Samsung BlackJack II Review

Introduction:

The original BlackJack was seen by many as an outstanding smartphone but had some major disadvantages, such as the battery life. Samsung went back to the drawing board and cooked up the BlackJack II with the target of improving on the original design. Looking over the specifications, it’s easy to tell that performance and features were targeted while the design went relatively unchanged. The market is full of smartphones and multimedia phones that offer a wide list of features coupled with great strong performance, such as the Motorola Q9h or the AT&T Tilt, so the BlackJack II has already got its work cut out for it.



Design:

Compared to the BlackJack, the BlackJack II’s layout is very similar with only a few changes made. The soft-touch finish is gone and has been replaced by plastic which still offers just the right touch of grip. The keypad is as cramped as ever but surprisingly easy to use. Numbers have all been grouped together instead of being placed in every other row. The navigation buttons above have the exact same layout but are now flush with the display making it very hard telling them apart. We’ve had instances where the wrong button was pressed. The scroll wheel on the side is combined with the D-pad to create the jog wheel which made scrolling through long emails or webpages very easy. Overall the layout is very intuitive and easy to use even though everything is so cramped. It’s even easy to hold as the bulge on the back rest on your figures adding extra support.



The 2.4 inch display shows very nice and natural colors and manages to battle glare pretty well. We experienced no problems using the BlackJack II in bright environments as everything was very easy to make out. Due to its landscape layout, surfing web pages and reading long texts or emails just seemed very cramped.



You can compare the Samsung BlackJack II with many other phones, using PhoneArena's Visual Size Compare tool.

Software:

The BlackJack II has been upgraded from Windows Mobile 5 to 6 Standard. Nothing special has been added to it so no surprises await you . By its functionality, the phone is identical to any other running the same OS. If you are not familiar with this system, please check our review of the Motorola Q9h.Contacts can be saved as either SIM contacts or Outlook ones which provides many more fields for all the necessary information. Media is played through media player which gets a new skin that looks much better than the default while providing the same simple controls.

Apart from the email and IM support expected from business phones, the BlackJack II is the first smartphone in AT&T’s lineup to use Video Share, which allows you to make one-way video calling as long as the other handset also has Video Share capabilities.

The camera has been updated to a 2.0MP one but don’t expect anything great here. Quality seemed very poor to us as some photos came out slightly blurry while in others the color was washed out .



One of the new features is GPS navigation provided by TeleNav. The program was very easy to use and all of the choices were very intuitive. It took only a few seconds to plan routes and guide us along our trips.

Not only is the BlackJack II a quad-band handset, it also has tri-band UMTS/HSDPA bands making it possible to stay connected to 3G networks worldwide. Unofrunately it still lacks WiFi, which most would expect from a smartphone.



PhoneArena's Video Review of Samsung BlackJack II:

Performance:

Thanks to its dual-core 260MHz Arm 9 processor, 128MB of RAM, and 256MB of ROM, AT&T’s 3G network isn’t the only blazing fast thing here. The BlackJack II responded to our commands without hesitation and programs loaded very quickly.

Reception was good throughout our test as we managed to get signal even in those areas where you wouldn’t expect any.

Sound quality was just as solid as the rest of the performance. We were able to hear the other person loud and clear both through the speaker and the speaker phone. The receiving end could hear us just as good.

One of the biggest concerns with the BlackJack was the short battery life and if it would carry over or be improved. Well, we’re glad to say that the battery life is the latter. We were able to get 9 hours and 12 minutes of talk-time out of a single charge. With heavy usage, the BlackJack II managed to last us well into the second day before it needed a charge. When it was used moderately, we managed to get four days out of the battery.

Conclusion:

Samsung took what many loved already with the BlackJack and made an evolutionary step forward keeping the same known design while greatly improving on the features. As far as performance goes, it’s solid with quick responses, great reception, clear sound, and strong battery life. It’s a definite winner in our eyes and keeps up with the competition by providing the same capabilities while adding some that others are lacking.