Dialed In: Samsung BlackJack Plays a Good Game

The extremely light PDA/phone is quite capable, but it suffers from a few design quirks and occasionally poky performance.

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Dialed In: Samsung BlackJack Plays a Good Game #1
The new Samsung BlackJack i607 from Cingular is the spitting image of the black Motorola Q. While the two PDA/phones look alike, the BlackJack features a lighter, narrower design and more-robust multimedia capabilities (such as streaming music and video). Overall, the BlackJack plays a good game, but it could use a performance boost and a few design tweaks.

The BlackJack's major selling points include multimedia features that other PDA/phones in this class lack. Unlike the Verizon Wireless-based Q, for example, Cingular's BlackJack streams XM radio (for $9 a month), as well as video content from CNN, HBO, and more (fees vary). One disappointment, though: Cingular doesn't offer an over-the-air music download service. You can transfer songs from your PC, and then store them in the BlackJack's meager 64MB of RAM. You're better off buying a MicroSD card for music, video, photo, and other file storage.
The BlackJack also offers stellar messaging capabilities. Running the Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone Edition OS, the handset includes Internet Explorer, syncs Outlook e-mail, and supports push-based e-mail delivery via Microsoft Direct Push, Good Mobile Messaging, and Cingular XpressMail. You can also sync POP3-, IMAP-, and SMTP-based e-mail clients. You can stay in touch through IM (AIM, MSN, and Yahoo) as well.
You don't get a mobile version of Microsoft Office with the operating system, but you can view Word documents, PDFs, Excel sheets, and PowerPoint presentations through the included Picsel Viewer program. And like many PDA/phones, the BlackJack includes a calendar, a notepad, voice notes, and a metric and currency converter. In my experience, though, opening and closing some apps, backtracking to a previous page, and using the 1.3-megapixel camera were sluggish operations, typically causing a 1-to-2-second delay to process the command.
Navigation Pluses and Minuses
The BlackJack is 4.4 inches tall, 2.3 inches wide, and 0.5 inches thick (the Q measures 4.6 by 2.6 by 0.45 inches). It's also incredibly light at 3.5 ounces, compared to the Q's 4.1-ounce weight. While I like the BlackJack's compact size, thumb-typing on its QWERTY keyboard feels cramped. (What I like about the Q's keyboard is the blank space at the bottom--a spot where I can rest my thumbs as I type, making the task easier.) The tactile keys, though, were a pleasure to use.
The thumbwheel on the right side of the phone moves swiftly and makes navigation manageable, though I prefer a touch screen because it gives me a lot more freedom to jump around the screen. Samsung does provide a time-saving function to the thumbwheel, though: Pressing and holding it launches the Quick Launcher window that lets you jump to your calendar, your music, or a Web page. (The selection of apps can be changed.)
Call quality generally sounded fine on both ends. The speakerphone worked okay, too. On my end, the phone's speakers produced fairly crisp audio, but a few of my callers had a hard time hearing me and reported noticing an echo. Talking around noisy or windy environments isn't advisable, either, as the phone picks up a lot of background noise.
A minor quibble: I ran into an inconsistency with volume control. In all applications except in streaming video mode, you have to use the thumbwheel instead of the volume control on the left side to adjust volume. (What finally tipped me off was a little speaker icon on the screen with a percentage number next to it--100 percent means it's at the maximum level.)
Dialing a number on the BlackJack also was a little challenging. The numbers are inconveniently placed between nonnumeric keys, so I often pressed a letter by mistake, when I should have pressed the adjacent number. I later discovered that when I pressed the letter to the right of the number, it entered that number. For example, pressing the letter R (which is located to the right of the number 1) enters the number 1.
Samsung estimates 5.5 hours of talk time on the device. (Stay tuned for PC World's test results.) The package comes with a spare battery and an external charger. You can also charge the battery while the phone is plugged into a PC via the included USB cable.
3G performance and signal strength varied in my test area of San Francisco and a few surrounding suburbs. Within range of Cingular's HSDPA 3G network, streaming video from HBO, for example, was smooth. On the EDGE network, though, the graphics could end up looking blocky, like a David Hockney photograph. Web pages usually loaded within 15 to 20 seconds, though they sometimes took longer. Cingular's HSDPA network is available in many--but not all--cities where the carrier does business. In these spots, having Wi-Fi would have been nice. Alas, the BlackJack doesn't provide it.
At $300 (with a two-year contract from Cingular), the BlackJack costs $100 more than its direct competitor, the Motorola Q. What do you get for that? Streaming media capability, a second battery, and a very light and compact design. The lack of Wi-Fi may be a deal breaker for some users, but if you're in the market for a PDA/phone, the BlackJack is a winning hand.
Comments or questions? Drop Grace Aquino a line.



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