So, I was thinking about it, and I’m really happy with my phone choice in the Samsung Blackjack. In spite of some issues I had originally with some dropped calls on Cingular, I am pretty much converted.

I enjoy that it’s a phone first, and a “smart phone” second. Since it turns out I use my phone mostly as a phone, that really works for me. An example of what I’m talking about: from the home screen, I begin dialing either a name (stored in my contacts) or a number and it starts to fill in the rest. I can then choose from a list of people who fit under the numbers I’d dialed. For example, I want to call “John Doe” whose number is 555-1234. I pick up my phone and start dialing either “J” “O” “H” (on the easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard)… or “5″ “5″ “5″… and it finds him.

Also, other little things like skinning your device, changing ring tones (including adding your own custom-made ring tones), and so forth are very easy to do. This is a welcome change from some other phones I’ve used that had to be tricked into adding a ring tone (like the Motorola RAZR from Verizon… what a pain…).

I think the smart phone features are still pretty intuitive, though. I can check multiple email accounts automatically, which is nice for business emails that I may need to reply to quickly. The browser is far from flawless, but it works. And Cingular’s 3G network is sufficiently fast for almost all of my phone-surfing needs. Throw this all into a sleek package, and I think I’m sold!

So, I was thinking about it, and I’m really happy with my phone choice in the Samsung Blackjack. In spite of some issues I had originally with some dropped calls on Cingular, I am pretty much converted.

I enjoy that it’s a phone first, and a “smart phone” second. Since it turns out I use my phone mostly as a phone, that really works for me. An example of what I’m talking about: from the home screen, I begin dialing either a name (stored in my contacts) or a number and it starts to fill in the rest. I can then choose from a list of people who fit under the numbers I’d dialed. For example, I want to call “John Doe” whose number is 555-1234. I pick up my phone and start dialing either “J” “O” “H” (on the easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard)… or “5″ “5″ “5″… and it finds him.

Also, other little things like skinning your device, changing ring tones (including adding your own custom-made ring tones), and so forth are very easy to do. This is a welcome change from some other phones I’ve used that had to be tricked into adding a ring tone (like the Motorola RAZR from Verizon… what a pain…).

I think the smart phone features are still pretty intuitive, though. I can check multiple email accounts automatically, which is nice for business emails that I may need to reply to quickly. The browser is far from flawless, but it works. And Cingular’s 3G network is sufficiently fast for almost all of my phone-surfing needs. Throw this all into a sleek package, and I think I’m sold!