The Samsung Blackjack is a nice piece of hardware. The screen is beautiful, it is well proportioned and fits well in my hand, the scroll-wheel makes it easy to select from menus, and it's thin enough to be carried in a hip pocket despite the factthat it's wider than most phones. The camera is adequate for a cell phone, and the speaker is plenty loud. The phone actually has two speakers,one in the ear-piece, and one on the back that is used to play audio from everything that isn't a phone call (movies, mp3, speaker-phone). The only downside to this is that people behind your phone get better (and louder) sounds than you do, which may be good for sharing music, but isn't as appreciated when you're watching a movie in public. As with every other 3G device I've played with (namely the LG CU500) a standard Bluetooth headset works for call audio only, and will NOT play mono-only sound from the movie/mp3 player. See my rant on 3G phones and why I hate this.

For those people who swap their microSD cards a lot, it's not hidden behind the battery. The matte black plastic hides fingerprints, but shows hand sweat. The built in mini-QWERTY keyboard is "chicklet" style and good for thumb typing, but the built in number pad (for dialing) is difficult to use. Even though Samsung made the number keys a slightly different color than the rest of the letter keys, my eyes kept sliding off of them and I had to really concentrate when dialing numbers. 

Overall, the Blackjack is small enough to be treated like a true  phone, while having most of the advantages of a PDA/SmartPhone. Now, on to the software. It's running Windows Mobile 5.0 with the Messaging and Security feature pack. (That means it can do SSL encrypted IMAP4 email.) This was my first experience with Windows Mobile (having skipped versions 1-4, if they even existed). Overall I wasn't terribly impressed, but the software mostly works and doesn't have any more annoyances than other phone software that I've used (Symbian, Motorola's custom OS on the V330, etc).  The web browser worked well, and the only annoyance I ran into with Java applications is that I can't find a way to allow Google Maps total access to the network, so every time I zoom or scroll I have to approve it's network traffic again. The Blackjack doesn't support the Dial-Up Networking profile (act as a modem) over bluetooth, but it does server as a network access point, so the procedure for connecting to it from a laptop is a little bit different from most phones, but the internet access works well if you know the secret.

If you use Outlook and can get the phone to sync with it, I think it would make a very good "remote desktop" for viewing your outlook email, TODO lists, and appointments. But it's no Palm. Entering appointments isn't terribly quick or easy, and it everywhere you go in the OS you find yourself having to do one or two more clicks to get what you want done that you should have to. As a view-port into your desktop based Outlook world, it'll work fine, but if you want a stand-alone PDA, go get a Treo. (I was able to borrow this phone because the original owner, who had owned a Treo previously,  disliked it enough to go and pay $600 for a Treo 650. Somebody else who borrowed it and who had never used a Palm device loves it.)

One thing that annoys my CS bits is the fact that when you start a new application, it just keeps running. Most applications don't have an exit button. When you are done, you switch away from the application by hitting the "Home" button (analogous to the Windows Start button) and go do something else. Unlike a Palm, where backgrounded applications are actually swapped out, the applications just keep running. This is great if you want to play music in the background while looking up an appointment, but annoying if you don't want the audio from a CNN video playing while you are trying to look up a contact to call. I guess I just have to learn to hit the pause button before switching away from the movie player.

Of course, having all of these applications running at once can use up all of your memory, which is apparently a common enough problem for Microsoft to put the answer to it on their Windows Mobile FAQ. (Namely, go to the Task Manager and kill off all the applications. It is interesting to note that the Task manager application will let you resume a single task, but it has no menu option to kill or stop a single task, instead you have to stop all tasks, and then re-start the ones you wanted to keep.)
 

Related posts:

1. Using bluetooth PAN / DUN on Samsung Blackjack with Linux
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I have been looking at the SyncML standard as a solution to keep the calendar on my palm pilot in sync with the calendar on a Nokia 9500 on the off chance that I don't want to carry two devices at once. SyncML was first developed for synchronizing cell phones, so the Nokia 9500 has a built in sync client. I explored two different clients for the Palm Pilot, the free Funambol open source client, and the Synthesis AG SyncML client (which costs $25 for the standard version).

Of course, you need to have a SyncML server for your electronic devices to sync with. You can either set up your own SyncML server (The Funambol project offers an open source one), or use a free one ran by somebody else. I evaluated two servers, ZyB.com and ScheduleWorld.com

Zyb.com has a slick and easy to use interface, but does not handle ToDo items and Notes from palm pilots. It also has a rendering issue with overlapping appointments.  ScheduleWorld is more powerful, supporting Notes and ToDo items, but has a less friendly user interface. If you are just looking to backup your cell phone's contact list, I'd suggest Zyb, but if you have a PalmPilot, definately check out ScheduleWorld.  As an added bonus, if you use Google Calendar, both Zyb and ScheduleWorld will sync to it.

The Funambol client will only sync contacts (Addressbook entries), which is useful if you are trying to share phone numbers with a cell phone, but it does not help you sync your calendar entries, or Memo/Todo items. If you use ScheduleWorld, they recommend that you stick with a very specific version of the Funambol client (3.0.3) which they host on their website. I ran into a problem with the Funambol client rebooting my palm pilot when it attempted to connect to the Internet. I was able to get it to work reliably by connecting to the network manually before starting the sync.

I evaluated the Synthesis SyncML standard client (it comes with a 30 day free trial, and costs $25 to buy) and it was able to successfully synchronize both my contacts and address book.  It initially aborted half-way through the sync with a 418 error, but I was able to work around this by changing the sync type from "normal" to "reload server". This erases all data on the server and replaces it with only what is on the palm pilot, but since I didn't have anything on the server yet, it didn't hurt anything. After that, the "normal" sync option has worked. I'm not sure if this error was caused by my testing the Funambol client first or if it would always appear when syncing for the first time. One other thing to make sure you uncheck is the "Only sync from 30 days before to 90 days after" setting in the contacts settings screen. 

The sync client on the Nokia 9500 worked flawlessly with both ScheduleWorld and Zyb. It is very nice to have my calendar available on both the Palm T2 and the Nokia 9500, and have the ability to sync changes from one device to the other. Although I regularly back up my palm pilot to my laptop, it's nice to be able to do an over-the-air backup to a website. The ability to access my calendar and contacts from any web browser without my laptop, PDA, or phone is also an added advantage to keeping things synced up with SyncML. 

SyncML is just starting to be well supported, but if you have a data plan and your cell phone's SyncML client works, I recommend taking advantage of one of the free websites I mentioned above to make a backup of your contacts. If you have multiple devices, SyncML is even more useful to keep your calendars and contacts replicated on them all. 

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