Smartphone Thoughts: From the Perspective of a Pocket PC Veteran - Samsung�s Blackjack SmartPhone Reviewed

A few more comments on the Blackjack
While the Blackjack did quite well in comparison to the other devices, there are a couple of additional issues that weren't addressed in the comparisons that merit mention.

First, the battery life can be pretty short depending on how you use the Blackjack. The speed of the HSPDA network is great, but it's murder on your battery. Based on my experiences, you can get about 3-4 hours continuous talk or browsing time. With more typical use (for example, a few calls, 1 hour per day of browsing), I found that I can go about 2 days before I need a charge. I've gotten into the habit of charging the Blackjack every night just to be sure. At least they include a spare battery as part of the package.

The other issue is with the camera. As seems to be the norm with PDAs and cell phones with built-in cameras, the photo quality of the Blackjack falls far short of what can be achieved with just about any dedicated digital camera. Consider the Blackjack's camera to be nothing more than an "emergency" camera for a situation when even a fair to poor picture is better than no picture at all. If you want pictures with any real quality, stick to a dedicated camera. For the record, this describes the built-in camera in the Razr as well.

Conclusions
A few foibles aside, the Blackjack is a great cell phone. And for what I�d classify as general purpose PDA usage (PIM, entertainment, light note taking), it does a very good job as a PDA. For some tasks such as web browsing, it combines features of a cell phone and a PDA to be better at the task than either of the dedicated devices.

Existing Pocket PC users who place a high priority on a larger touch screen and/or the availability of some laptop class applications should give a good amount of thought to the question �would I be satisfied if I replaced my Pocket PC and cell phone with a SmartPhone�? For those users, the answer might be no. For the rest of us, the answer might be yes.

Doug Raeburn is a data architect specializing in data warehouse design. He lives in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, USA.