Although the Samsung Jet is a undoubtedly a versatile device it has a couple of features that stand-out head and shoulder s above its technical brethren: namely the 3.1-inch OLED touchscreen and an 800Mhz processor under the bonnet. Does that mean this has the smarts to outwit other mobile phones?
The Jet benefits from a quite sleek design. Measuring 109 x 53 x 12mm and weighing 110g it isn’t all that different from any number of other fully touch capable handsets doing the rounds at the moment, but it does nonetheless look attractive. The casing does feel a bit plastic-y in the hand, but this is forgivable because the screen looks superb.
The 3.1in active-matrix OLED touchscreen takes up most of the real estate on the front and it is eye-searingly beautiful, with an extremely sharp 480 x 800 resolution. Above it are 0.3Mp camera for video calls, light sensor and loudspeaker, while the space below is taken up with call start and stop buttons and a hexagonal navpad.
On the sides are a volume rocker and lanyard hook, screen lock button, camera shutter button and a menu button, while on top are the micro USB slot covered by a plastic grommet and 3.5mm headphone jack. Around the back is the camera lens (uncovered) and twin-LED flash. It also has a classy-looking prismatic finish, that flashes when the light catches it.
Touch responsiveness is good. We particularly like the zoom feature when you are Web browsing. Hold one finger on the screen and use the other to push on a zoom icon: upwards to zoom in, downwards to zoom out. It works when viewing pictures too.
Text entry is possible thanks to a full QWERTY keyboard in wide screen mode. An accelerometer ensures the screen flips as you turn the phone in your hand. The accelerometer can also be used to move between applications by shaking the phone. It works, but really we’d rather just tap at the screen.
The scrolling is even painful when navigating your tools. You can decide which widgets to put in the side bar on the start page, but for the rest of them you’ll find yourself hitting the pentagonal button under the screen. Then you get to three screens’ worth of options including everything from the phone settings to the stopwatch.
The problem is that when you try and swipe between the three screens, it simply doesn’t work. Most of the time, I either ended up loading something I didn’t want to, or the screen just flickered slightly and then nothing.
The camera is average, with poor colour accuracy in low light, but has great detail in dark areas and very little noise. Likewise, video capture is excellent and looks great on the OLED screen, to the extent that we could envisage a no-budget, arthouse movie being shot using just this phone. Nearly. On the Jet’s insides you get an average 8GB of storage.
On the plus side you can supplement that with a microSD card, and you’ll probably want to do just that after you’ve taken a few snaps and videos. Internet connection over both HSDPA and Wi-Fi is good (if not as fast as we’d hoped for), and overall the Samsung Jet is a powerful handset with an awesome screen and some great multimedia options.
The music player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+ and WMA files and comes with an equalizer with 11 clearly distinct presets, and a 5.1 virtual surround option. Yet, this setting seems to have the effect of compressing the music more, rather than opening it out. You can browse your music’s cover art in the iPhone’s CoverFlow style in landscape mode and choose from a selection of onscreen visualisations.
There is a lot to like about the Samsung Jet. Ignore the fancy cube interface (which is easily done), forget about shaking to switch apps (also easy to do), and concentrate on the core features, and this is a well put together and serviceable handset.
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