Samsung Blackjack II Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Alfredo Padilla Published on December 31, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (4.17)
It took us an average of 4.8 seconds to get from the home screen until we had a song playing in Windows Media Player Mobile on the Blackjack II. This is an average time, you can see below that it sits right around the mid range of our comparison phones. We were slowed down on the Blackjack II by the fact that there's no home screen shortcut or dedicated button for Windows Media Player, so we had to go in through the menus. | 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.
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