Samsung's S8000 Jet with Webkit browser and TouchWiz 2.0 UI

The Samsung S8000 Jet is the Korean manufacturer's latest flagship feature phone product, which Samsung claims to be "smarter than a smartphone." That sets some pretty high expectations, but on paper, at least, the Jet certainly seems to have what it takes. For example, how many non-smartphones can you name that feature a Webkit-based web browser and sport an 800MHz processor?

The Samsung S8000 Jet is an attractive device that is equipped with a large 3.1-inch WVGA resolution AMOLED(INFO) touchscreen display that works reasonably well in direct sunlight. Unlike some of Samsung's other recent AMOLED touchscreen devices, however, the Jet makes use of a resistive touchscreen(INFO) that requires a slight bit of pressure to be activated. The upside is that such displays are more accurate when it comes to selecting small on-screen objects like links on a web page or keys on a keyboard. It is quite likely that the Jet's touchscreen is the most beautiful display used on a cell phone today. It's that good.

The body of the phone is constructed of a comfortable plastic material that has been formed into a shape with soft corners and slightly curved surfaces. The rear cover has a unique look to it, thanks to a bit of technology borrowed from Samsung's "Touch of Color" line of flatscreen televisions. There is nothing else like it on the market, and people seem to be quite drawn to it.

The front of the Jet is less interesting, but does feature a uniquely designed menu button that looks something like a 3D cube, a reference to one of the device's menus that we'll touch upon later. The other two front-facing controls handle call and power functions, and there is a noticable lack of a dedicated back key.

Above the display sits a forward-facing video call camera and a sensor that deals with automatic screen brightness adjustment as well as turning off the phone's touchscreen when the phone rests against a user's cheek during a call. A simple volume rocker sits on the left edge, the 3.5mm headphone port and micro-USB power/data connector are on top. The right edge is home to a screen lock and unlock key as well as an oddly shaped key that controls the camera as well as brings up the Jet's 3D cube menu mode, depending on where it is pressed.

The phone is rather typically sized for a full-touch device, coming in at 109mm x 54mm x 12.5mm (4.3in x 2.1in x .5in). Its 110.8g (3.9oz) weight is also right where it should be. All in all, the Samsung Jet sports a very sleek and workable physical design, and even ships with a nice leather pouch.

We tested our Samsung S8000 Jet in the United States, not in Europe where it is being sold. As such, Europeans will have to take what we say about reception and audio quality with a bit of perspective, as things inside the EU, with its different network bands, could be quite different. With that said, call audio quality on the Jet seemed to be pretty good, but we were less than impressed by its 900/1900MHz reception abilities. It often still worked when reporting 0 bars of signal, but it was certainly was a below average performer in general in weaker signal areas (not uncommon for Samsung's European models). The battery performed quite well in our tests, though, and the device's standby time seemed to be particularly good (on a GSM connection, at least). This is a phone that could probably go a few days between charges, as long as the camera and web browser weren't being used very hard.

The contacts system on the Jet is nicely done. It is very easy to scroll through contacts, and the shortcut buttons for each contact that appear in the contacts list provide quick access to calling and messaging. The search system is a bit weak, however, matching only on first names. The Jet has full profile support, and each profile can be customized to a very large extent. We do wish that there was a more convenient way to change the current profile than being forced to use the clunky Profiles widget, though.

There appears to be no support for voice dialing on the S8000 Jet, which strikes us as particularly odd. Speed dialing is supported through the contact list's "favourites" view, and is accessed by long pressing a number key on the on-screen dial-pad. The Jet offers two nice features that are linked to its built-in accelerometer. The first is that an inbound call can be ignored simply by flipping the phone over, which mutes the ringtone. The second is that if the user is already on a call, placing the phone on a flat surface will automatically activate the speakerphone, though it takes a second or two to do so.

There is good messaging support on the Samsung Jet, thanks to the typical SMS/MMS client as well as solid email functionality. Both POP and IMAP based email systems are supported on the phone, and the Jet even comes with a real Microsoft Exchange Server client for corporate email access (as well as contacts and calendar). The Exchange client is a bit difficult to use at times, though, and lacks many configuration options that should be present. As such, it is not possible to use it to sync contacts and calendar with Google, since email sync via Exchange is not supported by Google, and the Jet fails to connect as a result.

We were unable to test out the HSDPA(INFO) 3G data speeds on the Jet since we had no access to a 900MHz or 2100MHz UMTS network. We were able to use the Jet quite well with its built-in WiFi access, which is always good to have. Full Bluetooth support is available on the Jet, meaning that you can use it with both headsets and stereo headphones alike. The micro-USB connector made it easy to connect to a PC with the included cable to use with Samsung's freely available New PC Studio for media and data synchronization.

The Samsung S8000 Jet is a capable multimedia phone. For starters, its 5.0 megapixel camera is quite nice. Not only does it feature autofocus, but it can even capture video at 720 x 480 pixel resoution (and includes a video editor). We've been quite pleased by the camera in the Jet overall, though we do wish that it came equipped with a real Xenon flash. The dual-LED flash is decent at times, but Xenon would have made the Jet a great camera instead of a merely good one. Still, the Jet has one of the fastest focusing systems we've used on a camera phone, so it has that going for it.

We've included a large gallery of photos at the tail end of this review so you can see just what the Jet's photos look like. Like most camera phones, it suffers in low light a bit, but overall is quite useful as a camera. The photo viewer application on the Jet is that same as the one found on the S8300 Ultra Touch, which is to say that it has some nice features, but can be a bit difficult to control.

Thanks to its 3.5mm headphone port and capable music player application, the Samsung S8000 Jet makes a fine replacement for a dedicated MP3 player. The WOWHD and simulated 5.1 channel audio modes add some oomph to the listening experience, but there are other more subdued effects settings available, too. It is fully capable of background playback, and, naturally, has a home screen widget that goes with it. Since the Jet has well over a gigabyte of available built-in storage and supports large microSDHC(INFO) memory cards, there's plenty of potential room for tracks (and pics). If you prefer your music to reach you over the airwaves, though, the Jet's FM radio will probably suit you just fine. The radio does require use of wired headphones, but a pair is included in the box.

One of the features that Samsung touted at the Jet's launch event was its Webkit-based Dolfin web browser. The browser does a good job of rendering complex websites, and is pretty easy to navigate. Dolfin's "tap and slide" zooming control worked, if slowly, nut isn't nearly as easy to use as a multi-touch pinch or stretch gesture. While Samsung claims Dolfin can support up to 5 browser windows being opened at one time, we never managed to get past 4 since the application appears to need more RAM than the Jet has to offer at times. We ran into what appeared to be a lack of RAM when trying to run HD flash videos on YouTube. The Dolfin browser supports flash just fine, but struggled with large videos. None the less, this is a very solid browser offering for a non-smartphone. Check out our videos to see it in action.

The Samsung Jet comes with a pretty nice assortment of applications, including a full suite of organizer type apps. Some of those, like the calendar, task list, and memos, can be synchrnoized with a PC's copy of Microsoft Outlook using Samsung's New PC Studio. A wide assortment of calculators, convertors, and other simple apps are also available for use. There's also a few games (mostly trials) and a pre-installed copy of Google Maps available.

The Samsung S8000 Jet is the first device to feature Samsung's new TouchWiz 2.0 user interface. TouchWiz offers users a widget-based homescreen and a widget tray of available items that can be placed on the phone's home screen. In TouchWiz 2.0, there are three home screens that can be used, and they are accessed with left or right swipe gestures on the touchscreen. This is a big step forward from the original single home screen in TouchWiz 1.0 and the vertically scrolling version found in 1.5. Still, the widgets are often unwieldy, and are hard to keep organized since many of them grow or shrink depending on what you are doing with them. Things can get messy very fast.

The fact that the widget tray has no hard and fast order to it also makes it less useful. Since widgets and apps can be launched by tapping directly on the tray, you could think of the tray as being like a menu. But unlike other menus, each time you drag a widget onto the desktop or back into the tray, the order of the icons usually changes.

Like the home screen, the main menu now has three panes of its own. This allivates the need for a lot of sub-menus and provides pretty simple and direct access to most functions. The downside here is that the icons can not be rearranged by the user. But fear not, because there is yet another way to access apps on the Jet. Pressing the top half of the camera shutter button briefly brings up the cube menu, which organizes apps into categories located on the sides of a 3D cube. Tapping on a cube face brings up a stack of items that can be scrolled through with a fingernail. Pretty, but not of much use. The motion sensitive cube menu that can be brought up by long-pressing the button is even of less use, as you can see in the videos. Neat, but we'll wager that nobody will use it. It is especially a shame that the gesture controls the Jet is capable of only work when an app is launched from the special motion sensitive cube menu. That's a waste of capability, since the shake to close and previous/next functions would be of use quite often.

One of the phone's unique UI abilities is the way its lock screen can launch applcations and call contacts when specific letters are drawn by the user's finger. For example, you could configure 'M' to call your mother and 'W' to launch the web browser - all without fully unlocking the phone. The downside here is that the unlocking process requires a long press of the lock key to allow for this since a short press merely activates the display, and this makes fully unlocking the phone much more of a hassel. Samsung's onto something here, but it still needs work.

The cube-shaped button on the front of the phone normally brings up the main menu, but it can also pull up the task manager if long-pressed. Since the Jet is capable of multi-tasking, this is useful for closing apps that are running in the background. It is a shame that the multi-tasking is not as straightforward as it ought to be, at least from the perspective of typical smartphone users.

In general the Jet makes heavy use of on-screen softkeys for working through tasks. This is especially true when running games or other apps that might normally require at least a d-pad controller. We found the on-screen controls to be adequate, but less than optimal. The same goes for the lack of a hardware back key, which would be easier to use than the on-screen version the Jet relies upon.

There is minimal theme support on the Jet, which is not uncommon on Samsung's AMOLED(INFO) display equipped devices. A black based theme will use the least amount of power, but Samsung does at least offer very basic red and green options as well, though they are not very attractive.

Conclusion

The Samsung S8000 Jet is a very desireable phone. It has a very sleek design, and packs in a lot of good multimedia functionality. Samsung's WVGA resolution AMOLED display is a wonder to behold, and it pairs up quite nicely with the Jet's Dolfin web browser and 5.0 megapixel autofocus camera. Some of the new TouchWiz 2.0 user interface features look like cheap parlour tricks, but overall the phone comes across as solidly usable and enjoyable.

In the end, that's what matters. Will users enjoy the phone, and can it take care of their basic needs? For the Jet, that answer is yes. It offers a lot of high-end functionality in a device that is still simpler than most smartphones. People are going to love this phone. We give it a "Highly Recommended" rating.