Samsungish

Samsung recently launched the Samsung Jet mobile phone and we were finally able to get our hands on it. It’s called Jet because of its speed and Samsung is promoting it with the slogan “Impatience is a virtue.” According to Samsung, it is “the must-have product for those who live fast paced lives and want to pack more of everything into their day.

To live up to its claim, the phone features an 800MHz CPU which is theoretically faster than the processor used in the iPhone 3GS. From our experience, applications launch quickly. It also features 2GB of storage that can be expanded to 16GB. The handset also features HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth 2.1.

The phone has everything you need on the inside but the first thing you’ll notice is its screen. The phone features a beautiful 3.1 inch WVGA AMOLED screen. The screen has a resolution of 800×480 and displays 16 million colors. It’s the best screen I’ve seen on a mobile phone.

What also stands out is how small the phone is. The phone measures in at 108.8 x 53.5 x 11.9 mm but it’s difficult to explain how small it feels until holding it for yourself. It fits well in the pocket and is a pleasure to carry around.

The Jet S8000 runs Samsung’s OS called Samsung Handset Platform or SHP. It’s one of the first Samsung phones to use the Cubic-style menu. Spinning the cube is fun but also a bit cumbersome on a practical basis. We also found the touchscreen was a bit resistive and worked better with the stylus than our fingers.

Samsung plans to release a SDK for developers to build applications in the future but for now, they have around 30 widgets available. The phone features Microsoft Exchange support through ActiveSync. You can browse the Web with their Dolphin browser that is based on Webkit 3.0.

There is also a 5.0 MegaPixel camera included. The picture quality on the Samsung Jet was excellent for a phone in its class and there’s a dual LED flash to help in dark environments. The camera also features autofocus, smile detection and digital zoom. The camera can also record video.

Samsung has been releasing an impressive array of mobile phones recently. The AMOLED screen, fast processor and size make the Samsung Jet one of the best phones in its class but we were left disappointed with the user interface. Overall, we give the Samsung Jet S8000 4 stars out of 5.