Samsung Jet – Great Multi Media Phone
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Great on multi media, great touch screen interface, good looks.
Thumbs Down:
Lacks features of instant messaging and voice dialing.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM
Band: WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Bluetooth, music player, camera, etc.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The OLED display of the Jet is 3.1 inch with resolutions of 800 x 480 pixels, 24-bit (16.7 million colors). Recognized music formats are AAC, WAV, MP3, Real Audio. Recognized video formats are MPEG-4, H.264, H.263 video and AMR audio. The phone has 5 mega pixel camera which can record videos also. Video recorder options are 320 x 240 (QVGA), 176 x 144 (QCIF), 640 x 480 (VGA), 720 x 480. The camera also has face detection and smile shutter feature.
The phone has a 3.5 mm head phone jack.
POP3 and IMAP4 are the supported e-mail protocols. The 1100 mAh lithium ion battery gives talk time of 180 minutes and stand by time is of 250 hours. The phone has 2 GB internal memory which can be further expanded to 16 GB. The Jet can take 2000 phone book entries. Downloadable content on the phone include games, ring tones, themes, wallpapers, screensavers, video and audio files.
Razzle Dazzle:
Jet is an attractive phone with a big display. The sexiest part is the red bars behind the phone which give the phone a cool look. The phone is 2.11 inches wide, 4.28 inches tall, 0.48 inches thick and weighs about 3.88 ounces. We liked the glossy skin, spiffy design and slim profile of the Jet.
Inside Dope:
It is raining mobile phones from Samsung. We barely finished with the review of Samsung Highlight and the company delivered this phone in our test centers. Looks like Samsung is making new phones just to cash in on the holiday season so people are tempted to spend big bucks. However this phone indeed has some features that will make you buy it, some of them include 800 MHz processor, revamped web browser and improved TouchWiz interface.
The WVGA display of the screen is 3.1 inches big and gives resolution of 800X480 pixels or 16 million colors. The colors are bright, vibrant and photos look awesome on this gorgeous screen. Below the display there are short cuts for the applications you will use the most like messaging, main menu, phone book and keypad. The phone also has a built in accelerometer, though it doesn’t work on all the applications it is there when you need it the most. In the display you can change background image, greeting message, color theme and font type.
The TouchWiz interface of the phone has been improved, it now has multipage menu design, new interface to access media and motion-activated shortcuts, but it is still short of our expectations. We would like to place widgets for applications that we like on the bar. You get three pages for menu something that we are used to seeing on iPhone and Android based phones. Here again Samsung disappoints us because we couldn’t arrange icons according to our wish or add new icons.
Virtual dialpad is the same as found in other Samsung phones, it is comfortable and even it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have complained because you use it just to dial numbers and nothing else. There are shortcuts for messaging menu and phone book. The keypad can be used to type messages but we prefer the spacious virtual QWERTY keyboard for typing. The full size keyboard will get activated when you tilt the phone on the left. If you tilt it on the right, you get an upside down board. You can also use Jet’s writing pad but we wish there was a stylus for better ergonomics.
The phone though all touch screen has a few physical buttons and the menu button is the biggest of them. Other than this, there is Talk and End buttons. The latter is also the power key for the phone. On the sides of the phone there is a volume rocker and key to lock the handset. If you want to unlock the phone, you draw a letter or tap the unlock button. There is also camera button, charger/USB port and a 3.5 mm phone jack for plugging in your favorite brand of headphones. The memory card slot is still located behind the battery cover which will keep you digging if you want to access the card.
There is a 3D cube which we thought was more of a gimmick than an innovative feature. The cube has icons for applications all over it and you move the dice around to access it. You also get all these applications in the menu too.
There are two unique features on the phone which blew us off our feet. One of them is the Etiquette Pause which mutes the device when you place it face down and the other is speaker phone feature which gets activated when you are in a call and when take the phone away from your ear. We were quite fond of these never-before-seen features. However, if you don’t like them, you can turn them off.
Touch screen is responsive in scrolling as well as tapping the icons and scrolling through long lists but sometimes we had to tap harder to access the icons. You can change the brightness, backlight time and display calibration. The phone has haptic feedback and you can increase or decrease its intensity.
A huge 2000 memory phone book makes sure you never run out of memory to store your contacts. The SIM card can store 250 more entries. Photo pairing, custom ring tone and grouping of contacts is all supported on the phone.
We were disappointed to see there was no voice dialing or instant messaging on the phone and we don’t know why Samsung has done this. These two are basic features that you see in all phones in this range. Voice dialing is great for hands free usage. The Jet has support for POP3 and has an application for Gmail.
The Jet has a gorgeous five mega pixel camera at the back. The maximum attainable resolution is 2560X1920. The power full camera comes with host of options and features for photo and video recording. Quality is one of the best. You can store your photos and videos on the two GB internal memory and the card slot can take up to 16 GB of cards. Clips meant for MMS are limited to 25 seconds.
Music has been one of Samsung phone’s strong points and this phone also doesn’t any shy on music quality. Jet also has FM radio in case you are done with onboard music files.
Samsung’s has got a new browser called Dolfin and we were eagerly waiting to check it out. It supports zooming in and out and viewing of five pages at a time but doesn’t have multi touch so you cant pinch photos. We were happy with the revamped browser but we are yet to find a competitor for Apple’s Safari.
Call quality on the phone was good. We didn’t have any interference or disturbances and certainly no dropped calls while in the conversation. Our only wish was that the volume level could be a little higher. Speakerphone calls too were good but you will have to keep the device close to your mouth or else talk louder.
The battery life of the phone is rated at 8 hours of talk time and standby time is 17.5 hours.
Nitty Gritty:
Jet is not a smart phone but certainly is a good multi media phone. Buy it for the great camera, new look browser and awesome music quality.
