Cingular Blackjack (Samsung SGH-i707) impressions

Samsung SGH-i707 (a.k.a. Blackjack)

The Samsung Blackjack is a nice piece of hardware. The screen is beautiful, it is well proportioned and fits well in my hand, the scroll-wheel makes it easy to select from menus, and it's thin enough to be carried in a hip pocket despite the factthat it's wider than most phones. The camera is adequate for a cell phone, and the speaker is plenty loud. The phone actually has two speakers,one in the ear-piece, and one on the back that is used to play audio from everything that isn't a phone call (movies, mp3, speaker-phone). The only downside to this is that people behind your phone get better (and louder) sounds than you do, which may be good for sharing music, but isn't as appreciated when you're watching a movie in public. As with every other 3G device I've played with (namely the LG CU500) a standard Bluetooth headset works for call audio only, and will NOT play mono-only sound from the movie/mp3 player. See my rant on 3G phones and why I hate this.

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Using SyncML to save your data!

SyncML saves your data

I have been looking at the SyncML standard as a solution to keep the calendar on my palm pilot in sync with the calendar on a Nokia 9500 on the off chance that I don't want to carry two devices at once. SyncML was first developed for synchronizing cell phones, so the Nokia 9500 has a built in sync client. I explored two different clients for the Palm Pilot, the free Funambol open source client, and the Synthesis AG SyncML client (which costs $25 for the standard version).

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