Samsung Jet review

For years, the Indian mobile phone companies have used the number of megapixels of their phones' cameras as a major marketing tool. But as phones pass 8, 10 or even 12 megapixels people are starting to look for other ways to trump the opposition.

Enter the Samsung Jet and its main market-leading unique selling proposition - the speed of its main processor.

Previously, processor clock speeds were the reserve of PC geeks, but they’ll soon be a key part of your local mobile phone salesman’s patter - "You want the iPhone? But this Samsung Jet has many more megahertz. I’ll throw in a case too."

The Samsung Jet’s limelight-grabbing feature is its CPU, an 800Mhz ‘application processor’. Oddly enough, although we are indeed impressed with the CPU’s capabilities, it wasn’t the advanced applications available for the Jet that impressed us. Don’t buy the Jet looking for an iPhone-like App Store. Thankfully, it has plenty of other positives under its belt.

The first is the screen. At 3.1-inches, it’s not massive, but the AMOLED technology used in its manufacture make it more than a little gorgeous. Colours appear vibrant, while the 480x800 resolution means that everything in the interface looks pin sharp. To match the screen, the Jet has pretty impressive video capabilities.

We tried a handful of Divx and Xvid files on the device and they all ran perfectly. No doubt aided by the beefy processor, playback was impressively smooth. There are a number of aspect ratio scaling options too, perfect for those considering using the Jet as a mobile video solution- and since your videos are almost certainly going to be of a lower resolution than the phone’s screen (seems odd considering its size, doesn‘t it?) the Jet will do them justice.

Sure, the effect’s not going to be as impressive as watching them on an Omnia HD, but the Jet is far more pocketable, being the size of a normal feature phone. In short, it packs a punch on the video front.

Equally, although the 5-megapixel camera has long been superseded on the specs front (as we mentioned in the intro), in our tests it proved sharp and easy to produce decent shots with. The preview screen has an ultra-quick refresh rate- more props to the processor- and the images produced were of a consistent quality, which should help cut down the rate of dud shots produced by any less than experienced mobile photographers.

So, ‘quick’ and ‘easy to use’ are the order of the day for the Samsung Jet. This carries on into the menu system, which is split into two main sections. The first is a selection of three home screens, which you can populate with widgets, from clocks to Facebook update mini-apps.

It’s easy to overload your home screens with these, making them into a virtual widget junkyard, but at least you’re given the freedom to customise the screens as you like. Widgets are stored in a pull-out tab to the left of each screen, and you just drag them over onto the home screens from there.

If you like to keep it simple, you can forget about populating these screen altogether as there's also an additional three standard menu screens featuring icons for most day-to-day mobile tasks. Unfortunately, in paring back the customisation options for these, we’re left with just three backgrounds to choose from to alter the look of these- all pretty uninspiring colour gradients.

Flicking between these menus is once again quick but, nimble as the phone itself may be, it’s still held back by the fact it doesn’t use a capacitive screen. Instead, it uses a resistive one. This requires more pronounced prods in order for them to be picked up- more light and carefree taps or swipes won’t be registered.

Delving further into the phone doesn’t so much bring more negative points, but a few more superfluous ones. There’s actually a third menu system in the Jet, a 3D cube you can rotate with your finger, accessed by pressing a button on the side of the phone- let’s call it the show-off button.

The show-off button seems to have three primary functions. The first is let you show off a swish menu system to your friends in the pub, as a comeback when they tell you that their phone’s got an 8-megapixel camera. The second, a bit redundant now, is so that Samsung can show off the phone’s processor with the fancy 3D cube effect.

The third is just to convince you that you do have a super-powerful 3D-capable phone, even if it does cost less than an iPhone. Nice as the 3D cube menu is, featuring links to the phone’s entertainment functions, we can’t imagine using it much after having set up the Jet’s home screens. Although generally slick as the 800Mhz of clout would suggest, we found that the show-off button menu would chug inexplicably at times.

Still, maybe you’ll simply be sucked in by the glitter- after all the button used to access the menu is eminently thumb-able once you know it’s there, and it does highlight the phone’s strong points- the fun stuff. On top of the Jet is a 3.5mm jack – our must-have for any phone wanting replace your MP3 player - while the microSD slot gives enough storage potential for a reasonably large music library. The Jet comes with 2GB internal memory to start you off.

For a phone that’s got its eye on entertainment, the Samsung Jet thankfully stays away from aesthetic design gimmicks, although the keypad is crafted in the image of the 3D cube menu. Y’know, the one we find a bit superfluous. The phone’s back features a low-key but striking metallic red finish that only sticks out when it catches the light. It’s the kind of finish that’ll emit coos from onlookers when you point it out without causing you to hate your phone three months down the line, once you’ve grown tired of it.

Although we’ve painted the Samsung Jet as a bit of a good time girl, keen on impressing you in ways that aren’t particularly deep or meaningful, the areas of the phone’s feature set as yet undiscussed are perfectly respectable too. It’s got WiFi built-in, GPS, HSDPA - all the usual suspects, essentially.

Still, we’re still left wishing the Jet had that extra notch of responsiveness afforded by a capacitive touchscreen. Then again, could the phone be the price it is if it did feature one? We can’t be sure. Falling some way short of the highest of high-end phones in the pricing stakes, the Samsung Jet’s a winner. A good screen, decent camera and customisable home screen interface gel together to make the Jet a slick specimen.