Samsung S8000 Jet review: Airborne

Introduction

It's that time of the year and the living is easy: pool parties, blockbuster movies and new gadgets. The Samsung S8000 Jet sure knows good timing and gallantly promises a bit of everything - style, entertainment and impressively light and lively handling. It's a thing to show off to your friends and help you enjoy and capture the hot moments of the season.

The S8000 Jet is not exactly jet set stuff but claims a big piece of the touchscreen action. And it knows who it needs to kill to get it. The Jet is the direct and brave answer to the LG KM900 Arena and boy isn't it a tough call between these two. The S8000 Jet has the fancy 3D interface upgrade, 5MP camera with D1 recording, Wi-Fi, GPS and all the stuff to put this touchscreen phone in the desirable category. We have a thriller of a local derby and the high-end contenders need to do everything and do it well.

Samsung S8000 Jet offical photos

We were impressed in our preview with the new visual upgrades of the TouchWiz interface, which combine the best part of the 3D LG cube and page-organized iPhone menus. But now it's time for the final and deciding round with the Samsung S800 Jet.

Here is the full ammo of the S8000 Jet, along with what might be the deal breakers.

Key features

• 3.1" 16M-color resistive AMOLED touchscreen of 800 x 480 pixel resolution
• 800 MHz processor
• 5 megapixel auto focus camera with dual-LED
• Geotagging, image stabilization, face detection, Smile Shot, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR)
• Latest TouchWiz 2.0 UI with Motion UI, Media Gate 3D, Smart Unlock
• Quad-band GSM support and 3G with HSDPA 3.6 Mbps and HSUPA support
• Wi-Fi
• GPS receiver
• 2 / 8 GB onboard storage
• microSD card slot with microSDHC support
• Built-in accelerometer for screen auto rotate and turn-to-mute
• Proximity sensor for display auto turn-off
• TV out
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• microUSB port and stereo Bluetooth v2.0
• Web browser has full Flash and Java support
• DivX/XviD video support
• DNSe and SRS sound effect
• Smart dialing
• Speaker Call

Main disadvantages

• No smartphone capabilities
• microSD slot is under the back cover
• Smart dialing only works for numbers, not contact names
• No preinstalled GPS navigation software

As the specs suggest, the Samsung S8000 Jet is nothing short of a multimedia monster. The picture is complete with full Flash support - still quite a rarity among today's handsets - DivX/XviD video codecs and great music package. The camera is a high-end snapper with premium features that the LG Arena doesn't have, while the Smart Unlock, Speaker Call and Motion UI just add to its uniqueness.

Samsung S8000 Jet in our office

Unboxing the Jet

The Samsung S8000 is a high-end multimedia handset, but comes with an almost standard package. There is the mandatory charger, microUSB cable, 2GB microSD card and a two-piece headset. Its remote ends on a 3.5 mm jack so you have quite a choice of alternative headphones to use with the phone. A bunch of leaflets and a CD with the latest Samsung PC Studio are also supplied.

Unboxing Samsung S800 Jet • the headset

The only extra thing you get with the Jet is a weirdly designed leather carrying case. It hides almost the whole phone except the speaker, mouthpiece and the 3D Cube button. The two call buttons positions are marked, so you can take calls without pulling the phone out. Of course there's no way to know who is calling.

The weird carrying case

Samsung S8000 Jet 360-degree view

With a touchscreen device like the Samsung S8000 Jet the seen-one-seen-all impression can't be helped. The big screen on the front and the few buttons underneath are non-negotiable. This is a limitation of the form factor and makers are pressured to give their devices a distinct face.

For a phone aiming to make a big splash, the S8000 Jet looks and feels quite palm-friendly. At 109 x 53.5 x 11.9 mm and 99g, the S8000 Jet is a just about the same size as the LG KM900 Arena, but a few grams lighter.

Design and construction

As we said, the touchscreen form factor does limit the design somewhat, but Samsung still need to work a bit harder to distinguish the handsets in their own line-up. Their touch-enabled phones are beginning to look so similar that it's difficult to identify which one's which. Phones nowadays are not only about the features, but the style and the look as well.

Size comparison: Apple iPhone 3GS, LG KM900 Arena vs Samsung S8000 Jet and Samsung S5630

The Samsung S8000 Jet front is quite sleek with black glass framing the display, while the surface around the buttons is made of a matte material that helps keep fingerprints away. However, apart from that area of the phone, the rest is so fingerprint-prone that at some point you may feel the need to get some tape and play at being a CSI agent.

The edge is bordered with a strip of glossy black plastic, which is quite nice and in fact is the only thing that really distinguishes it from other Samsung offerings.

The back, however, is unique and surprisingly stylish, yet at the same time a huge letdown as the glossy plastic attracts a lot of smudges. Anyway, the dark red and black stripes are shaded in such a way that any direct lighting creates interesting - holographic - effects.

The Jet's front of course is dominated by the display and the 3.1-incher beats the LG Arena screen by a whisker. And with a WVGA resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, the S8000 Jet punches its weight with other devices offering the highest resolution on the market. Now add the AMOLED technology that provides contrast, unrivaled by any LCD and you get the idea that with the Jet you receive top-notch image quality.

Not the biggest screen, but pleasingly crisp and responsive

The only thing that stops it from being perfect is the resistive display. Or at least that was our first thought. But when we started tapping on the Jet's screen, we instantly forgot the technology behind it. As we already saw the same kind of display in our Samsung M8910 Pixon12 review we have no concerns about resistive displays used by Samsung any more.

It reacts to even the slightest touch just as a capacitive screen does, with the added bonus that you can use anything you want to interact with it - stylus, pencil, nails, gloves, etc. Writing, scrolling, typing, zooming - everything is as easy as on the capacitive screens of Samsung's M7600 and S8300.

Sadly, there is always something to spoil the deal and here it's the disappointing sunlight legibility. Performance in bright sun is the same as the Pixon12 and far from the best we've seen. Yes, you will be able to see most of the screen on a bright sunny day, but it's far from perfect and users will be struggling under direct sunlight. We know it's not the best part of a Samsung handset, but it shouldn't be make or break.

The Jet screen beats the LG Arena's by 0.1"

There are three hardware buttons below the display - Call and End keys obviously and the center button. Now, that's where we see the major change compared to the pre-market unit we first tested. To begin with, the control now looks transparent like a gem cut into a cube shape. A 3D Cube it sure is but it doesn't launch the Cube launcher like we saw in the earlier Jet sample. A short press toggles the main menu on and off while a press and hold launches the Task Manager. So, that leaves the former task-switch knob (right next to the shutter key) in charge of the Cube Launcher and the Motion Gate.

The buttons on the front are large and solid to press

The video-call camera and a slightly oversized ambient light sensor are above the display. Right next to them is the proximity sensor that takes care of turning the display off when you hold the handset next to your ear in a conversation.

Video-call camera and ambient light sensor

On the left side of the phone is the volume rocker and on the right side are the hardware Lock (or Hold) key and the Cube Launcher/ Motion Gate / shutter key combo. The latter is not a single button as we've seen in a number of recent Samsung handsets but a rocker-style control where the shutter key is tangibly raised. This can be half-pressed to handle auto-focus. All controls are easy to operate in both single and two-handed use scenarios.

One rocker-styled control on each side plus a hardware lock button

The top handles connectivity - it houses a 3.5 mm audio jack and a standard microUSB port with a protective cover. The phone charges off the microUSB port - just like most of its recent siblings - and is quite useful as you can leave the charger at home when traveling if you have a computer with you. There's nothing much to note at the bottom - only the mouthpiece is there.

The microUSB slot, audio jack and the power button • the bottom side

As usual, the 5 megapixel camera lens is at the back of the device along with the dual LED flash. It is not protected by a lens cover but there is a slightly raised edge surrounding it.

The back of the Samsung S8000 Jet also hosts the small loudspeaker grill, with a small nub so the speaker isn't muffled when you put the handset flat on a desk.

The lack of stereo speakers is a shame, especially given that otherwise the device is a very capable portable media player.

The back is plasticky and attracts smudges, but still looks amazing

Under the back cover you'll find a 1080 mAh battery and the SIM and microSD card slots. Typically for the latest Samsung devices the memory slot is under the back cover and even though it's hot-swappable, you still need to open the cover first. If the S8000 Jet is meant to compete with the Arena successfully, it should have much more internal memory than 500 MB or at least a more accessible microSD slot.

The microSD card slot is hot-swappable but under the rear cover

The build quality is quite solid. The rear cover is not held by any complicated lock but fits solidly in place and there are no audible creaks or other disturbing sounds. The front buttons don't wobble and have a very satisfying press.

Samsung S8000 Jet in the hand

The Samsung S8000 weighs in at 99 grams and is very pocket friendly. It feels as good in the pocket as it does in the hand. With a size identical to the LG Arena it should find its place as one of the most compact multimedia devices on the market.

TouchWiz UI just got better

Samsung S8000 Jet comes with the latest edition of the home-baked TouchWiz interface. This time it is spiced with more eye-candy and accelerometer control with the Motion gate and the Media gate applications.

If you have been keeping track, you would know that the number of available effects has been reduced since the early pre-release samples of the S8000 Jet, but what has remained is still enough to make the Jet quite a treat to navigate. Those effects are sure to wow users but if you want even faster response you are free to switch them off.

The Jet packs the latest version of the lively TouchWiz UI

Another thing that has an extremely positive effect on the user experience is the exceptionally sensitive screen. Even if you are used to capacitive touchscreen you are unlikely to feel the slightest discomfort with the Jet. The 800 Mhz processor that Samsung were so keen to brag about is also doing a great job for a really responsive and neat ticking device.

The Samsung Jet has the same homescreen layout as the Pixon12 monster of a cameraphone we recently reviewed. It gives you three different non-scrollable screens that you can alternate by sideways sweeps. The current selection is indicated by three thin bars at the top.

You can fill up each of those homescreens with as many widgets as you like and assign a different wallpaper each. The widgets are tucked in a tray on the left side of the screen by default. Once you open the tray, all you need to do is drag them to a place on the screen where you would like them to be. If you decide that you no longer need a widget just drag it back to the tray.

Widgets are mini-applications that you can use to customize your home screen. One shows the time in two time zones, another has the weather and so on. Even the operator logo is a widget and can be tucked away.

Some widgets are handy like the AccuWeather thingy that shows the local weather and a clock with two time zones. There are others like the 'Go on a diet' or 'Quit smoking' that count the days you've been 'clean'.

There are widgets that simply serve as shortcuts to an application, but there are also some widgets that help you run the others. One brings up settings for both the offline widgets (the one that don't need an internet connection) and online widgets (such as the aforementioned AccuWeather) where you can set up the network connections for the online widgets. The other very helpful 'meta' widget help you search for new widgets to download.

Selecting a widget to download launches the browser and directs it to a page with a short description of the widget and a screenshot. At the time of writing, there are 24 of them available to download but this number should increase as the user (and developer) community grows. You can also find updates for the already downloaded widgets that contain bugfixes and new features.

Aside from the homescreen, Samsung have also rearranged the main menu. It now stretches over three different screens, which are sweep-scrollable sideways. The reason that so much more space was needed is the fact that almost all apps are now brought to the main menu, arranged in a flat iPhone-like structure. You will only need to dig deeper for the settings but if those were also to be brought to the fore, the main menu would most certainly have become a huge mess.

The main menu has a flatter iPhone-like strcture

You can pick between three different themes for the menu and you can also assign a custom background. The image selected sits slightly dimmed in the background so that it doesn't interfere with the icons and hurt usability. Strangely enough, the Jet doesn't allow the user to reshuffle the main menu as the Pixon12 did.

The three available themes

In both the main menu and the homescreen, you have a button bar at the bottom that features four virtual keys - keypad, phonebook, messages and a button to toggle between the homescreen and menu.

The Samsung S8000 Jet, like most recent Samsung phones, comes complete with multitasking. The task manager gets launched by pressing and holding the hardware Menu key. It has a nice 3D view and a more classical grid one. You can alternate or even close the tasks straight from there. A "End all applications" key is also present in case you don't want to waste time closing applications one by one.

The Task manager packs a cool 3D view mode

A true cheer raiser around the office is the Samsung S8000 Jet's Smart unlock feature. First featured on Samsung S5600 and Samsung S5230, Smart unlock allows users to not only unlock the phone but open a menu item or an application, or even dial a contact, just by drawing a letter on the unlock screen.

The smart unlock is one of the best things about the S8000 Jet

Each letter from A to Z can be set to trigger one of those actions. For instance, you can use it to start features like the music player, messaging, web browser, Java apps or the dialing keypad. It also makes it a piece of cake to call some of your favorite contacts without even needing to unlock the phone.

Media gate

Two new exciting multimedia features are making anofficial debut with the Samsung S8000 Jet. The first is the 3D Media gate. Launched upon a short press of the dedicated button right above the shutter key, it brings out a cube UI that you flick on screen for quick and easy access to six key multimedia features: Photo album, Music player, Video player, FM Radio, Games and Web browser.

Quite impressively, you can really roll the cube in all directions and it reacts fluidly to the lightest and fastest of your sweeps. Even if you tossed and spun the cube around so the side of the cube displays its icon upside down or side up, it will smoothly rotate to its proper viewing position. An icon bar at the bottom of the screen also features the six applications of the cube launcher - if you tap any of them, the cube will roll to the relevant side. Or you can choose to tap and hold to launch the desired feature without rotating the cube.

The Media gate is quite impressive

Once you are done rolling the cube and click on one of its sides, the respective app will launch a nice 3D interface to let you browse your photos or the tracks you'd like to play. It's not the regular interface of the actual multimedia apps, but a new and cool (albeit probably not the most practical) redesign.

Motion gate

The Samsung Motion gate a.k.a. Motion UI featured on the Samsung S8000 Jet is Samsung's own motion recognition engine which gives you access to your multimedia favorites just by tapping, tilting or flipping the handset. It gets activated by a long press on the same middle key on the handset's right side, which launches the Media Gate.

A cube appears on screen again but this time only two of its sides are usable and you can pick which two applications should go there. The available options are camera, music player, FM radio, speed-dialing a favorite contact and motion game.

The Motion gate allows motion-based control of two multimedia features of your choice

To launch a Motion gate application you need to flick the phone left or right. The Samsung S8000 Jet apparently has a remarkably sensitive accelerometer as it precisely recognized almost every command.

Once you launch an app through the Motion gate (except speed-dialing which simply dials the predefined contact) you once again get an interface different from the one you can find in the menu. It allows you to control its features by double tapping on the phone's panel, snapping the phone left or right or flipping it.

For example you can double-tap to play/pause the music player and snap it left or right to skip to the previous or the next track.

In case it seems somewhat complicated to you, Samsung have also included a motion tutorial that explains how each gesture works.

Not much more to want from the phonebook

The Samsung S8000 Jet comes with a phonebook that can store up to 2000 contacts with multiple fields. You can assign a photo to each contact, or even a video if you so wish. On the downside, those pics can only be used as caller ID and are not visible in the contact list. You can view contacts in the phone memory, the SIM card, or both.

The Jet offers two search patterns for the phonebook. The first is the traditional search by typing a part of the contact's name. It doesn't work all that well with the virtual keyboards however. You have one extra click to open the text box to type and only after you tap 'Done' do you get to see the search results.

Samsung Jet's phonebook

So, we ended up using the alphabetic scroll most of the time. Quite nicely, Samsung have provided the option to place the scroll bar on either side of the screen to facilitate single-hand usage for both left and right-handed users.

Frankly, the Jet screen size favors single-handed use anyways but we guess the variable scroll-bar position is still a nice touch. Of course, the kinetic scrolling is also available in the search but it's not quite so convenient in longer contact lists.

We like it that this time Samsung found enough space next to contact's names to place a Send Message and a Call button. The photo you may have attached is not displayed.

When editing a contact there are first and last name fields along with a field for the display name. So you can have a contact appear by his nickname while still keeping the contact's full name on record.

Editing Dee Dee's contact info

Another useful feature to avoid duplicate entries is that the phone will display a warning if the number for the new contact you just entered is already in the phonebook.

Photo contacts if you like

Just as most recent Samsung the S8000 Jet features an interestingly looking alternative to the phonebook. While it still relies on the regular contact database, the Photo contacts application might save you the effort of ever entering the phonebook again, once you've filled it up.

The app itself allows you to tag parts of photos, which can then be used as shortcuts to various contacts. That might be pretty handy if you are into grouping your contacts. You can take a photo of your colleagues and another one of your buddies and than tag each face to its respective phonebook entry. Then you are one photo away from calling everyone in for a poker night at yours.

With Photo contacts you can use faces instead of names for browsing your contacts

Bear in mind that when adding a photo, faces are detected automatically but tagging is manual, even if you've already tagged that contact.

So in general photo contacts might not be the most practical application, but it is certainly one of the funniest ways to dial a number.

Call management is fine, Speaker Call we like

Quite expectedly the Samsung S8000 Jet is very good at its main job - making calls. Reception was problem-free with excellent voice quality during calls.

The dialer gets activated through its reserved shortcut on the homescreen or from the main menu. You can proceed to dial just like you would on any other phone. Unfortunately the smart dial feature works with numbers only, instead of names, which makes it pretty useless. When you punch in some digits, the contacts whose numbers contain them pop up but we doubt it anyone really remembers just a part of a contact's number.

The smart dial feature is a no-go on the Jet

Normally that app should search contacts, whose names contain the letters corresponding to those digits but we guess it will take another device to get that right.

As most recent Samsungs, the Jet has a nice accelerometer-based telephony feature. It allows you to mute the ringtone of an incoming call by turning it face down.

The Jet also packs another cool accelerometer feature, which we do like. The so-called Speaker Call allows it to automatically activate the speakerphone when you take the handset off your ear during a call and place it on a level surface. Lift the phone back up to your ear and the regular mode kicks back in. Be warned however that switching modes takes a second or two so don't just stick it to your ear right away.

Calling Dexter on the Jet

Samsung S8000 Jet also has a proximity sensor, which automatically turns off the display when you hold it next to your ear. Working like a charm, it makes sure you won't accidently press anything with your ear, while giving you instant access to all the on-screen controls when you take it off.

New events like missed calls or incoming messages show up on the homescreen as a widget. It has three tabs each signaling a different type of event. It also displays the sender's number and the time of the call or text.

Finally the Samsung Jet comes complete with a reject list option that allows you to selectively block numbers you don't want to receive calls or messages from.

As for the loudspeaker performance, here is how the Jet ranks alongside some of the other devices we've measured. You can find more details about the test itself, as well as the full list of tested devices here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G	66.1	62.1	71.7	Below Average
LG KM900 Arena	70.9	68.2	78.3	Good
Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH	70.1	66.7	75.8	Good
Samsung S8000 Jet	75.5	68.1	77.9	Very Good
Samsung S5230 Star	77.1	75.7	82.0	Excellent

Messaging is nicely organized

The Samsung S8000 Jet messaging department is an exact copy of what we saw on the Samsung M8910 Pixon12. The handset has a shared editor for SMS and MMS and a separate one for emails.

The SMS and MMS editor is the familiar intuitive application which allows you to add the recipient from your phonebook, from your recent contacts or punch it in manually. You can also add a whole group in the recipient field for mass messages, instead of adding contacts one by one.

Sending Dexter a message

The messages can be broken down into up to 15 parts for sending if you exceed their maximum character limit (standard 160).

Email support is also duly covered. There's a Gmail icon in the Google menu but all it does is open the gmail.com webpage in your browser. You might as well use it if you prefer web-based access but the native email client seems the far better option to us.

The greatest problem we had with it is that it didn't automatically detect the settings for Gmail so we had to enter them manually, but once that's done, handling email is a breeze. Still most other brands are already providing some automatic configurations for the email clients on their handsets and maybe it's about time Samsung did something about it.

The email client could not configure out mailbox settings automatically

The downloading email limit is 5MB, enough for receiving most types of files. If you receive an office document as an attachment, you will be able to view it as well.

As far as text input, the Samsung S8000 Jet has support for all three options that touchscreen handsets can offer. The first one is the traditional thing - typing on a customary (albeit virtual) 3 x 4 alphanumeric keypad.

An alphanumeric keypad is the first text input option

Turning the phone on its side automatically expands that numpad to a full-fledged on-screen QWERTY keyboard. The 3.1" display provides enough space for this layout, especially given that the number keys and symbols are in separate screens that toggle on and off upon a tap. Typing is really comfortable by touchscreen standards, once again the very sensitive display and the haptic feeback count in favor.

The full QWERTY keyboard is easily the most comfortable typing method on the Jet

The final option is handwriting recognition. While very intuitive and precise in most cases, the lack of embedded stylus is almost ruling it out as an option. If you don't mind your stylus (mind you, there isn't one in the retail box so you will have to find it yourselves) dangling on the side of the phone, be our guest.

We cannot see handwriting recognition working without an embedded stylus

File browser cuts it

True to its pedigree, the Samsung S8000 Jet is equipped with one of the most elaborate file managers you can find on a feature phone. It can display the files and folders on the phone memory or the memory card, and even both at once with matching folders nicely brought together.

There are folders for different types of files (images, video, sounds) and this allows the handset to sort the memory contents. However, you are not forced to follow this structure - you can place your files wherever you want and the phone will have no problems handling them.

There's nothing to complain about the file browser

You can copy or move files - both one by one or in bulk, and you can create and delete new folders (except the default folders, like Images, Sounds and so on).

When deleting multiple files you can choose to delete protected images, contact photos and so on. By default those options are off so you won't accidentally delete a contact photo or a ringtone.

Files can also be sent via Bluetooth, again one by one or in bulk. Throughout the whole file manager, you can pick files you would like to lock to prevent accidental deletion.

Luckily, the Jet has almost no issues handling memory cards unlike some of its siblings which we recently reviewed. Initialization and reading a 16GB memory card isn't the fastest around but it isn't frustratingly slow either.

Gallery improved

In line with other recent Samsung handsets, the S8000 Jet has two different picture galleries. They are both optimized for touch operation and very user-friendly, plus this time each sports a cool new view mode.

The first gallery is an inherent part of the file manager and accessing it is as simple as opening any folder that contains images. It allows sorting your images by date, type, name, and size.

The gallery offers grid, list and a nicely looking zig-zag view layouts. The latter is definitely the most visually elaborate but also certainly the least functional as it needs quite a lot of scrolling in some folders.

The zig zag view mode is a nice touch to the file manager gallery

Going through photos is quite fast with the Jet, we're delighted with image browsing speed. Once you open an individual image, you can sweep you fingers across the screen to see the next images without having to return to the image list. Alternating portrait and landscape modes is automatic thanks to the built-in accelerometer.

Alternating portrait and landscape modes is automatic

Samsung have also implemented the so-called one-finger zooming, which is recently getting new press hype by Samsung. It's marketed as a novel feature, but it's been around for quite some time already on the original Samsung i900 Omnia. And we just saw it implemented on the Pixon12.

Zooming is extra simple and takes only a single move of your thumb - you just need to hold it on the screen for a second and then drag up or down for zooming in or out. This method works in both galleries (as well as the web browser) and at first glance it even seems more convenient than the pinching gesture on the iPhone.

The one-finger zooming is a nice little feature to have onboard

The alternative to the picture gallery is the Photo browser. Strangely, the Media browser that we found on the Pixon12 wasn't present here and we really liked it a lot more. At least the images are ordered chronologically by default unlike the previous versions of the app we have seen. You can also opt for some other filters such as the usual "by file name" or the more intriguing "by color".

The Photo browser app

As usual the two galleries also have another Samsung proprietary accelerometer-based feature. It lets you browse pictures in fullscreen landscape mode by simply tilting your phone up and down.

The sensitivity of the tilt scrolling has been improved to a point that it is acceptable and quite usable. It is a great improvement over the rather annoying implementation in previous handsets that we have tested. But still, that feature is more of a gimmick and among the less practical things we've seen in the image gallery ever since it was first introduced on the original Pixon.

Minor facelift for the music player

The music player usually found on Samsung devices has received a light refresh on the S8000 Jet. It sports slightly different icons when browsing your tracks and a new way of displaying album art in Now Playing mode.

There're not much new stuff in the music player

The music player allows filtering tracks by author, album, and genre. Automatic playlists (recently added, most played etc.) are also generated and can subsequently be used as filters. If that doesn't seem enough, you can create your own custom playlists. The music player can naturally be minimized to play in the background.

The music player widget allows you to operate the app straight from the homescreen

The new option here is the '5.1 ch' button which, when activated, makes the player do its best to emulate 5.1 channel sound on normal stereo headphones. There are quite a few equalizer presets available, but no option to set up a custom equalizer.

Further on, the three different visualizations are a nice touch to the music player and the album browser (quite like the one on Omnia HD) takes after Apple's Cover Flow, something we quite appreciate.

Last, but certainly not least, the player is nicely touch-optimized for fast forward and rewind, just like the Pixon. This adds up to an excellent music application that can fully replace your portable MP3 player.

The music player widget is cool, allowing quick access to the full version of the application by only a single tap. You can also start, stop and skip tracks straight on the home screen if you prefer.

FM radio and RDS on board

The Samsung S8000 Jet features an FM radio with RDS. The advanced RDS allows displaying the station name on one row and some additional info on the other. It is complemented by a user-friendly and easily thumbable interface with several large buttons appearing on screen.

The Jet can automatically search and save all the available stations in your area. Alternative frequencies of a given station are automatically detected too, so you don't have to retune manually when traveling. There's an option to record radio broadcasts as well.

We are pretty pleased with the FM radio interface

The Samsung S8000 radio comes complete with an integrated music recognition feature called Find Music, which works much like Sony Ericsson's TrackID.

If you won't bother hitting the menu, the Radio widget on the homescreen gives you more immediate access. Tapping on it brings up the radio or you could just use the widget's controls to start/stop the radio or change the station. It can only jump saved stations though, and if you want to search you'll have to do it in the application.

Speaking of stations, you can save stations but they are labeled by just their frequency and can't be renamed. There's a separate list for your favorite stations.

Video player up to scratch

The video player has a nice touch-optimized interface and all the essentials are covered. It can play video files in fullscreen landscape mode (auto-rotated of course) and you can fast-forward and rewind videos in the same way as the music player.

The video player even provides the same 5.1 channel option when you plug in a headset. It also allows direct uploading of a video on the web.

Thumbs up for the video player

The Samsung S8000 Jet has no problem playing VGA or even 720x480 videos at 30 fps. Not a great surprise but worth noting since compressing videos to view on mobile devices can be a time-consuming business.

One of the best parts about the Samsung S8000 Jet video player is its DivX and XviD support. This means you no longer need to convert your videos to play them on your handset - just get them onboard and you are good to go.

Audio quality

The audio quality of Samsung S8000 Jet is pretty decent. The only concern we are having about its audio reproduction capabilities is about its somewhat shaky frequency response. It tends to deviate from the perfect for large parts of the audible range.

The rest of the scores however are excellent. Both the noise level and the dynamic range of the Jet can easily rival dedicated music player, and so can the stereo crosstalk. We have no grudges against the distortion levels either.

Here go the results so you can see for yourselves how the Jet compares to its competition. Things seem pretty equal between it and the LG KM900 Arena, with the LG winnig by the slightest of margins.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung S8000 Jet	+1.01 -2.03	-87.9	87.0	0.015	0.060	-85.9
LG KM900 Arena	+0.09, -1.61	-91.6	91.7	0.0017	0.101	-90.4
Samsung S5230 Star	+1.02, -2.41	-88.0	87.8	0.0045	0.222	-82.3
Apple iPhone 3GS	+0.01, -0.05	-92.1	92.1	0.0035	0.011	-95.0
Samsung M8800 Pixon	+0.54, -1.25	-86.4	85.7	0.0048	0.0165	-38.3
Sony Ericsson W995	+0.04, -0.40	-89.1	89.0	0.0033	0.048	-88.7

Samsung S8000 Jet vs LG KM900 Arena frequency response graphs

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

A pretty decent camera indeed

The Samsung S8000 Jet is equipped with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera that can take photos with a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1920 pixels. A dual LED flash is supposed to improve the low-light capabilities of the handset but as one might expect it hardly has a spectacular effect.

The camera also has a number of nice built-in features including the Samsung proprietary wide dynamic range option, the anti-shake digital image stabilization, geotagging, face detection, smile shot as well as viewfinder gridlines.

The camera interface is nicely touch-optimized and is certainly one of the most comfortable camera interfaces on a touchscreen device so far. The only complaint is that the auto focus settings are not visible in the viewfinder but are instead buried in the 3rd screen of the settings menu . Since this is one of the most frequently used controls it's pretty strange that Samsung didn't give it a more convenient place.

The camera user interface

The camera snaps photos quite quickly and is ready for the next photo without much delay. Disabling the automatic preview reduces the shot-to-shot time even further and makes taking photos with the Jet a very enjoyable experience.

As far as the image quality is concerned we are very pleased with the Samsung S8000 Jet camera results. The images have nice contrast, precise colors and good amount of resolved detail. The noise suppression algorithm is very mature, resulting in relatively noise-free photos, without too much fine detail loss. It still eradicates all detail in fine foliage, for example but we have seen cameraphones do far worse. Here go the samples so you can see for yourselves.

Samsung S8000 Jet camera sample photos

Synthetic resolution

We also snapped our resolution chart with the Samsung S8000 Jet Star. You can check out what that test is all about here.

Samsung S8000 Jet resolution chart photo • 100% crops

As you can see the Samsung S8000 Jet fails to deliver as much detail as the Nokia N97, while its noise reduction is obviously more aggressive. Still the difference between the two devices isn't too great so it probably won't even be noticeable in most cases.

Nokia N97

Nokia N97 resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Video recording - D1@30fps

The Samsung S8000 Jet can record D1 videos at 30 frames per second but unlike some phones where the video looks choppy even at 30 frames (some of the frames are interpolated so it's not really 30fps), this is pretty decent with vibrant colors and high levels of detail.

The camcorder viewfinder

Unfortunately the compression applied to the videos is a bit too strong, even at the highest quality setting, resulting in some artifacts.

Here goes a sample video for you to check out.

The S8000 Jet is also capable of recording slow motion video shot in QVGA resolution at 120fps. The quality of those isn't really impressive however with even more artifacts visible.

The general camera performance of the Samsung S8000 Jet is good, although of course it is no match for the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD or the M8910 Pixon12 imaging monsters.

Connectivity packs it all

The Samsung S8000 Jet is perfectly usable worldwide with its quad-band GSM support. The 3G network compatibility is not as complete with just the 900/2100 bands supported. The phone provides 3.6 Mbps HSDPA speeds.

Bluetooth is also available and comes with A2DP, which is no news on even lower end phones.

The microUSB port is quite welcome as it's a lot more popular than the proprietary port the previous gen Samsung phones used to come with. You can set up the phone to connect in mass storage mode or PC suite mode (Media player) or to prompt each time it's connected.

In mass storage mode it gives access to the memory card but not to the internal memory and you cannot use the phone for calls or data in this mode.

To round it all off, the Samsung S8000 Jet is WLAN enabled. It sports a nice Wi-Fi manager that makes it easy to add an access point to your list, while throwing some nice graphics in the same time. The problem is that you need to update each application's profile every time you want to use it with a different access point.

The Wi-Fi manager

This means that if you are at work and you have set your browser to use your office WLAN, you will have to reach for the profiles when you go home and switch to your own network, or if you want to use it over 3G. We really hope Samsung will come up with a more intuitive solution to automatically handle the networks currently available.

Almost perfect web browser

Samsung S8000 Jet is among the pioneers of the new WebKit-based Dolfin web browser, which is an in-house developed application. With full Flash support and the new one-finger zooming, it is one of the finest web browsers we have seen so far (especially on a feature phone).

The new web browser allows up to 5 pages to be open at the same time. Multiple downloads in the background are also supported and there is also a built-in AdBlocker. Unluckily, it tends to run out of resources pretty fast, displaying a warning with only three not really heavy sites opened at once. We cannot quite see it managing the promised five pages but we don't really use that many on a cell phone anyway.

The web browser is just great

The one-finger zooming works like a charm. Of course you can also rely on double tapping a block of text or an image and the handset will automatically zoom in on it. Another double tap and you are back to the previous zoom level.

On top of Flash and Java support, the new web browser also offers kinetic scrolling and fullscreen view mode. In all fairness, the kinetic scrolling is somewhat bumpy and not as smooth as on the iPhone but it still does the job. The lack of auto-complete when typing the address of already browsed websites is a bit of a letdown, though.

One of the Jet's web browser coolest features is the full Flash support, including Flash video

Organizer in full gear

The Samsung S8000 Jet has a good number of useful time-managing applications.

For starters, the calendar offers three views - daily, weekly and monthly. You can choose which calendar view should be default and you can pick the starting day of the week - the options are Monday or Sunday. However, with the Jet there are only two types of events available in the calendar. You can set the starting date and time of the event and set an alarm to act as a reminder.

The calendar is pretty standard

The alarm is widely customizable. You can set up to 10 alarms, each with the following configurable options - custom ringtone, volume, repetition days and name.

You can set up to 10 alarms with the Jet

The calculator of the Samsung S8000 is pretty much as basic as it gets. Among the other organizer offerings are a voice recorder, a world time application and a unit converter. The voice recorder limit is 60 minutes. A countdown timer and a stopwatch come in useful too.

Some more of the Jet's organizer apps

There are also to-do and memo applications for taking down tasks and notes. You can also use the memo widget to place a memo on the homescreen where you're unlikely to forget it. The widget and the application are separate so don't expect your memos to automatically pop up on screen. There's a to-do widget as well.

The Video editor also deserves a mention. It can handle videos of up to D1 resolution and there's the option to edit them - trimming, splitting or inserting text. You can even use photos instead of videos - you just set the time for them to be on screen (from 1 to 30 seconds).

The world clock allows you to quickly check out the time in any given time zone around the world.

The world clock app

Finally, one of the most important applications of the Samsung S8000 Jet organizer is the office document viewer that supports Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files. It's an application developed by Access and is one of the nicest additions to the software package.

The document reader is one of the nicest we have seen

The document viewer is quick enough when opening files; however, panning is rather slow. The document viewer also works in landscape mode (once again, rotating the screen automatically), which makes reading a little easier.

GPS Navigation is missing

Even though the Samsung S8000 Jet comes with a built-in GPS receiver our unit didn't have any voice-guided navigation application preinstalled. The Google maps app was available but it simply cannot match a full-fledged SatNav solution like the Samsung Navigator that was available on the Pixon12.

Luckily even if you are in the same spot as us, you can go and purchase the Samsung Navigator software separately. The rebranded Route66 product will set you back about 70 euro for a one-year voice guided navigation license for your region. Expensive it really is but at least you can be sure that its functionality and map data is sufficient.

Bear in mind though that this is strictly market dependent so you better check with your local provider if the Jet has any SatNav software preinstalled or not.

There aren't many real games onboard

Typical Samsung, the Jet offers a bunch of trial games. Entertaining though they might be, they can only keep you occupied for a short while and the full versions have to be bought for a small fee.

The trial games aren't much fun really

The only game section that isn't a trial is called Rollercoaster Rush. The Java title uses the built-in accelerometer for control and ranks decently on the fun scale.

The accelerometer-based Rollercoaster Rush saves the day

There is also another motion-based game inside the motion tutorial that comes preinstalled on the handset. With it being more a proof of concept than real gaming material you are extremely unlikely to play it more than once.

The motion game is hardly too entertaining

Final words

So, in a nutshell - the Samsung S8000 Jet is quick to please and keen to entertain. If not the feature load, we're impressed with the fluid, lively and ticking user interface. Sometimes fun to use does matter as much as all the extra features in world.

The best thing about the Samsung Jet is it really puts the user first. The rich and captivating interface and the sharp and inspired accelerometer controls make the Jet unique and entertaining. Furthermore Samsung have managed to deliver a pretty decent hardware package too. Sure, the S8000 Jet is no Pixon12 but it hardly has any significant omissions in the specs sheet either. Well the smartphone capabilities might be a deal-breaker for some but if that's what you signed for you won't be let down.

The main rival that the Samsung S8000 Jet has is of course the LG KM900 Arena. The two devices are almost perfect matches specs-wise with the Samsung taking a slight edge in terms of screen for packing a little larger AMOLED unit.

Some might argue that the capacitive technology of the Arena touchscreen is an advantage but we can assure them that they won't feel that much of a difference between the two. In fact the remarkable job Samsung have done of boosting the resistive display sensitivity lifts the user experience to such a high level. That said, the differences between the Jet and the Arena are so minor that picking between those two is strictly a matter of personal taste.

LG KM900 Arena

The only thing that can be held against the Jet is probably the not so prominent exterior, revealing little of the exciting little treats that lay in store for the user.

Anyway, the Samsung Jet is bound to rub shoulders with devices that fall in quite a different price range. But if smartphone skill is a must, you will simply have to dig extra deep in your pocket and asset your sights on Samsung i8910 Omnia HD (for the features) or an Apple iPhone (for the attitude). But hey, if some delighted Jet user should tell you their device kicks the snot out of Omnia HD and the iPhone, just don't be too quick to laugh it up.

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD • Apple iPhone 3GS

source : gsmarena