27, 2005 03:50 AM
Does anyone know if either 3 or Vodafone sell the JasJar on a plan?
Posted by: Andre at March 4, 2006 06:51 PM
So...is there somewhere I can get the settings to get the O2 Exec or JasJar to work with Three (Australia)
Posted by: Neil at March 15, 2006 09:37 PM
I have a o2 XDA EXEC and I am with Three Australia. I cannot find out what the settings are to access the various services through Three; they seemed to not want any of their services used; very strange company. Does anyone have any advice at all regarding how I might be able to get the settings I need?
Best regards - Neale
Posted by: Neale at July 7, 2006 11:45 PM
I am with three, and I managed to get all the details off them. My Jasjar now works fine on the three network under 3G coverage.
If you want details:
Set up a new connection. Call it whatever
Select "Cellular Line (GPRS, 3G)"
select next
enter the access point name "3netaccess"
select next
leave username and password blank, as the SIM is used for identification
select finish
Now, here's the funny part. I have no recollection of HOW I got "Cellular Line (GPRS, 3G)" as an option. I am sure it was not there when I started trying all configurations (and believe me, at $1600 I tried EVERYTHING). Maybe it appeared after I selected "Cellular" and *99# as the number, which did not work. Maybe it was after I connected to the #G network (which is sporadic at my home).
Jerome
Posted by: Jerome at August 8, 2006 08:43 PM
I'm using the JasJar (actally on the train now using it to post this comment). I've used a lot of different phones and PDAs, but the JJ is one of the best I've come across.
My only complaint, I'm with 3 and can't get MMS to work at all!
Anyone worked it out?
Posted by: nathan at February 2, 2007 07:41 AM