Samsung SGH-i607 BlackJack

Cingulars high-speed network goes truly portable with the new Samsung BlackJack, an excellent little handheld for folks looking for a BlackBerry-style device with more speed and multimedia features.

Just like T-Mobiles Dash and Verizons Motorola Q, the BlackJack is a Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone slab sporting a 320-by-240 screen, a full keyboard and a 1.3-megapixel camera on the back. In many ways, its a cross between those two other phones.

Like the Dash, its a quad-band world phone, its black, and its almost the exact same size. Like the Q, it uses a high-speed national cellular network rather than Wi-Fi, the keys are long slanted ovals, and it has a handy scroll wheel on the side as well as cursor keys for navigation. At 4.5-by-2.3-by-.5 inches and weighing 3.5 ounces, its smaller and lighter than both the Dash and the Q.

Lets step back for a minute. All three of these phones fit into the media-hyped category of "BlackBerry killers." Honestly, nobodys about to kill the BlackBerry any time soon; rather, these are all phones that look like BlackBerrys, but add the Windows Mobile abilities to easily sync with Microsoft Outlook, do push e-mail with either Good Mobile Messaging or Exchange Server 2003 SP2, and play music and video synced over from Windows Media Player.

All Windows Mobile 5 smart phones work basically the same, but Cingular and Samsung have added their own line to the familiar "Windows Mobile BlackBerry-killer" song with some new software. Rather than the usual ClearVue Microsoft Office viewers, the BlackJack includes the much slicker Picsel Viewer, which in my experience handles complex PDF documents better.

Read the full story on PCMag.com: Samsung SGH-i607 BlackJack

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