Samsung BlackJack II

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 The soft-touch finish is gone and has been replaced by plastic which still offers just the right touch of grip.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 specs for Samsung i780 include:

-HSDPA/WCDMA/GSM/GPRS/EDGE conenctivity (900/1800/1900 +2.1GHz)
-QWERTY keyboard
-Full Touch Screen
-3.2 megapixel camera
-front camera for video calls
-2.55″ 320×320 px 65K color display
-Built-in GPS with Navigation client
-Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, WiFi b/g
-MicroSD memory card slot
-Dimensions:115.9 x 61.3 x 13.3 mm



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.




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.