Samsung Blackjack II Black Smartphone (AT&T)
| Samsung Blackjack II Black Smartphone (AT&T) |
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| Product Name | Samsung Blackjack II Black Smartphone (AT&T) |
| Manufacturer | AT&T |
| Product Number MPN | BlackJack II |
| Retail Price | $499.99 |
| UPC | 635753468083 |
| Weight | 0.8 lbs. |
| Deal first added on: | 29-March-2008 |
 | Samsung Blackjack II Red Wine Smartphone (AT&T) | 499.99 | $39.99 |  at 2 stores |
 | Motorola Moto Q Global Smartphone (AT&T) | 299.99 | $149.99 | at 1 stores |
 | Plantronics Voyager 510 Bluetooth Headset with Multipoint Technology | 99.95 | $37.99 | at 13 stores |
 "Broke after 3 months" | 2009-07-09 |
| - Reviewed By xanm | |
| First of all, this was my first smart phone. My last phone was a very simple, inexpensive Nokia that I had for 5 years. At first I was really pleased with all the features this phone has and I like the way the phone looks. The camera was pretty good, although it wasn't as good as I had hoped from using friends' phones to take pictures before. Pictures would come out blurry a lot, especially in medium to low light. One thing I didn't like was that the phone got really hot when I would talk for more than five or ten minutes. I don't know if this is normal for smart phones, but it made talking so uncomfortable that I would have to use a headset. Another thing is that the quality of the sound seemed worse than that of my old Nokia. Lastly, and most importantly, is that after about three months the phone just stopped working. Since the phone was refurbished, it isn't under warranty anymore, so there's not much I can do. I dropped the phone a few times from short distances while it had a case on, but my old phone took much worse abuse and has never had a problem for over five years. I think for my next phone I will go for something more reliable, even if it's at the cost of fewer features. | |
 "Weak battery is offset with other features" | 2009-03-01 |
| - Reviewed By fixed99 | |
| I switched to the Blackjack 2 last summer after owning a very simple LG phone for 3 years. I wanted to remotely surf the web easier and found that the text interface was simpler to use than the Iphone, for me at least. The character limit per message is somewhat annoying especially for the heavy texters who have to shorten every other word just for a sentence to have clear meaning. The battery is the number one problem with this phone. If you leave the web broswer open for an extended period of time or surf graphically intense sites it can drain extremely fast if you don't turn off the 3G speed. Also the RSS Reader is great for regular updates from news sites. But after a few months the RSS feeds for several sites no longer would update as often as they should or we're just dead links. Video playblack also will naturally drain the battery and the sound picture quality is rather poor but this is to expected from a cellphone since isn't designed to be a multimedia powerhouse. Flash enabled sites are also difficult to load and I even tried loading several Adobe Flash apps that claim to work with these sites, however they were never successful. Another thing that I noticed is the inability to load some sites that used outdated HTML frames script. I could browse these sites easily on my previous phone but after making the upgrade, I can no longer access them. Samsung also has disabled Internet tethering on this model, meaning that it can no longer be used as a modem to connect your laptop to surf the web. Playing cellphone games on the Blackjack 2 is also problematic as part of the control scheme uses the scroll wheel and not a traditional controller setup that can be emulated with a regular cell phone key configuration. Its a nice phone for browsing low graphic news sites, and even allows me to post on web forums something my previous phone could not achieve. The luxury to occasionally view Youtube videos is nice but the weak battery drains fast also when using the camera to record video. Leave the camera on by accident and again pay the price with a much faster reduction in battery power. I found the Windows software to connect to your laptop to be easy to use. But when playing back video in Vista it came out choppy videos and copying the pictures taken with the camera to my local hard drive was rather useless as the software caused my laptop to blue screen and crash several times. Streaming radio is enabled for for various sites but again the weak battery will drain unless you are listening connected to an external AC dapter which defeats the purpose of listening on the go. While sound quality for streaming radio is clear, MP3's saved on the phone is scratchy and almost unlistenable. The inferior sound quality also applies to Youtube videos and the various "streaming TV" services that are offered on a pay-per-view basis. The phone also has a tendency to get extremely warm when its expending too much memory doing memory intensive tasks for Internet Explorer, video, and streaming radio. Finally, the most important and basic feature was dialing using the keypad. Having to press and hold the Fn key every time to input a number can be somewhat inconvenient. Especially when other phones just require a simple touch of a button and not multiple functions to accomplish such a simple task. As a result, I found it difficult dialing a number quickly without saving it first. This can be a minor inconvenience but once you get the hang of the keypad it is easily overlooked. | |
| "Loaded with features but shoddy construction quality does not help it last" | 2009-03-01 |
| - Reviewed By fixed99 | |
| I switched to the Blackjack 2 last summer after owning a very simple LG phone for 3 years. I wanted to remotely surf the web easier and found that the text interface was simpler to use than the Iphone, for me at least. The character limit per message is somewhat annoying especially for the heavy texters who have to shorten every other word just for a sentence to have clear meaning. The battery is the number one problem with this phone. If you leave the web broswer open for an extended period of time or surf graphically intense sites it can drain extremely fast if you don't turn off the 3G speed. Also the RSS Reader is great for regular updates from news sites. But after a few months the RSS feeds for several sites no longer would update as often as they should or we're just dead links. Video playblack also will naturally drain the battery and the sound picture quality is rather poor but this is to expected from a cellphone since isn't designed to be a multimedia powerhouse. Flash enabled sites are also difficult to load and I even tried loading several Adobe Flash apps that claim to work with these sites, however they were never successful. Another thing that I noticed is the inability to load some sites that used outdated HTML frames script. I could browse these sites easily on my previous phone but after making the upgrade, I can no longer access them. Samsung also has disabled Internet tethering on this model, meaning that it can no longer be used as a modem to connect your laptop to surf the web. Playing cellphone games on the Blackjack 2 is also problematic as part of the control scheme uses the scroll wheel and not a traditional controller setup that can be emulated with a regular cell phone key configuration. Press to hard on the scroll wheel and you have a broken phone and send it in for a replacement or risk voiding the warranty if you want to open the phone up and replace the scroll wheel yourself. Its a nice phone for browsing low graphic news sites, and even allows me to post on some web forums something my previous phone could not achieve. The IE browser works a fair amount of time but high graphic intensive sites hunkers down the phone and makes it very slow. Turning off images using a toggle or hot key would have been nice rather than having to press the right button every time. It also slows down the phone and makes it extremely tiresome to use. Reading on the small screen with extremely small font sized is also a burden to deal with. Even sent to the largest sized text, some sites still show tiny letters. Typing in text boxes is hit or miss depending on how fast the site loads. Try and type in the middle of loading and chances are you will make a mistake in you're entry. Turning off 3G speed helps the battery but single G is equivalent to dialup speeds. You become so used to fast DSL connections making the transition is a lot harder than it seems. The luxury to occasionally view Youtube videos is nice but the weak battery drains fast also when using the camera to record video. Leave the camera on by accident and again pay the price with a much faster reduction in battery power. I found the Windows software to connect to your laptop to be easy to use. But when playing back video in Vista it came out choppy videos and copying the pictures taken with the camera to my local hard drive was rather useless as the software caused my laptop to blue screen and crash several times. The Opera Mini Java browser can also be easily installed and can view other sites that the default IE browser has problems. The disadvantage of the Opera Mini browser however is the inability to view streaming videos from Youtube. Something which the IE browser can accomplish with the Windows 6 Media player but not without being able to play larger video clips of 10 minutes or more completely. Streaming radio is enabled for for various sites but again the weak battery will drain unless you are listening connected to an external AC dapter which defeats the purpose of listening on the go. While sound quality for streaming radio is clear, MP3's saved on the phone is scratchy and almost unlistenable. The inferior sound quality also applies to Youtube videos and the various "streaming TV" services that are offered on a pay-per-view basis. The phone also has a tendency to get extremely warm when its expending too much memory doing memory intensive tasks for Internet Explorer, video, and streaming radio. The Blackjack extended battery is replaced about every 5 months but when it goes out it usually does without warning. On my second battery replacement I tried charging the phone as usual and got a yellow warning light which indicates abnormal charging or battery replacement. The battery can't be easily obtained in store at any brick and mortar AT&T Wireless location and has to be ordered online. This is problematic because you have to deal with the delays in shipping. Imagine waiting on a battery to arrive in a week and not having to access work or personal contacts. You are dead in the water. Finally, the most important and basic feature was dialing using the keypad. Having to press and hold the Fn key every time to input a number can be somewhat inconvenient. Especially when other phones just require a simple touch of a button and not multiple functions to accomplish such a simple task. As a result, I found it difficult dialing a number quickly without saving it first. This can be a minor inconvenience but once you get the hang of the keypad it is easily overlooked. *UPDATE, 8/3/2009: I am now on my third Blackjack 2 in less than 12 months and second replacement in less than 60 days. The power button no longer functioned and the phone could not even be turned on! This was a brand new phone! I will accept this replacement since it still under warranty but once it any shows further signs of defects, I am returning this phone and will never buy another Samsung product again! Cheap, shoddy construction cannot be forgiven for a product that arrives new, out of the box. | |
 "Any other phone would be better" | 2008-09-23 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2BIMWMFWV1XGC | |
| I've had this phone for less than a year and I can say that, without a doubt, this is the least user-friendly and least durable phone I have ever owned. The Windows OS is impossible to manage effectively and the build of the phone itself cannot withstand even minor drops from the pocket. I would never recommend this phone to anyone. | |
| "Too many bugs" | 2008-09-15 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3VDPFGYYYDESH | |
| The Samsung Blackjack is a great example of how, the more complicated the phone, the more prone it is to bugs. I am on my second warranty replacement phone and am still having problems. Basically, the phone feature itself is prone to "crashing" (for lack of a better term). What I mean by that is that the phone stops working and you can't send and receive calls. The only way you know that this is happening is when you try to make calls and the phone just says "Dailing...". This is not a service issue since the phone doesn't start working once in a coverage area. Basically, the phone feature just goes dead. From what I've seen, this can be remedied by turning the phone off and restarting so this strikes me as a software issue (BTW - I've had the SIMcard replaced as well but still have the same issues). The other issue that I've had with teh Blackjack is that sometimes, after I receive a voicemail and check it, the voicemail notification does NOT go off. Even when I restart the phone, it does not go off. It only goes off when I get another VM and check it again. br /br /In short, the Blackjack, while good on paper, is a disaster in actuality. If you're looking for a reliable phone, I'd say stay away. | |
 "Great first smartphone" | 2008-08-25 |
| - Reviewed By ctsamurai | |
| I picked this for a couple of reasons: 1) reasonable price (with contract extension) 2) Napster support 3) QWERTY keypad Pretty low demands, i know. but this has exceeded my expectations. Despite a rather long startup, the phone functions well jumping between programs once it starts up. Moving media between the phone and computer is a breeze (windows mobile and a Windows PC, pretty good fit). I haven't delved too far into the Outlook integration/syncing, since I don't use outlook. Call clarity is very good, compared to my old Motorola phone, and texting/emailing is a breeze with the "desktop"(main screen) layout and keypad. Its fairly customizable, and if you're a little more industrious, many websites can step you through other ways to modify the phone. The one thing I haven't yet figured out is how to do standard "copy and paste" (if its even possible) with things like addresses (both web and physical). But aside from that, I am extremely pleased with this phone and its really become an asset in my day to day life. | |
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