New Samsung BlackJack II

• Posted: Monday, January 21, 2008
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Handset, Samsung, Smartphone, Windows Mobile

Samsung BlackJack II will be among the first Windows Mobile 6 devices from AT&T to support Microsoft's System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008. The System Center Mobile Device Manager offers companies an end-to-end solution for managing and securing Windows Mobile devices. Employees will also have access to company information and a line of business applications from a single, secure place behind the firewall by using a cutting-edge Mobile Virtual Private Network (VPN).

"Samsung and AT&T are delivering a worthy successor to the wildly popular first generation BlackJack," said Pieter Knook, senior vice president, Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft Corp. "Windows Mobile 6 is a great option to those wanting to run errands or take a walk in the park, all while staying in touch with important business and personal matters."

With its glossy black body, smoky glass-like menu keys, and sliver accents on the side, this smart phone is certainly more attractive than the original. The BlackJack II is also slightly heavier (4.1 ounces versus 3.5 ounces) and a tad thicker than its predecessor. That's because a larger 1700-mAh battery offers more than double the BlackJack's talk time. The Windows Mobile 6-powered sequel sports a sexier design and a lot of other improvements, including a beefier battery, more internal memory, and GPS navigation support.

Like most Windows Mobile phones, the BlackJack II offers excellent integration with Outlook and the ability to read and edit e-mail attachments with Office Mobile. AT&T's push-enabled Xpress Mail client did a decent job updating our Inbox, which Windows Mobile 6 makes easy to search.

The included instant messaging application offers support for AOL, Windows Live, and Yahoo. It took a relatively brisk 20 seconds for it to sign into Yahoo and load our contact list. We liked that the BlackJack II notified us of incoming messages when we had other apps open.

The BlackJack II offers smoother performance than its predecessor, thanks to Samsung's doubling the amount of memory, to 128MB of RAM from 64MB, and to 256MB of ROM, up from 128MB. The 260-MHz processor (up from 220 MHz) loaded applications pretty quickly, and having multiple programs open didn't slow things down much.

Samsung upped the camera resolution from 1.3 megapixels to 2 megapixels. We were more impressed with the camcorder, which captures 320 x 240-pixel footage. Playback on our notebook looked decent in a small QuickTime window, and the footage is just good enough for YouTube. /pr

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