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After getting my Blackjack II for Christmas last year, I feel like I have enough experience with it, and it's not gonna be pretty. The main reason I wanted the Blackjack was because I did not want to look like some rich kid using his parents money to buy the newest technology. What a big mistake that was.
Looks: The phone looks OK, with a large screen and a small keypad fit into a box-like design. The black plastic looks tacky, and smears / scratches quite easily. The same goes for the screen; after just one day of putting my phone in my pocket, it had a large scratch in the screen. Plus, fingerprints collect on the phone so quickly that there's no hope of ever keeping your phone clean. The covers over the plugs for the charger and MicroSD card slot look good and match the silver strip running around the phone, and these have proved to be quite durable so far. The phone's not going to win a beauty contest, but I mainly bought the phone for its features.
Usage: I have not been very happy with the voice quality and coverage the phone receives, even though it has 3G connection. People's voices are soft and have a fuzzy quality to them, no matter where I receive a call. The speaker phone works well, and the volume can easily be adjusted mid-call with the two buttons on the side of the phone. The thing I have been most happy about with the phone is the keyboard because I text a lot and it has sped up my texting. However, the keys are small so it is easy to miss the key you are aiming for, and they often do not respond when you press them. Another nifty feature is that you can search through your texts by typing in words, so there's no need to scroll through the hundreds of texts in your inbox. This also works with your contact list. The scroll selector is in my opinion pointless; I always use the direction keys that are incorporated into the circular scroll wheel. One of my biggest complaints is a bug that sometimes does not let you unlock the phone, even if you press the correct keys. This requires a manual shutdown of the phone by pulling out the battery, which is a pain and takes a long time (takes 40 seconds to boot up). The last thing about usage is the battery life, which I have found to be stellar. I can go a week on a single charge sending around 20 texts a day and maybe making two or three 5 minutes call a day. This is remarkable for a phone on the 3G network of this size.
Extra Features: The three main features that I will talk about are the camera, internet and computer connection, all of which are a dismal failure. The camera may have a high pixel rate, but you need to turn the size and quality to the lowest setting in order to get a decent picture. With high quality settings on, the phone takes about 5 seconds to take a picture, and there's no way I'm going to get a good photo like that. There is internet access, but it's implemented so poorly I find myself using someone else's iPhone to browse the web. There's no way to zoom in and out, so most picture's are tiny. Plus, websites with text only display one word per line in the browser, so scrolling through reading an article is just a pain. ActiveSync, which syncs the phone with Outlook and enables you to transfer files to the phone, does not actually recognize the phone, so it is useless.
Summary: The phone was hailed as an iPhone killer, yet it is implemented so poorly that I can not help but wish I had splurged for an iPhone. Currently the iPhone 3G is the same price as the Blackjack II, so if your considering getting a Blackjack, go for the iPhone. The only reason to get a Blackjack would be for the superior keypad that helps immensely with texting, but there should be keyboard apps out soon for the iPhone using the Apps store that brings texting on the iPhone up to an acceptable speed. Just hope your local store is not sold out of iPhones!
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