| Samsung BlackJack Smartphone Review | Today's Top Stories | ||||||||||||
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(Review) - Samsung started making a buzz late last year when it announced its plan to reveal a smartphone device that would go head-to-head against RIM’s BlackBerry, Palm’s Treo and Motorola’s Q to name a few. Now that Samsung’s BlackJack is available for purchase, things are looking very optimistic for Samsung and its entry into the highly lucrative smartphone category. The BlackJack has a very slim and cell phone-like body, which makes it easier to work and interact with. You can’t necessarily say the same about RIM and Palm’s smartphones. It’s even slimmer than the Motorola Q, and really you can’t ask for much more in terms of the portability factor. Samsung’s BlackJack is really a combination of a lot of successful smartphones (the ones mentioned above). It appears as though Samsung has taken the winning ingredients from nearly all of them, added some innovative spices of its own and released a tasteful dish. The exterior of the device is black, a sexy choice for a color, with backlit QWERTY keyboard and a gorgeous display with 320x240 resolution and 65K colors. The right edge of the BlackJack has a microSD slot for storage upgrade with a cover, a scrollwheel and a Back button. While we certainly enjoyed the added navigation support, they weren’t as smooth as we had initially thought. However, as you use them on a regular basis, they do tend to soften up, but the initial interactions weren’t thrilling. As you move along to the left edge, that’s where the headset and power adapter is located, along with the volume buttons. We must admit that the BlackJack is well designed with few quirks. With that said, the QWERTY keyboard could use a little work. For instance, the keys are oval; it would’ve been much better to make them rectangular as it’s easier to type. Furthermore, the numerical keys for dialing are oddly spaced. We would like to know Samsung’s reasoning behind such an odd keyboard layout. Since the phone is slimmer than RIM’s BlackBerry, the keys are noticeably meshed together, which makes it difficult to type on. Similarly, the top navigation keys, just below the display, are also meshed to the point that if you have big fingers, you will press the Call or End keys, while navigating through the menu. From a feature’s standpoint, there isn’t much to discuss except that it’s based on Windows Mobile 5.0 as its core OS. What’s interesting is that Samsung uses the smartphone edition of the OS instead of the Pocket PC edition. That limits the Office Suite to merely viewing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDFs. With the Pocket PC edition, you can actually edit them on the device. Obviously there are third-party applications that can remedy this problem, but it would’ve been nice to have a full Office Suite right from the box. You can also play audio and video through Cingular (now AT&T Wireless) Music and Video services and view photos. The BlackJack is a UMTS/HSPDA smartphone, which will give you the ability to experience broadband-like speeds, while browsing the web or listening to and viewing live audio and video streams. There’s also a 1.3-megapixel camera that produces reasonably decent images, but again, it’s much weaker than competitive camera phones. We had an exceptional experience calling through the BlackJack, as the audio quality was crystal clear, even with the speakerphone on. The live music and video streams, and web browsing was super fast, thanks to the combination of 3G technologies. With video streams, however, we did notice pixilation. Even though we expected that, it needs to be worked on. That’s not particularly a Samsung-only flaw, but it would’ve been great for Samsung to take care of that. Also, the addition of Wi-Fi is another thing that we would’ve greatly appreciated. The call time was rated for 5.5 hours; the BlackJack barely beat that time. For the price of $199.99 with a 2-year contract, Samsung, in partnership with Cingular, has released a more affordable device for the professionals on the go. Even though it has some minor drawbacks, overall, it’s a two-thumbs-up winner that should satisfy the needs of any professional. Click here to get the latest prices on Unlocked Samsung BlackJack smartphone! |
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