I have had the pleasure of evaluating several PDAphones in the past several years, and have recently had the opportunity to do a head-to-head comparison between the Motorola Q (on Verizon Wireless) and the Samsung Blackjack (on Cingular Wireless) and wanted to post some findings here.

First Impressions

My first thought upon opening the box at the Cingular store was "Wow! That's small!" In fact, I had my RAZR V3i in my pocket and I didn't think the Blackjack even weighed more than the RAZR (although reality is that the RAZR weighs in at 3.31 ounces and the Blackjack at 3.5 ounces.)


I also had my Q back at my in-laws waiting for me. The Q weighs in at 4.1 ounces and is even heavier and bulkier with the extended battery, and actually felt much larger in my hand after holding the Blackjack. The Blackjack feels just as sleek, but it does have a bulge where the camera is installed at the top rear, in addition to the external speaker. Where the Blackjack seems to feel easier to handle and pocket is in the height and width, being narrower than the Q. It also seems to pocket easier, which is a good thing.



Testing and Results

One of the benefits of the Blackjack is the new 3G HSDPA capability, which offers some serious speed for Cingular users (finally!) Where the Q has been out with EVDO for almost six months, true 3G has not been available for GSM users until just very recently. I tested the speeds using DSLreports.com/mspeed and found that the Q consistently downloaded at around 460Kbps in the Baltimore EVDO area. The Blackjack, however, totally exceeded expectations by consistently downloading at over 1Mbps (1026Kbps) in the same area. Unfortunately, not all cities have HSDPA and many won't see it for a while, including my home area of Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Virginia. But even the EDGE speeds seemed faster on the Blackjack than with comparable EDGE devices, like the HP hw6940 and Cingular 8125. Browsing is easy and supports many if not most web sites.

The Blackjack is a similar type of device as the Q - a Windows Mobile 5 smartphone, with the display in a 320x240 pixels landscape orientation standard. The processors are remarkably similar (TI OMAP 220MHz in the Blackjack) and the memory configurations are similar (128MB ROM, 64MB RAM) with the expansion slots being different. The Q uses mini-SD and the Blackjack uses micro-SD (so I now have to have a whole slew of different memory cards and it is yet another hidden expense.) The good news is that the micro-SD cards are available in 2GB sizes right in the Cingular store (with a $20 rebate when I got mine.)

The Blackjack has some noticeable differences in the button and keyboard arrangements. The Blackjack has the volume up/down rocker on the left top side of the device right above the charging/sync slot. On the right side, there is a thumbwheel with the back/escape button directly below, just as on the Q and RIM Blackberries with the micro-SD slot above. (Note the slots for sync and expansion cards are protected by attached rubber covers.) The QWERTY keyboard is also similar to the Q, with the keys angled slightly to facilitate typing, but there are additional buttons along the bottom row to help with Caps Shift, Num Lock, Symbol, and Mail. The standard Windows Mobile Smartphone buttons directly under the screen manage the Home Screen, Back/Escape and the soft buttons, with the Green Call Send and red Call End buttons on either side of the circular 5-way action button.

The screen is just slightly smaller than the Q overall, but is bright, sharp, and very readable.

The Blackjack comes with an additional battery and a separate charger unit in the box (as if to respond to the Q users and their battery issues.) The package also includes a proprietary USB synch cable and the usual manuals and CD. The box does not include a case nor a cradle.

Battery life seems to be much better than the Q, using a similar configuration, but I cannot conclude that it is until I have tested it further. Battery life does appear promising.

The major benefit is the apparent snappiness in performance.

Phone Operation

The Q was one of the best PDAphones as far as phone call clarity and quality in my usage. I liked my RAZR for call quality of service on Cingular. But my first use of the Blackjack sold me very quickly on it as a cell phone.

Call volume was very good, in fact one of the best for any PDAphone I have ever used or tested (over 40 to date.) The standard Windows Mobile tools such as Speed Dial and the phone app are somewhat dubious to me, but I have yet to experience any problems and Microsoft has made it easier than ever to save a number called or received. The speakerphone is very good, whether used on a table or just in the air like in a car. Signal strength is as good as any other Cingular device I have had, and is better then the 8125 or the hw6940. And, even more importantly, the Blackjack is comfortable to use by holding to to your head or with a bluetooth headset.

Bluetooth

The Blackjack uses the new Bluetooth 2.0 standard. Disappointingly, even though the Blackjack supports A2DP audio, it doesn't support standard audio over hands-free profile, so you can't use a normal phone headset for anything except phone calls. My Jabra JX10 paired right up and has worked perfectly since day one with clear audio quality. The only problem has been with automatic reconnection when I walk out of range - it disconnects and I manually have to reconnect through the Bluetooth menu. My A2DP Motorola HT820 headset also paired up and the Stereo Headset profile came right up on discovery and worked with the 250 or so music files I had stored on the micro-SD card using Windows Media Player.

The one major problem that I have found is that I can not seem to get the Blackjack to connect to ActiveSync over Bluetooth. Try as I might, I was unable to get the Blackjack to see the ActiveSync profile from either my desktop or my laptop. Apparently, the Serial Port profile isn't working, but is required on the PC end to be configured in ActiveSync for the Bluetooth COM port assigned. there are a number of users on the Cingular users forums experiencing the same problem and hopefully a fix is forthcoming.

Messaging

The Blackjack is designed for easy keyboarding and to be used with email and SMS messaging. SMS texting is straightforward, although the standard Microsoft app doesn't support threaded SMS or other more advanced features. The Blackjack has the Microsoft Messaging and Feature Pack (MSFP) and is ready for immediate use with Exchange 2003 mail servers. There is a wizard to get the new user started that walks through the process of connecting to Exchange.

For my testing, our company is using Novell GroupWise 7 with Service Pack 1. One of the new tools we have been evaluating with all PDAphones (except Blackberries, as we hope to reduce annual maintenance costs and license/connect fees with Blackberries) is the new GroupWise Mobile Server, powered by Intellisync. GroupWise Mobile provides an experience similar to Blackberry enterprise Server, connecting to the GroupWise post office and relaying mail in real-time to the device, using an installed client. There are clients for Smartphone and we have been testing with the Q and other PDAphones (Windows Mobile and Palm clients) with some success. The Q created a new mail account, but the Blackjack did not create a new account in Pocket Outlook, instead it requires the user to open the Inbox from the Intellisync client and not through the usual mail buttons or menus. This is a minor inconvenience, but not enough to deter its use. The other thing that may prevent users from using GW Mobile is that "push" email requires SMS messaging. (The server sends a specially formatted SMS to the client telling the device to connect and retrieve the waiting message.) Without a significant quantity SMS plan, this can get expensive very quickly.


Conclusions

Overall, the Blackjack is a very affordable and effective solution. It suffers from the limitations of the Smartphone OS - no touch screen, and no Pocket Word, Excel or PowerPoint. However, for the user looking for a powerful and fast email or web device, the Blackjack is the perfect fit. For users living in the HSDPA-enabled data areas of Cingular coverage, it is the fastest device on the U.S. market in the Smartphone offerings. I really wish that Samsung or Cingular packaged the Blackjack with a micro-SD card (like they do with the Motorola V3i RAZR with iTunes.)

Every application that ran on the Q also runs on the Blackjack, including ALK CoPilot Q Edition (GPS Navigation app.)

Overall, I give it a good rating with the potential to be rated excellent after a few weeks of use and testing, in particular with the battery life and data speeds.

__________________
John

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