Samsung Jet Review

With millions spent on Research , Unique Marketing strategy with lot of fanfare Samsung had launched “smarter than smartphone” Samsung JET with the model number S8000 It is loaded with features according to the specs sheet – 800mhz CPU,AMOLED resistive touchscreen.3D cube interface ,  3.1-inch display, 5-megapixel camera, DivX/Xvid support, Wi-Fi and 2 GB built-in memory. One can easily fall in love with it once it gets in hand because it’s so light and act as a status symbol too. The Form factor is really worth appreciating considering the feature set. Lets dive in and find out if its smarter than the smartphone in this Samsung Jet Review

The Goodies

• 800MHz CPU
• 3.1 inch AMOLED resistive touchscreen with 16 million colors with 800×480 px resolution
• TouchWiz 2.0 User Interface with Motion UI, Media Gate 3D
• Supports Quadband GSM Networksand Dual band 3G with HSDPA support
• 5 Megapixel Camera with DualLED Flash and AutoFocus
• Bluetooth , USB 2.0, Wi-Fi , GPS
• 8GB inbuilt memory plus microSD expansion.
• MP3 , 3.5 mm audio jack , FM Radio
• MP4, Divx, Xvid Video playback.
• Accelerometer , Proximity Sensor, TV-Out

The Looks

Hardware is solid and provides easy gripping. it has only 3 keys in the front  – call button end call button and a hexagon menu button in the middle . The Menu button minimizes the current running app and long press of this button allows users  to end all application in one go. The AMOLED screen is one of the best in the market and is very responsive even though its resistive. The display performs really well indoors but not very usable under direct sunlight.  The phone is prone to catch dust and finger prints easily. But this is the case with most touchscreen phones . The problem exists even in the iPhone 3GS and the HTC Hero which claimed to address the issue with  a Oleophobic screen.

On the left side of the device you will find the volume rocker keys. On the right side you will find the lock key and the camera key along with the 3D Cube key.

On the top you have the microUSB port an the 3.5mm audio jack. On the rear you will find the camera along with the flash.

The 800 Mhz CPU rocks for Multitasking

Response time of the phone was pretty good and with just a light press on the screen you get what you want. You need to press as its a resistive screen unlike the LG Arena which is the same league features a Capacitive screen.  Talking about the multi-tasking of Jet, I opened 18 applications simultaneously and the phone did not hang but on initiating 19th app it said “Not enough resources , close some applications and try again”. Its quite impressive that the 800 mhz processor does wonders for multitasking. Jet has a provision to end all the applications in one go , but it seemed there was a small bug in this feature if you consider it should end Wi-Fi and Bluetooth also or else you can consider it a feature.

File copy speed was impressive.I copied 1GB of data ( 873 photos-67secs , 350 pdf files-41sec, 53 vidoes-62 secs , 102 songs-64sec ) from Laptop(Lenevo S10 Atom processor )  to Samsung Jet , it took me 264 secs.

Music and Video Playback

Jet is a good all-rounder phone and the Music features are worth appreciating. The Audio clarity is pretty good and there are  lots of options and controls. The 3.5 mm jack gives the user an option to insert high definition ear phones to make your music experience even better.Syncing with Window Media Player is also possible.Etiquette pause was a real beauty as you just need to keep the phone with screen facing down and the music is paused. The best part was the music player widget which lets you play , pause , skip tracks right from the homescreen. There is FM Radio too incase you run out of Audio tracks and the interface was refreshing and there’s auto-tuning just in case you don’t remember the Radio stations. Video playback was flawless but it drained the battery quite fast. The support for Divx and Xvid video is worth appreciating.

Camera

The Camera on the Jet does its job very well and the pictures taken with the phone look pretty decent. While many Camera phones take lousy useless pictures, the Jet will not disappoint you .It has lots of options to customize your photo before and after the click and smile detection is a great addition.The phone allows Photo tagging which is becoming a part of most cameraphones. While the Jet takes good pictures it does not come close to the Nokia N97 , N86 or SamsungOmniaHD. We won’t complain as the the Camera is not the main selling point of the Jet. The phone records video at 30 frames per second at a 720×480 resolution which is decent.

3D Cube and Motion UI

It was a good move by Samsung by introducing 3d cube / Motion component. Tutorial given is self explanatory and users may get to used to it very easily if he really want to use JET by  Motion. It does have a learning curve and you might not understand how to use it the first time. Its all about minimizing the human effort and opening and closing the applications just by a snapping the phone to left or right while held in the hand. A photo gets clicked by tapping the phone twice and phone turns to silence if kept with screen facing floor. Moving the phone 3 times in right direction closes the open application or turning the phone upside down will open the application etc . These really added attraction to Jet but I was more comfortable while using phone in generic way that is though keys .But the new motion experience was unique.

Usability

Changing the wallpaper in the phone was never so easy as its in JET . We need to just move a finger on the Home Screen from left to right or right to left and your wallpaper is changed. Gestures unlock and application launch was cool. There is an interesting feature of Message Log , it means log for sent or received messages are maintained in the call logs , it cant be of much use to the end user but once you see your message entry in the log it feels good.

Connectivity

The phone is fully loaded when it comes to Connectivity options. Bluetooth , WiFi, microUSB , Mass Storage mode. It supports Quad band GSM Networks and does 3G on 1900/2100 Mhz. It supports HSDPA 3.6 Mbps also.

Browser – Jet has one of the best inbuilt browsers you would find on a phone running a Proprietary OS. The Dolphin Browser is based on WebKit and offers full flash support , one finger zooming, ad-blocker, Kinetic scrolling. It gives you a great mobile browsing experience as it  quickly loads web pages. It has left behind the two finger zoom of iPhone because here its now possible with 1 finger and that too in a fraction of seconds. Tap,Tap and zoom if you want to zoom into a section of the webpage. Scrolling had a bit of lag at times but responded pretty well. The browser supports multiple downloads also but it acts like Firefox’s sibling and eats up memory quickly.

Social Networking

Jet has an application folder called Communities and there you have access to  all our social networking portals at one place ex. Facebook , Picasa, Flickr , Friendster, MySpace and Photobucket.Sadly there is no way support for 3rd party apps like Fring and Nimbuzz.

Features worth a mention

• Samsung has broken the myth of large processor means less battery as we have normally seen in case of  other phones . With a 800 Mhz CPU battery performance is pretty good while you receive calls, tune to music or browse internet for decent amount of time.

• Voice Quality is good enough and one need not to hold the phone so close to ear to listen the voice.
• Reject a call if used can be helpful to avoid unwanted repeated calls and its well defined feature in jet. This feature used to be in some phones but Samsung has provided good interface to use these tiny softwares to be productive for the end users.
• Jet has its configuration settings at one place which gives user an ease to configure the device the way he wants the device to behave and user hardly gets confused about settings as all are well defined in one place.
• Features like Fake Call provided in JET do add value to the phone and I really enjoyed using this cool feature.
• Trimminga video reminds us of  some 3rd party software for our laptop/PC but yes this time its available in mobile too and JET has made it possible , Just shoot video and cut and upload .
• Smile detection , No I am not talking about my cybershot digicam but I am talking about smile detection available in JET , so just a smile and you are shot if you are in front of Jet.

The ugly

Samsung need to provide 3rd party application support which is currently very limited.This is where Samsung has to really push hard if it wants to compete with the big guns – Apple App Store,  BlackBerry App world , Nokia Ovi Store. Samsung does provide the option to download ringtones , wallpapers etc but user is already bored of this level and is looking for innovative apps.The phone had an option to add email accounts but please don’t give user the pain to enter incoming /outgoing server details manually. Widgets can be downloaded but the number is limited and they are also not according to Indian taste so high end localization is requiredJet is scratch prone and scratches become a part of jet very soon.So bit of care has to be taken. The unit we got maintains a weak connection with a Wi fi but yet the connection was succesfull.Whenever we put a sim card in a phone the operator settings are delivered on the handset but it dint happen in case of JET so I manually configured Airtel settings and browse the internet from the data services available from the operator.Users need to install a bulky 104 mb New Pc Studio for charging through USB and managing the device. For Managing its fine but we expect charging to work out of the box.

Conclusion

The Samsung Jet retails at around Rs.19500 now and for the price it does provide loads of features which are packed in a great form factor. The phone certainly has one of the best touchscreen displays in the market but a Capacitive screen like on the iPhone or LG Arena would be more than welcome.  The phone handles calls pretty smoothly and provides decent battery life.  Die-hard smart phone users might find it difficult to get used to the Jet due to lack of 3rd party software but the average user might find the phone above expectations !  I would recommend the Jet just for the Screen and the Features.