A Pretty Useful Smartphone

The Samsung Blackjack is one of the more useful cellular phones I've owned. Although the perfect device has yet to be designed, this one comes pretty close. This review will feature ratings on battery life, signal strength, operating system stability, features, design qualities (screen/keyboard, etc), and connectivity.

-- Battery Life (Rating: C): There is a reason why many Blackjacks sold on EBay feature a second battery included for free. This device is pretty hungry. While the standby time isn't bad, and the talk time is acceptable (about 2 hours), this phone's battery life when used as a 3G wireless modem is only about 75-90 minutes.

-- Signal Strength (Rating: A-): It has been rare that I have been somewhere where I couldn't make or receive a call. The phone even works in the elevator at my job. I'd give it an A+ or an A was it not for the fact that the phone does occasionally drops calls 60 seconds into the call. This happens rarely, but it does happen. I theorize that this is a software flaw in the phone and not an actual connectivity problem.

-- Operating System Stability (Rating: B): Nothing that runs any variant of Windows is ever going to get a grade of "A" for stability, and this phone is no exception. This phone has trouble changing modes from "Modem" to "Active sync", and to finalize the change, the user has to turn the phone off and back on. Again, this is not a huge problem, merely an annoyance. Occasionally, I've has to pull the battery off and back on to restart the phone, but that is typically the result of an ill-behaving 3rd Party application. However, the phone does NOT ever to a "hard reset" where it clears out the phone's entire memory (as Palm devices are so vulnerable to experiencing.) The operating system runs reasonably fast as well, with very little lag time between selecting a menu item and having the application launch.

-- Features (Rating: B+): The phone includes a video/still camera, MP3/WMA player, 3GP video player, MS Office viewer, web browser, email client, SMS/MMS, and two games. The camera is pretty standard for a phone (1280x1024 and 640x480), but seems to do a decent capture even in mediocre lighting. Likewise, the 3GP video player doesn't stutter too much (cheap phones tend to drop a lot of frames, but this one doesn't). The MP3/WMA player WILL work with Rhapsody and Real. The web browser is pretty weak; it is not strong enough to log onto some banking institutions (1st Mariner Bank is one of them), it doesn't recognize the Submit buttons on many web sites, and it can't play Flash content. The email client is pretty much your standard PDA text-only email using POP3/IMAP4, but the automated download is a nice feature (mine checks for email every 15 minutes) and you can install multiple email accounts. Unlike older Smartphones, you can send email with attachments. SMS/MMS works as expected; however, an AT&T-to-T-Mobile MMS will not always go through (this may be more of a network issue than a phone issue, however). The office viewer functions as expected, but it's sort of useless given the size of the phone's screen; Smartphones are just too small for displaying an 8"x11" document.

-- Design Qualities (Rating: D): The screen on this phone is sharp and bright. The default brightness is set to medium, but it looks nearly "laptop" bright with the illumination set to maximum. Additional storage is achieved via MicroSD, a chip that is less than half the size of a postage stamp. The keyboard is pretty small. While the keypad is still reasonably usably, I wouldn't want it any smaller. Also, the keyboard is not very rugged, as evidenced by it getting stiff after a few weeks of use. Then there is the problem of ports: everything is handled through a single proprietary USB port. This means that the user cannot use a headset while recharging the phone. There is also a serious design fault in the way the phone recharges. While the phone will charge off the USB cable in "Active sync" and "Mass Storage" mode, the phone will NOT accept a charge in "Modem" mode. And since this mode is the most power-hungry mode of operation, the user can only connect to the internet for 75-90 minutes before the charge is exhausted. The phone then will recharge SLOWLY over a period of several hours. If I could change just one thing about this phone, this would be it.

-- Connectivity (Rating: C): I give this phone kudos for being able to connect to the Internet at over 500kbps (fast enough for Netflix and Second Life), but the fact that it can do so for a maximum of 90 minutes is not a bonus. The phone's Bluetooth features are so limited that I wonder why it was even included. The Bluetooth service does NOT support dial-up networking or FTP. So far as I can tell, the only thing the Bluetooth transmitter is good for is using wireless headsets. The phone supports the rarely-used IRDA, but lacks the more popular Wireless LAN capability.

-- 3rd Party Applications: Two applications can make this phone more useful. The MobiPocket Reader (Free) allows the user to read eBooks on the device. The Dataviz office suite ($29.99) allows the user to view/edit/create Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Both can be installed to a storage card so as not to use up the phone's main memory.


Overall Grade: B-

Summary: While the phone has its shortcomings, I'm generally satisfied with it and can recommend it to someone who needs a midgrade Smartphone that doesn't cost a fortune.