R.I.P. i-mate, we barely knew ye
By Tim Stevens 
posted September 17th 2009 8:24AM
posted September 17th 2009 8:24AM
posted September 17th 2009 8:24AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
How soon we forget about Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.
Not Soon Enough.
BeyondTheTech:
YOU LIE!
Not the same as a sequel.
Anyway:
WOLVERINE!!!!
I had the misfortune to catch the first 30 minutes of Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. Boy, was that awful! I mean, both the wife and I never finished watching it nor wish we did.
I loved Patrick Swazye
Was that dirty dancing joke really in the best taste? Especially so soon after his death. I'll let the other commenters be the judge.
its fine, its not like someone important died
... and this just in: Kanye West interrupts the eulogy of Patrick Swayze to announce that Michael Jackson's funeral was much, much better.
BeyondTheTech: YOU LIE!
no xcrunk , YOU LIE
Nobody puts swayze in the coroner
:o
I just bought an HTC i-Mate STR TRK (yes, that's 'Star Trek') a few months ago. Epic fail! ;.;
Heh, so did I. $100 from Newegg, upgraded to WinMo 6.1 and an extended battery. Hard to beat.
Farewell, company that re-branded other manufacturers' cell phones.
futurepastnow, I heard it was really laggy on 6. Any truth to that?
I reckon support for their products will cease? It's a good thing the 810-F is indestructible then.
1) The Dirty Dancing joke is surely in bad taste and
2) i-Mate and its ridiculously bad phones surely wont be missed. I used to have one and I swear to god it was the most pathetic piece of hardware I have ever owned!
@Pradster
1) Since when did they have joke gourmands in the world?
2) Chances are, you would never be able to create a standing line of phones for the global market, support them by emplying and a managing a global staff, and risk money to create innovative and cheap products for thoose that can't afford a brand new 999$ glass phone. - so lay of the critisism prad.
I'm loving the task list on the i-Mate: "Update resume, clear out desk"
LOL
well spotted
Good eye, Faulknerswhiskeydrunkard.
I have an i-mate K-jam :D
It's shit, I'm getting an X1 soon, but I really do love my i-mate.
I have an i-mate 9502 which, at the time, was one of the most well-specced phones you could get. It is still pretty amazing now.
I still like my 9502, has been reasonably stable since upgrading to WinMo 6.1
It's been quite strong too, dropped from my backpack once and only slightly loosened the casing top corner and a small dent.
screen and keypad still play fine.
Don't worry :), there will be a sequel. With the popularity of dance in the US currently they won't pass up the opportunity (Fame opens next week). Someone other than Patrick will star.
Nicely played sir!
Seriously, i-mate strength in the US was weak sauce. Back when I was all gung ho over the K-JAM, they were charging users of hand-me-downs to access their site's downloads. They weren't anything but a rebranding of all the HTC products. Now that HTC has taken the spotlight with their WinMo and Android products, who needed i-mate? I listened to a lot of the i-mate CEO's ramblings over the years and couldn't believe how full of himself he was. Why they couldn't get HTC to produce 850MHz-compatible 3G phones when they first came out is beyond me - remember the JASJAR? We'd have a videophones by now. Stupid names, too.
R.I.P Patrick Swayze, BUT Dirty Dancing(the movie) was in bad taste! Point Break FTW!
I had an I-Mate phone... okay concept, but quality control was poor (phone made a constant buzzing sound to the people on the other end) and customer service was *abysmal.* I tried for two months to get a response of *any* kind from their customer service department (even an automated one!) and never heard a word. I finally did an end-run around them and talked straight to their U.S. repair center, who were great. No surprise the company went under..
too soon for swayze engadget, too soon.
i have an i-mate momento. tried setting it up as a vista sideshow device.... no support provided for it at all. I'm not surprised they're going under.
Mine works fine as a Sideshow device. In fact now that's probably the only thing it's good for.
man, I REALLY wish they would sell the Momentolive.com and assets off to FrameChannel. FrameChannel already offered to buy it once. Maybe now they can get it at the fire sale.
Aww, that sucks. I had an i-mate for a while (same model as the XDA2) and absolutely loved it. One of the best phones I've ever owned. I really loved it and occasionally still miss it.
http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/Oct2003/O2Xda2.jpg
This is my first ever post: The Dirty Dancing "joke" was pathetic. Stick to tech news and leave the 'comedy" to pros.
I had an imate sp3i about 6-7years ago or so and loved that little marvel. It played movies, surfed the internet, email. It still works great for my 2 year old's entertainment.
I-mate never manufactured a phone, all it's phones were actually HTC phones branded as i-mate. The fact they are not known here as they were allowed to sell only in the middle east. HTC at the time never had a phone branded with it's name, it's phones were known as Q-teq in France, Dopod in China, O2 in UK and so on.. Just like in the USA u have phones branded by AT&T and Verizon with different names for same device.. Although I-mate nor Q-teq were cell phone providers.
Right...this is a sad day for WinMo fans. Even though i-Mate simply sold rebranded HTC, they were an early proponent of Windows Mobile at a time when the mainstream was not. Everyone knows HTC now, but it wasn't so long ago that they weren't a household name and you had phone like the i_mate or the Audiovox SMT5600. I appreciate what they did for pushing smartphones.
Since the "ultimate" line came out, none of their phone were made by HTC. The Ultimate line were custom phones designed by imate built by third party contract manufacturers. By your strict definition, Apple does not make the iPhone - they are build by Foxconn in China although Apple does all the design and engineering on them.
The latest 810F is a 100% i-mate designed phone, but as with the others, actually manufactured by a third party Chinese contract manufacturer (not Foxconn though).
Wouldn't it be the distributors left out to dry, not the retailers. Just saying y'all.
This is something which should be worrying many i-mate customers like me. The guyz here at digitizor , http://bit.ly/8671i , pointed out that there might be some possibility of HTC taking over i-mate. I m just hoping this. It will definitely bring some relief to us i-mate customers.
The chance of HTC taking over i-mate is about 1 million times LESS likely than getting hit by a meteorite ;-). There is NOTHING in the i-mate line that would interest HTC except, maybe, the new rugged 810F which was an i-mate designed phone, not a re-branded device from someone else.
First their forums and the layoffs, now this. Wow. I guess I should have seen it coming. I wonder what's going to happen with that "lifetime warranty" on the 810-F?
In this case, "Lifetime" refers to the life span of the COMPANY, not the USER or PRODUCT. Bummer.