EDIT: I HAVE FIXED THE MAIN ISSUE WITH MY GMATE, MORE INFORMATION BELOW
Well, my Gmate+ came in the mail today, and I've been playing with it for a little while now and am able to give first impressions. First off, the device is much smaller than I imagined, it easily fits in my palm, the vibration (on the plus version) is very loud. As for the function itself, it works. You can call and send and receive text messages (haven't tested the web access yet) with a few minor (and one major) annoyances. My device is currently a US SGP 4.0 running Terrasilent 1.1 and EtherealRom 2.3.
Minor annoyances I have found with the Gmate+:
- Notifications (read: texts) do not make noise/vibrate while the screen is locked. Once the screen goes on, if you do have a new text, it notifies you, kind of ruining the point of the notification.
- Text messages you send have proper time stamps, for some reason, the ones you receive are off by a few hours, as if the sender is in a different time zone
- Seems to be no way to delete contacts from the address book, even uninstalling, wiping data, reinstalling didn't do anything about this.
Major annoyance with the Gmate+:
- It disconnects, and by that I mean it disconnects ALL THE TIME, the device is pretty much useless because of this, it will be fine for a few minutes, then disconnect, regardless of how close the Gmate is to my SGP. Every few minutes, I'd check it, and guess what? No connection. Sometimes it would reconnect, sometimes I'd have to manually do it, sometimes I'd have to restart one or both devices to get it to work again.
Seeing as everything the device does it actually does quite well when actually connected, I want to rule this problem to some battery saving tweak in my kernel/rom. As such, I'll be returning to stock and trying the Gmate again to see if any of these issues are cleared up. As it stands, I have a 75$ paperweight that buzzes occasionally.
EDIT: After flashing back to stock and noticing no change, I began searching around and found other people having similar problems with similar devices, mainly connecting their smartphones to the bluetooth sound system in their car. Turns out in Deep Sleep, the device has issues keeping constant bluetooth connection. After downloading an app (Bluetooth KeepAlive: ~$1.30) on the market that keeps the device from entering this mode, the Gmate no longer disconnects, and has remained connected for several days, having no problem with calls or text messages at any time. In summary, with this app, I am now happy to recommend the Gmate to anyone who is looking for this kind of functionality. Guess it goes to show that non compatible apps are listed in the Play Store as non working for a reason