Samsung BlackJack Smartphone

I got my first cell phone in Israel. When I returned to the states in 2002, I got a Blackberry. I was very happy with my Blackberry. In 2006, however, the Blackberry was giving up the ghost and I decided it was time ton invest in a new phone.

I wanted a thin phone with a full keyboard. I had been happy with the service I had through Cingular and they were offering the phone. I wanted something that would allow me to keep my address book and calendar in one location. My needs were pretty simple. The Blackjack advertised extra bells and whistles, but those were my basic needs.

On the plus size, the Blackjack is small, thin, compact and lightweight. It has a full alphabetic keyboard laid out in a QWERTY arrangement. Above each letter is eitehr a number or symbol which can be accessed by holding down the key for an extended time or by using the number lock key and then pressing the key. Number lock remains engaged until it is pressed again. There is also a Cap lock key which will change the next letter to uppercase. It only works on the next key hit. A symbol key rounds out the special keys on the bottom left of the keyboard. It brings up a table of special symbols.

Slightly above these and to the left of Z is an Fn key. Hitting this and then a letter will take you into your address. If you hit Fn then S, you will go to the section of your address book where your friend John Smith is listed.


The one function of the Blackjack that I do like is the alarm. I can set various times for various days. Thus, my regular alarms go off at the same time Monday through Thursday, a different time on Friday, and a different time on Saturday. I have no alarm on Sunday. There are also alarms that can be set for special events.

I am now done with the functions I like on this phone.

The problems and they are multitude....

There are two slots with small plastic covers on the sides of the phone. One is the slot for inserting the charger. The other is for an additional memory card. I am not terribly rough on my phone and yet within 6 months, the plastic strings that held the covers in place had torn off and the covers were lost.

My sister bought me an additional memory card. It was marked as the proper card for use with the Blackjack. The card would never sit correctly and constantly popped out. That popping out, no doubt, is how the cover got disconnected. Going to the Cingular store, they couldn't get the card to sit right either. One of the folks tried it in his new Blackjack, and sure enough, he had the same difficulty. Replacement memory cards were no better. The issue was the phone design. The solution to keeping your memory card in place appears to be to wrap a rubber band around the phone at the level of the memory slot to hold things together.

There are times when a phone number is given in letters instead of numbers. My keyboard doesn't give me a clue about which letters are represented by which numbers. There is no function to allow me to "dial by letters." As far as I can tell, there is no chart anywhere in the phone to use as a directory. Thus, it's a mental exercise in remembering that N is on the 6 button.

Where friends with far less expensive phones can call from my cubicle and get four bars, my Blackjack will vary from no bars and no service to two bars to four bars. My phone can be sitting propped up against the wall of my cubicle and the reception will change over a few seconds from no bars to four bars and back again. I get disconnected more with this phone than anyone else in my office does with their phones.

There are times when I have four bars and dial a friend. The phone will stay in "dialing" mode for a very long period before actually trying to dial. I was trying to call a friend's cell phone so he would have my number in his. We were talking on land lines as we did this. My phone simply wouldn't complete dialing so his never rang. I finally gave him my number and he called to make sure he had entered it correctly. His call went through immediately. We both have AT&T phones and live about a block apart. I have to believe the difference was the phone.

I finally got a blue tooth headset to go with my phone becasue the sound quality of the built in mic degenerated over time so badly that I could not be understood otherwise. I was told if I wanted this fixed, I would need to mail my phone to mail my phone to Samsung for repair. I honestly can't be without my phone and Cingular/AT&T can't figure out what's wrong.

The display screen is plenty bright and clear for indoor use, but in the sun doesn't have a way to adjust so as to be visible. Thus, the phone becomes nearly useless outside. Living in California where much of life is conducted outside, that's a problem.

I have email on my phone. There are times when I get email fine. Often, however, I will be somewhere with four bars, but the phone can't seem to get my emails. I constantly get messages that the connection to the server has timed out. There are several ways to get email into the phone. I preferred the way it was originally set up with it coming in like an SMS message. One day, that function seemed to drop off. Repeated visits to Cingular stores got me various attempts to make it work. One day, someone was able to make it function, but was not able to explain to me what to do if it happened again. Of course, it has happened again and I'm now left to access my email via the internet explorer. That's not nearly as reliable a way to get mail, but at least there's an option.

The camera mechanism in the phone is simple enough, but the pictures are terrible. I have had friends tell me "Oh, all you need to do is...." They've then proceeded to try and make the camera take decent pictures. It does not happen. I understand the low resolution of most cell phone cameras, but this is worse than any I have seen.

There are more problems. The internet connection is slow and nearly as erratic as the email. If you want to go back to the same site you were at some other time, you can start typing in and a list of sites that match will come up. However, there appears to be no way to delete the entire previous address so you can start typing a fresh URL.

The Blackjack does come with a second battery and an outside battery charger. Battery life for me appears to be about one day at my level of usage.

I have tried to use the instant message function on the phone. If you sign onto Yahoo IM the defaults are set, you will start getting text messages with odd numbers in them - I received over 40 of them starting at 9 p.m. one evening and ending only when I turned the Blackjack off. I was able to get it reset, but it shouldn't have happened. It was only after an internet search of the number that kept texting to me that I found the solution. It seems others have had the same issue. The solution, however, comes from users - not from Samsung or AT&T.

I have had other problems along the way, small and large. In the end, if I could afford to replace the Blackjack, I would. This phone has been nothing but trouble. I recommend against it.