FIRST TAKE: Samsung JET

FIRST TAKE: Samsung JET

Samsung fires the first shot in the mobile processor wars with their new 800Mhz feature phone. Check out our hands-on impressions of the Samsung Jet.

At Samsung Mobile headquarters, company reps gave us a hands-on look at their newest flagship feature phone, the Samsung Jet. The Jet is not a smartphone. It runs a proprietary OS instead of Windows Mobile, like the Samsung Omnia 2. Still, with its 800 MHz processor and advanced capabilities, this has got to be the smartest 'dumbphone' on the market. With companies beefing up their mobile processor offerings, we expect to see a new MHz war open up in the mobile phone world soon.

The Samsung Jet is a bit smaller than the Samsung Omnia 2, thanks mostly to the smaller display. The Omnia 2 uses an AMOLED touchscreen that is 3.7-inches diagonal. The Samsung Jet uses the same AMOLED technology, but the screen comes in more than a half inch smaller, at a still-respectable 3.1-inches. The AMOLED screen on the Jet looks fantastic, and users are going to enjoy the new technology as it trickles down into more and more phones. Colors look bright and fresh, and the phone is capable of much deeper blacks, lending a deeper contrast to the display. Also, the AMOLED technology uses 40% less energy than a comparably sized TFT LCD screen, according to Samsung. In our hands-on time, we took a look at the 180-degree viewing angle, and there was hardly a point where the screen didn't look crisp and legible.

Meet the new TouchWIZ, same as the old TouchWIZ?
The Samsung Jet uses an updated version of the Samsung TouchWIZ interface (to read about more TouchWIZ phones, click here). We were never big fans of TouchWIZ. The widgets seemed to require more screen real estate than the phone would allow. The same is true for the new TouchWIZ interface, at least what we saw in our hands-on look. On the new TouchWIZ 2.0, widgets can update live over the Internet, which should add more functionality to the phone, and to make up for the lack of screen space Samsung has endowed the interface with 3 separate homescreens, much like the Apple iPhone and T-Mobile G1 use multiple home screens. Just flick your finger to see more widgets, along with a separate wallpaper and other customizable options. This was a nice compromise for the UI, so we're curious to take a longer look at a new TouchWIZ phone and see if this solves the problem.

In addition to the new TouchWIZ screens, the Samsung Jet gets the new Samsung cube menu, a six-sided multimedia interface where each side is a shortcut. Samsung has a thing for cubes, and we remember the touchable cube from the ill-fated Samsung Glyde home screen. On the Samsung Jet, if you want to access the music side of the cube, you can either move the 3D model with your finger, or you can set the phone to recognize gestures. Flick the phone in the right direction and the cube will move, revealing the shortcut you need.

In our hands-on time with the Samsung Jet, we weren't very impressed by the cube design. While it was a cool idea, for sure, it didn't seem to add any real feature advantage, and it wasn't easier to use than a simple homescreen shortcut. We could see ourselves showing off the cube to jealous onlookers, but never really using it on a daily basis.

With great power comes great responsiveness

With its high-end processor, Samsung is promising that using the Samsung Jet will be a much more responsive experience. The company even claims an instant response from a 3D interface that will match the speed of touch. In our hands-on with the Samsung Jet, the phone certainly seemed plenty responsive, but we're still skeptical of these broad claims. The phone had the trademark feel of a resistive touchscreen, a technology that works very well with a stylus, but not so much with fingers. We'd like to see Samsung try their hand at a capacitive screen, like the screen on the Apple iPhone or the new Palm Pre. Capacitive screens work much better with fingers, and the Samsung TouchWIZ UI is definitely built for finger control.

Besides the interface, Samsung is putting that power behind the multimedia features on the Samsung Jet. The phone will be able to play DivX videos and a range of codecs, like the Samsung Omnia, but Samsung claims the phone will have no trouble adapting and resizing videos to the WVGA, 800 by 480 pixel screen. To store all those videos, along with music and photos, the Jet will come in 3 storage configurations, ranging from 2GB up to 16GB of internal memory. All models will expandable with a microSD card slot capable of holding a 16GB card, for up to 32GB total capacity.

If you build it . . .

For the Samsung Jet, the company built their own proprietary mobile browser, called the Dolfin browser. Though Dolfin is a strictly Samsung design, the browser is based on WebKit technology, which means it should render pages similar to other high-end Web browsing phones, like the iPhone and Nokia's Nseries devices, all of which use a WebKit browser. Instead of multi-touch, the Web browser, along with the photo gallery app, will use a one finger zoom. We've seen similar controls on HTC TouchFLO devices, and it works nicely as a compromise for a resistive screen. In addition to the one-handed zooming, the Jet's Dolfin browser will also use an ad-blocker, and will be capable of multiple downloads in the background.
The Samsung Jet will also be among the rare feature phones (non-smartphones) to have built-in Exchange ActiveSync access. Instead of using a separate app for e-mail and contacts synchronization, the Samsung Jet will have Exchange built-in at its core, so even without a smartphone OS the Jet will still be useful for business customers who use an Exchange account.

The 5-megapixel camera on the Samsung Jet will feature plenty of advanced options for picture taking, many of which we've seen on compact cameras, and are now seeing on cameraphones. The Jet will use auto focus and two LED flash lights to help keep shots sharp. The phone will also get face detection, smile detection and even blink detection to make sure the shutter snaps at just the right moment. Of course, with onboard aGPS, the phone will also be able to geo-tag photos.

Samsung has yet to announce an official release date for the Samsung Jet. The company was fairly certain the Jet would not be sold in the U.S., and pointed us instead to the Samsung Omnia 2, which has already been confirmed for a Verizon Wireless launch some time in the future. Pricing and availability have also yet to be determined.