PREVIOUS ARTICLENEXT ARTICLE

By Thomas McKinnon 28 September 2009

0

She’s A Genius by Jet has been blaring in the office all spring, it’s just so catchy. It’s remarkable just how genius the Samsung Jet turns out to be with cool features like its gesture initiated shortcuts, multitasking and auto-switching to speakerphone as well.

Processing

Samsung is marketing the Jet as “smarter than a smartphone”. We don’t know if that is necessarily the case, but it is definitely faster. The powerful 800 MHz processor is the fastest we’ve come across yet. This impressive processing power ensures that apps open near instantaneously and that you can navigate through menus at a blistering pace.

All this is housed in a small 110 g body that also sports a 3.5 mm jack and micro USB port. The Jet with a red prism type effect on its back looks ridiculously attractive, despite feeling a little plasticy.

Interface

The only trouble is that Samsung decided to use their proprietary TouchWiz interface with its widget driven focus. Our previous experiences of TouchWiz haven’t been fantastic as navigation felt less than intuitive.

This isn’t a train smash though as Samsung have updated the interface to make it more user-friendly. It has three home screens that you can customise with widgets, a three screen grid menu and a cute multimedia cube. Flipping through these various screens via the Jet’s responsive resistive touch screen actually turned out to be a dream. Although a capacitive screen would still have been a nice touch as things like scrolling through contact lists was a little frustrating.

Almost everything else

The Jet’s 3.1" AMOLED display with WVGA (480 x 800) resolution is remarkable, and watching video on the go is a real treat with excellent colour and contrast. Wi-Fi, 3G HSDPA and A-GPS are all there and even Microsoft Exchange Active Sync for good measure.

The Jet’s Dolfin browser now features a one-touch zoom function making it far easier to browse pages, which in conjunction with the ability to view up to five pages simultaneously makes browsing a treat.

A decent five megapixel camera and video camera complete with editing apps onboard rounds things off nicely.

But is it a smartphone?

Faster than a smartphone the Jet maybe, but whether it’s as smart is debatable. Without an apps store or a dedicated music service available, the Jet is dumbed down. While the Jet can multi-task and features some satisfactory apps, it has a very limited number of apps currently available to customise it.

PROS
A brilliant AMOLED display, all round connectivity and an 800 MHz processor.
CONS
Samsung still lack an app store and TouchWiz is not the best interface around.
USER COMMENTS

Read
Magazine Online
TechSmart.co.za is South Africa's leading magazine for tech product reviews, tech news, videos, tech specs and gadgets.
Start reading now >
Download latest issue

Have Your Say


What new tech or developments are you most anticipating this year?
New smartphone announcements (43 votes)
Technological breakthroughs (27 votes)
Launch of new consoles, or notebooks (14 votes)
Innovative Artificial Intelligence solutions (27 votes)
Biotechnology or medical advancements (21 votes)
Better business applications (132 votes)