Blackjack or Crackjack: Is The New Samsung Blackjack Your New Best Friend?

The fit and finish of the Blackjack is as high quality as any Smartphone. The screen is vivid and almost readable in direct sunlight. The black matte finish on the outside prevents the “oily fingerprint” issue that plagues so many handhelds. The MicroSD slot and 1.3 megapixel camera work as you’d expect. The thumb scroll on the side performs true to the Blackberry style. New Blackberry users will also enjoy the familiarity of the buttons and QWERTY keyboard design. Is this it though? Just these features? Isn’t there more than this?

The answer is a resounding “Yes”. Samsung made some changes to the standard setup and chose to set the number pad differently from anything prior. Instead of putting all the numbers together they chose to spread the rows out by one key. The number keys are set apart with the grey color to make them easier to find. This should make it easier to phone home; but this completes my second full week of use, and I am still frustrated at locating the numbers when I need to make an actual call.

The reason you’re probably looking at the Blackjack is for the 3g. For the unaware, 3g is the new high-speed data standard for cellular phones. Rollout for AT&T’s 3g has been very slow, and there are many cities still lacking in coverage. Make sure to check for coverage in your area, or you’ll be missing the killer aspect of the Blackjack.

In full 3g mode you can download and surf at roughly residential DSL speeds. You can surf and browse emails much faster than with EDGE (which is older 2g technology). The awesomeness of HSDPA (AT&T’s 3g) is you can use voice and data at the same time. This means you can be on a call and use the Internet capabilities similutaneously. You simply can’t do this in EDGE or EV-DO (Sprint and Verizon’s 3g). Until Sprint and Verizon upgrade to Rev. A EV-DO, the Blackjack and AT&T 8525 are the only game in town. The gripe with many Blackjack users is in order to get the discount, you must subscribe to AT&T’s Unlimited PDA plan, but not the Unlimited Smartphone plan.

Wait a minute, Yvonna. I thought the Blackjack ran Windows Mobile 5 for Smartphones. Isn’t the Blackjack a Smartphone? It is, and it does. Unfortunately, AT&T believes that their arbitrary decision to call anything with a QWERTY keyboard a PDA. This means that the Blackjack is a PDA in AT&T’s mind. So we get stuck with $40 a month to connect instead of $20. You can also choose another $20 add-on as a tether option. This allows for you to hookup a laptop through USB or Bluetooth, and surf using the 3G connection.

Sprint and Verizon are canceling many users that they think are “abusing” their cellular data plans. Good news is AT&T has yet to start that stupid practice. If I am paying $40 a month -the same I pay for home DSL which I use tons more- then I want to see, hear and stream from my slingbox 24/7.