New Phone (with mini review)

I mentioned that I broke my Cingular 8125. While the cost of fixing the digitizer has gone down, it’s still significant. I also found out that less than a year through my contract, I was already eligible for an upgrade. I guess this is the advantage of Cingular Premier with the place I work with. I was following the development of the Cingular 8525 (aka HTC Hermes).
However, a friend just recently acquired an HTC S620 (or the Dash for T-Mobile) Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone. Cingular also announced the Samsung Blackjack (SGH-I607), a similar smartphone which was to be released at the same day as the Cingular 8525. When they are available (on the midnight of the release day) I finally got to choose. I chose the Samsung Blackjack. Not only that it’s half the price. It’s much lighter and sleeker as well. There were times when I almost regretted carrying my 8125 because of the bulk and weight. I also wanted to try a Windows Mobile Smartphone instead of a Pocket PC phone.

There are plenty of reviews on this phone already so I just want to share my subjective likes and dislikes. I like the phone and I will probably keep it although the phone is not perfect at it is. I hope I won’t find any unpleasant surprise.

Likes:

1. The overall package. The phone is very slim and attractive. I like the black color and while the screen and keys are small, they are very shart and usable.
2. It’s better phone. The Samsung Blackjack (and I guess the rest of the Windows Mobile phones) is a much better phone than a Pocket PC phone. Most phone related operations are very simple and easy to do with one hand.
3. 3G! I’ve seen friends’ EV-DO phones enviously while I had to resort to Cingular’s EDGE. The Samsung Blackjack supports Cingular’s HSDPA network and while it’s connected to 3G, it’s blazing fast. However, Cingular’s 3G network is not yet widely deployed. On my short experience, I can get to 3G in about 50% of the time I’m in the south bay area.

Dislikes:

1. MicroSD and proprietary port. In a few short years, I have bought CF, SD and miniSD cards. Now I will need to pony up for a microSD card fot the phone. I also would not be able to use any of my miniUSB cables/chargers since the Blackjack use a proprietary port for charging, connectivity and headphone/headset jack.
2. No wi-fi. I like wifi. It’s fast and it has lower latency than EDGE or HSDPA. I can network my phone to my home PC or laptop easily with wi-fi. However, I made the decision to get the Blackjack knowing it has no wi-fi so I guess I can’t really complain.
3. This is my biggest gripe so far and this is 100% Cingular’s fault. The Java Midlet Manager software includedhas been ‘customized’ by cingular. For some reason, they made it necessary to press OK everytime the java application wants to access the network. The option to allow connection for the whole session has been removed. This ‘feature’ renders some applications (like gmail mobile and google maps mobile) almost useless. I installed an IBM JVM for smartphone with mixed results. While the IBM’s software behaves correctly regarding the network connectivity, some other behavior like soft keys mappings are not correct. I guess either there will be other compatible Midlet Manager I can install (maybe an updated IBM version or Cingular finally comes to its senses) or there will be a hacked ROM for the Blackjack without this limitation.