My beloved (but sometimes also hated) i-mate JAQ3 must have heard through the grapevine that it’s getting replaced with an iPhone, because last week it decided to give up the ghost completely.  The poor thing has given me a good year and a half of hard use, so I really can’t blame it for wanting to go toe up.  I was bemoaning its loss and trying to figure out what to do in the meantime, since my husband is using my backup phone as his primary device.  Luckily I didn’t have to worry too long–a very sweet friend was able to provide me with a loaner phone that I can use until I get my precious iPhone at the end of August.  This isn’t just any loaner phone either, it’s a PDA phone with all the bells and whistles!

I’ve considered the T-Mobile Wing (aka the HTC Herald) quite a few times since it was introduced into the T-Mobile lineup, but never bit the bullet despite the temptation.  When I found out that’s what I was getting on loan, I was pretty excited to be able to try it out.  I love HTC devices, and so far this one has NOT disappointed me!

Let’s look at what the Wing is packing under the hood:

• TI OMAP 850 201 Mhz processor
• 128 MB ROM
• 64 MB RAM
• Talk time of up to 4 hours
• Standby time of up to 6 days
• 2.0 megapixel camera
• MicroSD slot
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
• Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
• Windows Mobile 6 Professional

My JAQ3 was running virtually the same processor, but it never felt as fast and responsive as the Wing does.  Programs that took up to 20 seconds to open on the JAQ3 open in just a few seconds on the Wing, and since I’ve had it, I haven’t had to soft reset the device once.  I was resetting the JAQ3 4 or more times a day at the end.

I can also see a huge difference on battery life using the Wing as well.  My typical usage during the day has the device checking my GMail and work IMAP accounts every 10 minutes, syncing my calendar via GooSync a few times, syncing my tasks via Milksync once every 4 hours, and talking for anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours.  I also fire up uBook to read an eBook quite a bit.  I’ve only seen the battery drop down below 50% when I’ve done all those tasks PLUS read an entire eBook.  That’s pretty impressive, considering I have grown used to constantly having a charger or mini-USB cable on me at all times, just in case the JAQ3 runs out of juice!

I grew quite used to the QWERTY thumbboard on the JAQ3, and while it had a really beautiful, clear screen, I often wished that it was bigger.  The slide-out QWERTY keyboard on the Wing seems like the perfect answer to that wish–the screen is large, clear and bright, and when I need the keyboard I can just slide it out.  The screen auto-rotates when the keyboard mechanism is engaged, which is a nice touch.

The JAQ3 was a slightly buggy device that I hoped would be fixed by a Windows Mobile 6 upgrade that was promised but never delivered.  I can only imagine the things it might have fixed…the Wing runs flawlessly on the newer OS.  Programs that never quite worked right on the JAQ3, like SPB Phone Shell, are working in ways I never thought they could on the Wing.  For instance, I have a black list set up in SPB Phone Shell to block random 1-800 numbers that call me from time to time.  On the JAQ3 it would work sometimes, but not all the time.  Numbers on the blacklist would still ring through or shoot to my voicemail.  On the Wing, I never get a single blacklisted call.  Video also works perfectly on the Wing, whereas on the JAQ3 it was laggy, would only play in portrait mode (read: sideways) on the JAQ3’s landscape-oriented screen, and you could only play video in Windows Media Player, which has never been my choice for mobile video.

The call quality on the Wing is on a whole other level from the quality of the JAQ3.  My poor friends and family have put up with a buzzing noise over the line for the last year and a half, and I know they must be happy to be free at last!  I actually have to turn the volume down on the Wing–on the JAQ3 I had to keep it cranked up to the highest level to hear my calls clearly.

Data on the Wing works without a hitch–the JAQ3 worked great at first, but the longer I had it, the spottier the data connections seemed to get.  I rarely connected on EDGE, even though I was in the middle of the T-Mobile EDGE network, and the data connection would drop intermittently, as would my signal.  I would have to reset the phone to get it to pick the signal or the data back up again.  It was so frustrating, but I dealt with it because it was just too convenient to have my PDA and my phone all in one device.

I’m looking forward to moving on to the iPhone a great deal, especially now that the App Store is open, but in the meantime I’m really enjoying one last month with a great Windows Mobile device.  If you’re on T-Mobile and looking to pick up a solid PDA phone, I highly recommend the T-Mobile Wing. I give it 4 out of 4 DTD stars!