Home > Reviews > Manufacturer > Samsung Blackjack II Cell Phone Review

Samsung Blackjack II Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on December 31, 2007 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The Blackjack II is a powerful Windows Mobile smart phone that brings a high end feature set at a very compelling price. Many of the significant flaws of its predecessor have been addressed such as poor battery life and a difficult to use D-Pad. It also brings support for global roaming on 3G networks and GPS functionality to the table, all for about $100. There are some flies in the ointment, though. The Blackjack II's stills camera is pretty poor and we found the control keys were as difficult to use as the original Blackjack. We also noticed some lag from time to time, but not enough to make the device a chore to use. In balance the good things about the Blackjack II outweigh the bad and it will be a very attractive device for those looking for a high end feature set at a reasonable price.

The Blackjack II is available exclusively from AT&T for $99.99 with a two-year contract.

Tour & Design - The Blackjack II retains the slim form factor if its predecessor, but we worry about the durability of the all plastic construction.

Audio Quality - The Blackjack II did very well in our audio tests, with only minor issues.

Imaging - The Blackjack II's two megapixel camera produced pretty poor stills, but video capture is decent for a cell phone.

Making/Receiving Calls - Dialing numbers on the Blackjack II was easy and the calling features were very good.

Messaging - The Blackjack II offers excellent email and messaging capabilities.

Organizer - As a Windows Mobile smart phone the Blackjack II is a full fledged PDA, with many holes in the platform filled by Samsung with add-on software.

Multimedia - Windows Media Player Mobile provides solid music and video playback support, but the lack of any dedicated multimedia keys is a little annoying.

Software - Windows Mobile Standard is a powerful platform with a few flaws that can be addressed with third party software.

Battery Life - The Blackjack II is not a battery powerhouse, but it is slightly above average and is significantly better than its predecessor.

Connectivity - With support for international 3G roaming as well as AT&T's network the Blackjack II is a very well connected device for the world traveller.

Hardware - The Blackjack II's QWERTY is one of the best we've used and the rotating D-Pad is very good.

Other Features - The Blackjack II supports GPS functionality, albeit with no software available out of the box on the device you'll have to shell out to use it.

Value & Comparisons - At only $99.99 with a two-year contract the Blackjack II is one of the best values we've seen.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front
From the front the Blackjack II looks similar to its antecedent, with a largish landscape display at the top, a QWERTY keyboard with slanted pill-like keys at the bottom and a set of flat controls in between. Above the screen is the phone speaker and to the right of that an LED indicator. Just below the QWERTY keyboard and off-set to the right is the microphone.

Left
On the left the Blackjack II has a rocker switch for volume control near the top and below it a covered proprietary port used for power, data and headphones.

Top
The top of the Blackjack II has a power button on the left and a small grill for the loud speaker.

Bottom
There are no buttons or other features on the bottom of the Blackjack II.

Right
On the right side of the Blackjack II you will find a covered slot for Micro SD cards. Those familiar with the original Blackjack will notice the lack of a scroll wheel.

Back
The back of the Blackjack II has a battery cover on the bottom two thirds and near the top you find the lens for the two megapixel camera and a self-portrait lens.

Battery Out
When you remove the battery cover you reveal the battery. No information is available about battery capacity, but it is larger than the original Blackjack's battery, which is appreciated since battery life was one of that phone's achilles heels.

In the Box (3.0)
The Blackjack II ships with a USB cable, charger and synchronization software. This seems to be a pretty poor selection of accessories for a phone as capable as the Blackjack II. We would have liked to see a stereo headset, especially give that you have to buy proprietary ones if you want some, and perhaps a Micro SD card to get you started as well.

Handling (4.0)
The Blackjack II is slightly thicker than the original Blackjack in order to accommodate the larger battery and additional features. This actually isn't that bad a thing as it gives you more phone to hold onto. What you're holding onto isn't very easy to grip, however, as the Blackjack II is styled in very slippery glossy black plastic. We definitely fear that this thing will be flying out of people's hands. We much prefer the soft touch finish found on phones like the HTC Touch.

Portability (7.0)
Despite the added thickness the Blackjack II is still a relatively lightweight and small smart phone. At 4.4 x 2.3 x .4 inches it's about the same size as an iPhone. The plastic construction allows it to stay relatively lightweight at 3.52 ounces. One of the things that people loved about the original Blackjack was how easy it was to carry around, and the Blackjack II continues in this tradition. You'll be able to easily slip it into most pants pockets and it won't be a problem to fit it into a jacket pocket or bag.

Aesthetics (7.5)
Like the original the Blackjack II retains a pretty attractive facade. As much as we disliked the glossy black facade for handling it definitely gives the phone a nice professional look. It's not fashion phone but is better looking than many brick-like smart phones such as the HTC Tilt.

Durability (6.0)
The Blackjack II doesn't have any significant moving parts, but we do worry a little bit about the long-term durability of the rotating scroll wheel. We are also concerned about the all plastic construction. With a lot of glossy surfaces you can certainly expect the Blackjack II to get scratched and it also feels a little cheap. We worry that one bad fall could cause breakage serious enough to put your phone out of commission. These are all fairly minor concerns, but put together they may be a good reason to invest in some screen protectors and/or cases.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

To test audio quality we use the same professional grade software and equipment that many cell phone manufacturers and carriers use. To simulate the human ear we use a Head and Torso Simulator (HATS) from Brüel & Kjær. To analyze the audio captured we use Listen Inc's SoundCheck software. For more information on how we test see this article.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.49)
The chart above indicates the quality of sound received by the Blackjack II. The blue line is the phone's performance while the two red lines are the limits against which we test. You can see that the Blackjack II had a couple of problems, rising slightly above our limits at lower frequencies and dropping off a little too quickly at the upper frequencies. Neither of these is a major problem, but you may notice that some lower voices are exaggerated while some higher voices are clipped. You can see below that minor as these problems are they are significant enough that the Blackjack II put up the second worse score amongst our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Blackjack II	Nokia N81 8GB (on AT&T)	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on T-Mobile)
Score	7.49	8.73	8.30
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Palm Centro (on Sprint)	AT&T Tilt (on AT&T/)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	6.24	8.04	9.17
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Sound Send Frequency Response (8.42)
In this test we look at the quality of sound sent by the Blackjack II, so this is how you will sound to those on the other end of the call. As before the graph above indicates the Blackjack II's performance with a blue line while our limits are delineated in red. Unlike the sound received by the Blackjack II we saw very few problems with the sound sent by the phone. You can see from the graph that it stays within our limits across the range of frequencies, with the only possible issue that it may drop off a little too quickly at the end, but even here it stays within our testing limits. The result is that the Blackjack II put up a better score in this section than any of our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Blackjack II	Nokia N81 8GB (on AT&T)	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on T-Mobile)
Score	8.42	7.65	7.51
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Palm Centro (on Sprint)	AT&T Tilt (on AT&T)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	7.82	7.44	7.58
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Handset Side Tone (7.02)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that you hear through the phone's speaker so you can judge how loudly you are speaking. We like to see side tone around -18 decibels, while the Blackjack II scored -20.98 decibels. This is a little on the low side and you may find yourself speaking more loudly than you should to compensate. That being said we've seen worse, you can see below that the Nokia N81 put up a similarly low side tone score while the iPhone's side tone is very high.

Cell Phone	Sidetone Measurement	Score
Blackjack II	20.98	7.02
Nokia N81 8GB	21.15	6.85
BlackBerry Curve 8320	17.88	9.88
Palm Centro	17.86	9.86
AT&T Tilt	20.29	7.71
Apple iPhone	8.8	0.80

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (2.45)
To test the resolution of photos taken by a phone's camera we take a series of photos of an industry standard resolution chart. We then use Imatest to analyze these photos. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), which measures how many alternating white and black lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.
The Blackjack II's two megapixel camera scored 742 lw/ph horizontal and 894 lw/ph vertical. This is not a particularly impressive score. You can see from the comparison table below that although two of our comparison phones did slightly worse than the Blackjack II, three of them did significantly better. Of particular note are the iPhone and Curve 8320, both of whom also have fixed focus two megapixel cameras, which did much better on this test than the Blackjack II.

Cell Phone	Blackjack II	Nokia N81 8GB	BlackBerry Curve 8320
Score	2.45	1.16	5.25
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	742/894	511/534	1087/933
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Palm Centro	AT&T Tilt	Apple iPhone
Score	1.41	4.80	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	581/596	1039/1057	970/879
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (2.62)
To test the quality of the color captured by the Blackjack II's camera we take photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart. Imatest analyzes the photos and compares the captured colors to the original ones. Imatest produces the chart below, where you can see the original table with the captured colors superimposed so you can see the differences.
Imatest also produces the chart below that illustrates exactly how accurate color capture is. In this chart the ideal color is indicated with a box while the captured color is marked with a circle. The longer the line between the two the more inaccurate the color capture.
You can see from these two charts that the Blackjack II has some serious issues when it comes to color capture. There is pretty significant drift in almost all colors, and most strikingly the whites are all over the place. This indicates that the Blackjack II does a poor job judging white balance, which throws off the rest of the colors in a scene. Although we have seen phones do worse, the Blackjack II's performance is pretty poor and is the worst amongst our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Blackjack II	Nokia N81 8GB	BlackBerry Curve 8320
Score	2.62	3.21	4.92
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Palm Centro	AT&T Tilt	Apple iPhone
Score	8.08	5.50	5.22
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (1.42)
To test the amount of noise produced at each lighting level we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four lighting levels ranging from a bright sunny day to candle light. We then use Imatest to analyze the amount of noise produced at each lighting level. Our final score is based on both the total noise produced and the consistency across lighting levels. The Blackjack II performed well in this test, putting up the best noise score amongst our comparison phones including very good scores in low lighting conditions where most phone cameras to very poorly. That being said you can see by the scores below that even a "good" camera phone isn't very good.

Cell Phone	Score
Blackjack II	1.42
Nokia N81 8GB	0.47
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.41
Palm Centro	0.91
AT&T Tilt	1.23
Apple iPhone	1.20

Live Preview (4.0)
The Blackjack II's live preview takes up the entire screen, which we like to see. The Blackjack II's good sized display means that it's easy to see your subject on screen, however we did notice some problems. When panning we saw significant blurring and pixelation. More importantly, though, is that the live preview was not a good indication of what your final photos was going to look like. In particular we noticed that what you saw on screen had richer colors than the final photo, which seemed to indicate some sort of error in white balance. Not surprising given that we detected a similar problem in our color test above.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (3.45)
This test measures how long it takes to get the camera launched and take a photo from the home screen. This is important if you want to take spurt of the moment shots. The Blackjack II did not perform particularly well in this test, taking 5.8 seconds to launch the camera application and then capture a photo. You can see below that the Nokia N81 was also pretty slow but most of our comparison phones completed this test at least two seconds faster. Chances are that if you see a shot you want to take you'll probably miss it by the time you get the phone out and the camera launched.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	5.8	3.45
Nokia N81 8GB	4.5	4.44
BlackBerry Curve 8320	2.9	6.90
Palm Centro	3.8	5.26
AT&T Tilt	3.7	5.41
Apple iPhone	2.43	8.23

Shot to Shot Time (6.30)
This test measures how quickly you can take a series of photos with the Blackjack II's camera. When possible we use burst mode for this test and the Blackjack II does have such a mode. Using this feature we were able to take five photos in 2.39 seconds, which works out to 2.1 frames per second (fps), an excellent score. Where the fly hits the ointment is in the quality of those photos. Like so many camera phones the Blackjack II reduces the resolution of photos when capturing using burst mode, in this case the resolution goes down to a terrible 320 x 240. This means such photos are almost unusable for anything but sending via MMS, you certainly won't be able to print them out or even enjoy viewing them on a computer screen. If you try to get around this by taking a series of photos manually at maximum resolution you will find that the process is much slower.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
Blackjack II	2.1	6.30
Nokia N81 8GB	0.9	2.70
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.35	1.05
Palm Centro	0.28	0.84
AT&T Tilt	1.36	4.08
Apple iPhone	0.4	1.20

Shutter to Shot Time (1.33)
Shutter to shot time is the length of time it takes for a phone's camera to actually capture a photo once you've pressed the capture button. For the Blackjack II this time was 1.5 seconds, which is pretty atrocious. You can see below that the only comparison phone that does worse than the Blackjack II is the AT&T Tilt, which has the excuse of having an auto-focus lens. All of our other phones that share a fixed focus lens with the Blackjack II did much, much better. This is one of the worst scores we've seen from a fixed focus cell phone camera in this test. Waiting a second and a half to capture a photo once you've hit the capture button can ruin a ton of photos.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	1.5	1.33
Nokia N81 8GB	0.17	11.76
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.43	4.65
Palm Centro	0.88	2.27
AT&T Tilt	1.64	1.22
Apple iPhone	0.4	5.00

Interface (4.0)
The Blackjack II's camera interface uses the whole screen as a viewfinder, which we like to see. Hitting the center select button will capture a photo while tapping on either of the soft keys or any of the directions of the D-Pad will bring up icons and labels for the soft keys. The icons across the top show you things like camera mode, resolution, white balance and how many photos you can still capture. The left soft key takes you to the album software while the right soft key opens the menus. It is with the menus that we have our biggest beef. instead of a camera-like interface as found on the AT&T Tilt or the Nokia N81 the Blackjack II's menus are just like those found in any other part of the Windows Mobile Standard interface. The most annoying thing is that the white menu blocks a significant portion of the screen, which only gets worse when you open one of the sub menus; not good.

Photo Album Software Internal (6.0)
The Blackjack II has different album software then found on most Windows Mobile devices. Instead of the standard Pictures & Videos application you get an interface called "my stuff", which is really just a glorified file browser. There are a couple of features we like in the interface, for example it's easy to select multiple files to manipulate them by hitting the * key. You can also create slide shows with a couple of options. There's really no compelling reason to have replaced the standard album software, though, and we wonder why Samsung and AT&T would force users who might be used to the Windows Mobile Standard platform learn new software, especially when the new software doesn't really improve on the old.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Blackjack II doesn't offer any manual controls for capturing photos.

Zoom (1.0)
There is a digital zoom built into the Blackjack II's camera. We only award a single point for digital zoom because all it does is crop and enlarge what you're seeing, which you can do just as easily with software on your desktop.

Focus (0.0)
The Blackjack II has a fixed focus lens, which means what you see is what you get. We don't award points for fixed focus lenses.

Flash (0.0)
The Blackjack II lacks a flash.

Metering (2.0)
Like most phones the Blackjack II has simple brightness controls, but unlike several Windows Mobile devices we've reviewed recently it lacks true metering controls that let you adjust from what point or points in the scene light is judged.

White Balance (2.0)
The Blackjack II has the typical selection of pre-sets for white balance, including tungsten, incandescent, daylight, etc.

Image Handling (5.0)
The album software found on the Blackjack II has some decent image handling options. Unlike the standard software found on Windows Mobile devices you can't do a color adjustment, but you can crop, rotate, resize and adjust brightness and contrast. All of these are options that most phones lack.

Video

Overall Video Score (6.0)
The Blackjack II captures video at 320 x 240 and 12 frames per second (fps). This is in the upper half of what we are seeing from cell phones, with devices like the N95 topping out the range with 640 x 480 and 30 fps video capture. Many phones, though, only capture at 176 x 144 pixels, which is only good for MMS. The video captured by the Blackjack II was decent enough that you won't be embarrassed to show it on a computer monitor or post it up onto Youtube. Pixelation was limited and noise wasn't too bad. It's not the best we've seen, but also not the worst.

Video Resolution (6.72)
To test video resolution we take video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for still images. We then take frames from this video and use Imatest to score them using the same line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) standard we used for still images. The Blackjack II scored 233 lw/ph horizontal and 277 lw/ph vertical, which is pretty good. You can see below that this is similar to what we saw from the Nokia N81 and Palm Centro, two other phones that also produced good video capture. It's far better than the video produced by the AT&T Tilt, showing that the quality of still capture and video capture often diverge.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
Blackjack II	233/277	6.72
Nokia N81 8GB	247/272	6.72
BlackBerry Curve 8320	N/A	0.00
Palm Centro	249/274	6.82
AT&T Tilt	183.2/177.3	3.25
Apple iPhone	N/A	0.00

Video Compression (2.0)
The Blackjack II only captures video in 3GP format, which is standard for mobile video. Still, this format does compress the video more than we like and it would have been nice to have the option to capture in Mpeg-4 or H264 to produce even better videos2

Interface (4.0)
The Blackjack II camcorder interface is very similar to the stills camera interface. We don't like the menu system that can cover half the screen, but do like that the whole screen is used as a viewfinder. When recording transparent white bars appear at the top and bottom of the screen showing you what the soft key functions are and giving you a timer for how long you've recorded. When not recording the icons and labels disappear and then reappear when you tap a soft key or a direction on the D-Pad. It's decent, but we've seen much better from phones like the Nokia N81 or Palm Centro.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Blackjack II doesn't offer any manual controls for video capture.

Zoom (1.0)
Like the stills camera the Blackjack II's video camera has a digital zoom that's of limited functionality. What's even more annoying is that you can't zoom while capturing video, so you'll have to stop, zoom and then resume if you want to get a close up of whatever you're video taping.

Editing (0.0)
The Blackjack II doesn't offer any editing features for videos.

Modes (4.0)
The Blackjack II's video camera has a specific mode for MMS video capture and also offers a couple of scene modes, including white balance options.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (6.45)
We found it fairly easy to dial on the Blackjack II, taking an average of only 3.1 seconds to dial our test numbers. You can see below that this is pretty close to the best score amongst our comparison phones. Unlike the original Blackjack all of the number keys are located right next to each other on the QWERTY keyboard, Although the buttons are a little small they are also well differentiated with good key travel and tactile feedback, all of which makes dialing easy.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	3.1	6.45
Nokia N81 8GB	3.04	6.58
BlackBerry Curve 8320	3.16	6.33
Palm Centro	3.62	5.52
AT&T Tilt	5.57	3.59
Apple iPhone	3.96	5.05

Talk and End Buttons (3.0)
The talk and end buttons on the Blackjack II are similar to those on the first version of the Blackjack in that they are very flat and difficult to differentiate from surrounding control keys. They are rather large, which does help a little, but they are also slick, which pretty much cancels that bonus out. Considering the send and end keys are two of the most used buttons on a cell phone we really don't like phones that make them difficult to use them, no matter how pretty they look.

Call Management (7.0)
The call management features on the Blackjack II are typical Windows Mobile Standard fare. You can filter your call history by missed, incoming or outgoing. Like other Windows Mobile 6 devices there's a nice feature in contacts that allows you to view the call history for each individual contact. During a call the right soft key opens a menu where you can access all of the call features including mute, speaker phone and three-way calling. About the only thing missing is the ability to record the call. As a Windows Mobile smart phone you can of course multi-task and use any of the phone's other features while on a call.

Startup to Call (1.82)
Startup to call measures how long it takes for the phone to get going after being turned completely off and then make a call. Continuing in a long tradition of poor performances on this test for Windows Mobile devices the Blackjack II took almost a minute to start up and make a call. You can see below that although other smart phones platforms like the Nokia N81's Symbian Series 60 or the Centro's Palm OS, are also slow none of them are quite as bad as the Windows Mobile devices.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	54.8	1.82
Nokia N81 8GB	33.8	2.96
BlackBerry Curve 8320	7.12	14.04
Palm Centro	42.66	2.34
AT&T Tilt	64.55	1.55
Apple iPhone	26.12	3.83

Ring Volume (9.02)
We measured the Blackjack II's maximum ring volume at 90.2 decibels. This is pretty good, most phones fall between 80-90 decibels so the Blackjack II's performance is at the higher end of that curve. You can see below that only the Nokia N81 was louder than the Blackjack II in this test.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
Blackjack II	90.2	9.02
Nokia N81 8GB	96.1	9.61
BlackBerry Curve 8320	85.6	8.56
Palm Centro	85.5	8.55
AT&T Tilt	85.7	8.57
Apple iPhone	84.9	8.49

Ringtone Customizability (2.0)
We were sad to see that unlike many Windows Mobile Standard devices where you can just put a music file in the appropriate "My Sounds" folder to use it as a ringtone the Blackjack II does not allow this, forcing you to use either the built in ringtones or those you pay AT&T for. You can use the voice notes application to record your own ringtones, however.

Non Audio Alerts (10.0)
The Blackjack II has a very good vibration alert, much better than the anemic ones we normally see on phones. You should be able to easily feel it in your pants pocket and you even have a good chance to notice it in a jacket pocket or hear it vibrate when it's in a bag. The on screen alert for a call is also good, taking up the whole screen os it's impossible to miss.

[page title="Messaging"]

Supported Email Services (8.0)
Like all Windows Mobile Standard devices the Blackjack II provides excellent support for email services. Not only are standard POP3 and IMAP4 email accounts supported but the included wizard makes it very easy to set up popular email accounts like AOL, Gmail and Yahoo without needing to fiddle about with things like incoming/outgoing server addresses. Windows Mobile devices like the Blackjack II are also the only smart phone out there that can natively handle Hotmail/Windows Live email addresses.

Push Email (3.0)
Windows Mobile Standard phones like the Blackjack II support push email via Microsoft Exchange server out of the box. This makes it easy to get instant email as long as you have access to an Exchange Server. If you want to use another push email service like BlackBerry or Good you'll need to go out and find an appropriate client.

Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The Blackjack II supports up to six email accounts, which is more than the five we test for. You an only have a single Exchange account at a time, however.

HTML and Attachements (11.0)
One of the excellent upgrades that came with Windows Mobile 6.0 is support for HTML emails and better native document handling on Windows Mobile Standard devices. HTML support in the Blackjack II's email client is very good, allowing you to view complex HTML encoded emails as they were meant to. This is something that many other "smart" platforms like BlackBerry and Palm OS still don't do. The included Office Mobile suite handled Word, Excel and Powerpoint attachments while an included PDF viewer handles that file type. Unfortunately there's not support for viewing ZIP files on the Blackjack II.

Email Customizations (2.0)
The only options you have to customize your emails on the Blackjack II are to add signatures. There's no support for things like changing font.

Time to a New Message (7.41)
To see how easy it is to create a new email message on the Blackjack II we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a new email dialogue on screen. It took the Blackjack II an average of 2.7 seconds to complete this process, which is a good but not great score. You can see below that most of our comparison phones, with the notable exception of the AT&T Tilt, performed better in this test than the Blackjack II. That's more an indication that we have some very good messaging devices amongst our comparison phones than an indictment of the Blackjack II, but we did notice that it took longer than we would have liked to actually open a new email dialogue once we asked the device to do so. We don't like seeing any kind of noticeable lag like that. We did like the dedicated messaging button on the keyboard that made it easy to get to the email program.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	2.7	7.41
Nokia N81 8GB	2.5	8.00
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.7	11.76
Palm Centro	1.86	10.75
AT&T Tilt	6.45	3.10
Apple iPhone	1.9	10.53

Email Usability (6.0)
We've always like the email client on Windows Mobile devices. It's easy to use, intuitive and powerful. Messages are organized in a simple list with the option to sort them by subject, sender, date and message type. Each account has its own inbox and folders, you can easily switch between accounts by pressing left/right on the D-Pad. When creating a new message you have fields for To/Cc/Bcc, subject and body of the message. Most functions are found under the right soft key menu. Our only wish is that the interface was a little faster than it is, but that's more to do with the device's hardware capabilities rather than the software itself.

Supported IM Services (0.0)
The Blackjack II has AT&T's IM client included that, like many carrier provided IM clients, will charge you for a text message for each instant message sent or received. This is pretty unfair, not only is the pricing ridiculous but it's just extortion for those who pay for an unlimited data plan. If you're willing to put up with this the client will allow you to access AOL, MSN and Yahoo IM services. AT&T and Sasmsung have conveniently removed the built in Windows Live client that they can't collect money on. If you do a lot of instant messaging we recommend you get an unlimited data plan and then pay once for a third party client like Agile Messenger so you don't have to pay ridiculous fees. As you may have gathered we don't award points for IM clients that charge you for text messages.

MMS Support (6.0)
MMS support on the Blackjack II is good. Not only is it well integrated into both the camera and album software, but we were also happy to see that MMS messages were integrated into a single inbox in the messaging client along with SMS messages. Unfortunately the interface for creating messages isn't integrated yet.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
Like most Windows Mobile devices the Blackjack II neither interprets smileys as graphical equivalents nor does it allow you to easily insert smiley faces into your messages.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (7.0)
SMS and MMS messages are integrated into a single inbox in Outlook Mobile, basically they are treated as another email account. As with email the interface is easy to use, although we did find it a little annoying that you had to decided whether to create an SMS or MMS message, you can't simply turn one into another by adding media to it. When composing text there's a helpful counter so you can see how many of your 160 characters you've used up. We also wish that threaded messages were supported, basically we wish that the excellent Palm messaging client were transposed and integrated into Outlook Mobile. Whether that wish ever comes true we don't know, but it certainly won't with the Blackjack II. In the meantime the included client does a pretty solid job.

Time to a New SMS Message (2.86)
It took us an average of 3.5 seconds to get a new text message dialogue open on the Blackjack II. This is a rather poor time, as you can see below only the Curve 8320 performed worse in this test amongst our comparison phones. We found we were slowed down by the fact that we had to choose which type of message to create and that there was some significant lag when launching the new message interface.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	3.5	2.86
Nokia N81 8GB	0.9	11.11
BlackBerry Curve 8320	4.22	2.37
Palm Centro	0.86	11.63
AT&T Tilt	0.79	12.66
Apple iPhone	2.62	3.82

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization (6.67)
The Blackjack II uses ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Manager to synchronize with your Windows computer. Both pieces of software are easy to install and set up, although they each have their own particular idiosyncrancies.

Synchronization is supported via USB or Bluetooth. Contacts, including photos, tasks, calendar appointments, files and email are all synchronized. The only thing that isn't synchronized out of the box are notes, as Windows Mobile Standard like the Blackjack II don't support notes out of the box.

The Blackjack II can be synchronized with Outlook or with Vista's built in PIM applications. There's no native support for synchronizing with different PIM software or with a Mac, although you can find third party solutions to help you sync with most commonly used programs/platforms.

Alerts (8.0)
You can set an alert on the Blackjack II for calendar appointments or tasks. You can very good flexibility for alerts, with the ability to set a custom time and recurrence pattern. When an alert sounds you get a full screen message and the appropriate sound for your current profile. We especially like the snooze options, which allow you to snooze an alert for one of a variety of different time periods. It's the best implementation of snooze we've seen on any platform.

Over the Air PIM Sync (2.0)
If you have access to an Exchange Server you can synchronize your contacts, calendar appointments and tasks automatically over the air.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (8.87)
It took us only 11.28 seconds to add a contact name and phone number to the Blackjack II. This is an excellent time, you can see below that it's the best time amongst our comparison phones. We were helped out by the fact that the left soft key on the home screen was assigned to contacts and the keyboard was very easy to type on.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	11.28	8.87
Nokia N81 8GB	16.56	6.04
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.1	7.09
Palm Centro	12.22	8.18
AT&T Tilt	19.74	5.07
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79

Looking/Sorting/Search (5.5)
Like all Windows Mobile Standard devices the Blackjack II provides decent options for sorting and searching through your contacts. Contacts can be organized by last name or company, but is missing the option to sort by first name. You can filter your contacts by category and can easily search through contacts by simply typing a name.

Fields (8.4)
The Blackjack II provides you with a plethora of fields when you create a new contact, with room for forty two different pieces of information. These include advanced fields like categories and obscure ones like customer ID. We would have liked the option to create our own custom fields, which the Blackjack II lacks.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (2.33)
The Blackjack II supports speed dials but lacks any kind of voice command software, either speaker independent or using voice tags.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (23.81)
Adding a calendar item to the Blackjack II was very quick. We were able to add a lunch appointment for the following day with a reminder 15 minutes before in only 4.2 seconds. You can see below that this is the best time amongst our comparison phones. We were helped out by the fact that the Blackjack II adds a reminder by default and once again took advantage of the very good keyboard.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	4.2	23.81
Nokia N81 8GB	19.2	5.21
BlackBerry Curve 8320	6.04	16.56
Palm Centro	4.8	20.83
AT&T Tilt	7.46	13.40
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29

Calendar Views (4.4)
The Blackjack II offers users with four calendar views. The standard view is the agenda view, which shows you the current day with a busy/free time bar at the top and a simple list of your upcoming appointments. The week view is just as good, it shows you a grid with days along the top and hours on the left. Appointments are blocked out during the time they are scheduled and when you have an appointment selected you see details about it in a small box at the bottom of the screen.
The month view is not as good, you only see a small indicator on days that have appointments but no way to see information about those appointments. Those who are used to Windows Mobile Professional devices will note that the Blackjack II lacks the daily and yearly views, but with two very good views and the month view available as a solid overview the Blackjack II should meet most people's needs.

Fields (10.0)
Creating a new appointment on the Blackjack II gives you access to a good selection of fields. The basics are there but we were also happy to see more advanced options like recurrence and invitations. We did find the recurrence options a little constrained as you have to choose from some presets instead of the more flexible options you get on Windows Mobile Professional devices like the AT&T Tilt. Also missing was support for categories, which is a shame.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (7.52)
It took us an average of 13.3 seconds to add a new task reminding us to get groceries to the Blackjack II. This is a pretty solid time, you can see below that it falls right around the middle of the range provided by our comparison phones but it's not too far off the leaders. The tasks program is buried in the menu system a bit so you need to do some navigating to get there, which slowed us down a bit.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	13.30	7.52
Nokia N81 8GB	13.20	7.58
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.80	6.76
Palm Centro	11.52	8.68
AT&T Tilt	17.77	5.63
Apple iPhone	n/a - no tasks	0.00

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (7.0)
We were very happy to see that the tasks program on Windows Mobile 6 devices like the Blackjack II has been significantly upgraded over what we saw from Windows Mobile Standard devices with version 5 of the software. The upgrade includes support for things like prioritizing and categorizing tasks. You can filter your tasks by category and also sort them by status, priority, subject, start or due date. We are a little puzzled that tasks support categories but the calendar does not, it seems a little inconsistent to us.

Fields (8.0)
Along with the upgrade came a very good selection of fields. We've already mentioned category and priority, you can also set status, start/due date, recurrence and add a note. This solid selection makes the tasks program very usable, a sharp contrast to the task program on older Windows Mobile 5 devices that ran the Standard version like the T-Mobile Dash.

Notes

Adding Notes (4.03)
The notes program on the Blackjack II is also buried in the menu system, but despite that we were able to create a new note fairly quickly. It took us an average of 12.4 seconds to go from the home screen until we have added a new standard note. You can see below that the only comparison phone that did significantly better than the Blackjack II on this test is the Palm Centro. Pretty good considering the application requires some doing to get open.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	12.4	4.03
Nokia N81 8GB	14.9	3.36
BlackBerry Curve 8320	12.2	4.10
Palm Centro	8.46	5.91
AT&T Tilt	13.79	3.63
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95

Note Interface (4.0)
Windows Mobile Standard devices like the Blackjack II don't come with a notes application by default, so we're glad to see that Samsung has added one for users. The application is pretty basic, showing you a simple list of the notes you have created. You can sort this list by title (the first line of your note), date or size, which is better than many notes programs offer. The left soft key is assigned to create a new note, which brings up a plain white canvas where you can type a note. The interface is easy to use, largely due to how basic it is, but we're glad to have a notes application at all.

Note Formatting (0.0)
The Blackjack II's notes program doesn't offer any formatting options when creating a new note. This is in sharp contrast to the excellent OneNote application that was included on the T-Mobile Dash, another Windows Mobile Standard device. OneNote is so good that we wish all Windows Mobile Standard devices were loaded with it.

Voice Memo (4.0)
The voice notes application on the Blackjack II is fairly simple. You have a list of notes with the left soft key assigned to recording a new note and the right soft key opening a menu allowing you to delete, rename or send the currently selected note. You can also set a note as a ring tone. Simple but useful.

[page title="Multimedia"]

Accessing Music Software (4.17)

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	4.8	4.17
Nokia N81 8GB	2.8	7.14
BlackBerry Curve 8320	7.62	2.62
Palm Centro	3.22	6.21
AT&T Tilt	5.47	3.66
Apple iPhone	3.1	6.45

Dedicated Music Controls (0.0)
As we mentioned above the Blackjack II lacks any dedicated buttons to launch the music player. The volume buttons don't even help you out here as they are mapped to the phone volume rather than the music player volume.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (6.2)
Windows Media Player Mobile on the Blackjack II provides solid music playback support. Playlists are supported, but only those that you sync from Windows Media Player on your computer. You can edit and create lists on your device as well. Tags for Mp3, AAC and WMA files were all recognized. You can view music by title, artist, album or genre, but there is no search functionality. We do find it annoying that your music is divided into two "libraries", one of music on the phone and another on the memory card.

Album art is supported, as are visualizations, ratings and scanning your device for all music files. There's not equalizer on the device and although background play is available it's turned off by default. Overall the software provides good functionality but it's not as good as the music software on Series 60 devices like the Nokia N81 or the iPhone.

Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The Blackjack II allows you to purchase tracks from Napster Mobile on your device via a web based interface, but the songs aren't downloaded directly to your device, instead you get an email so you can download the song onto your computer and then transfer it to the Blackjack II.

Streaming (2.0)
The Blackjack II supports streaming Windows Media audio, but does not support streaming Mp3 or Real audio.

Podcast Support (0.0)
The Blackjack II lacks any software to download or organize podcasts on your device.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
Synchronization with a PC is handled by Windows Media Player on your desktop. You can easily set up playlists to synchronize automatically or just drag and drop music manually.

Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The Blackjack II supports Mp3, AAC and WMA music files. It also supports Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM protected tracks that are used by a variety of online stores like Napster.

Music Interruption (10.0)
If you are listening to music when a call comes in the Blackjack II handles it admirably. Music is immediately paused and then starts back up again when the call completes.

Video

Video Software Access (2.86)
Getting a video to play on the Blackjack II took us an average of seven seconds. This is not a particularly good time, you can see that several of our comparison phones did much better. As with music we had to navigate to the Windows Media Player Mobile program, but there was more lag when we actually launched the video than with music.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Blackjack II	7.0	2.86
Nokia N81 8GB	5.8	3.45
BlackBerry Curve 8320	8.08	2.48
Palm Centro	3.16	6.33
AT&T Tilt	10.18	1.96
Apple iPhone	3.2	6.25

Video Controls (8.0)
Video controls in Windows Media Player Mobile are pretty good. The center select key is assigned to play/pause while volume is controlled using up/down. Left/right will skip to the next or previous clip while holding them down will fast forward or rewind. The left soft key takes you to the current playlist. Zero will toggle full screen mode, * will let you adjust the rating for the video. We were also happy to see that you can re-assign controls in the options.

Video Software & Organization (6.0)
Windows Media Player Mobile handles video playback on the Blackjack II. The software does a solid job, playlists are again supported and videos are divided into two sections: "My Videos" and "My TV". You can play videos in full screen or in the background. You will find that once again your videos are divided into two "libraries", which is a little annoying.

Video Sync with PC (7.0)
As with music synchronization is handled very well by Windows Media Player on your PC.

Video Formats (7.0)
We were quite impressed with the range of video formats the Blackjack II was able to handle. All three of our test 3GP files played back as did vanilla Mpeg-4 video and Mpeg-4 encoded in H264 format. As you would expect Windows Media Video was supported, but more surprising was that Real video was also supported. This is the first Windows Mobile device we've seen that handles this format. Flash and Quicktime video were not supported.

Video DRM (5.0)
The Blackjack II can handle video protected by Microsoft's DRM. Videos sold with this DRM are available from Amazon's Unboxed video store. It does not support iTunes protected video.

Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
The Blackjack II was able to handle all five of our test clips that are encoded at varying bitrates, up to 768 kbps. This means you can watch pretty high quality video on the Blackjack II

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Blackjack II does not support any direct download video stores.

Video Streaming unscored
We do not score this section because streaming video for mobile devices is not very standardized. We did test some popular sites to see how the Blackjack II handled them, however. We were able to play streaming Windows Media video from Windowsmedia.com. We were also very happy to see streaming 3GP video from Youtube Mobile was supported, as this has been something of a bugaboo for Windows Mobile devices. We were also able to stream 3GP video from www.zoovision.com's mobile site.

[page title="Software"]

OS (8.0)
The Blackjack II runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard. This is the version of Windows Mobile without a touch screen. Windows Mobile Standard is a fairly powerful smart phone operating system, this latest iteration addresses many of the faults of previous version by adding things like Office documents and better support for tasks. Despite these updates it still lags a little behind the Professional version of Windows Mobile that you find on devices like the AT&T Tilt, for example notes are not included in the operating system and the calendar is missing some views and lacks support for categories. These are small issues, however, and can be easily addressed with various third party software. Samsung has thankfully included some additional software as well, including a notes application, to address some of these shortfalls. Overall Windows Mobile Standard provides users with a lot of flexibility and power.

Home Screen Score (6.0)
The Windows Mobile Standard home screen is different from that found on Windows Mobile Professional devices. The top line is taken up by icons of recently used programs. Although this certainly makes it easier to go back to programs you were just using, we would have liked the option to assign our own permanent programs as you can do on Symbian Series 60 devices like the Nokia N81. Below this launcher are a variety of plugins that give you access to different information like AT&T's Xpress Mail service, IM, calendar appointments and profiles. Unlike