Samsung Blackjack II Cell Phone Review - Messaging

Alfredo Padilla
Published on December 31, 2007 Comment on this

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

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