In a Nutshell... Outstanding (Samsung GT S8000 Jet)

Member Name: blonde_girl774

Product:	Samsung GT S8000 Jet
Date:	24/07/09 (284 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to Use, Great Functions, Responsive Touch Screen & Sleek Looking.

Disadvantages: Battery Life.

For the past few years I've taken advantage of O2's sim only contracts which offer you a one month contract with great benefits in terms of free minutes and texts at quite a reasonable price. The reason it's so reasonable is the fact that you don't get a phone which means for the past year I've had a pay as you go phone which I paid about £70 for. It's quite a good deal really but I did get a bit sick of having a basic phone when all of my friends were surfing the internet and doing all sorts of things on theirs! I finally decided to take the plunge after months of envy and commit to a contract in order to get a more functional, modern and stylish phone. I opted to change my mobile provider too and move to Vodafone to secure a better contract and a better phone, all at a better price! I'm not really a pro at writing mobile phone reviews and nor am I a technical genius so you'll have to bare with me!

After doing a bit of research and testing some phones out I finally decided on the Samsung Jet which is one of Samsung's most recent phones having only been released in Summer 2009 in the UK. It's just under 11cm in length, just over 5cm in width and just over 1cm in depth making it a fairly average size in the world of touch screen phones. It weights 110g which I found to be a little heavier than other phones on the market although to me it seems a fairly good weight for the size of the phone. Visually to look at the phone it's very attractive, clean cut and sleek looking as well ; the front of the phone is black in colour with a screen measuring 6.8 cm by 4.2cm. There are two small call buttons at the bottom with a hexagon shape central button between them. Samsung is imprinted in small silver letters on the top of the phone. The back of the phone is a very dark red colour when in the light.

In terms of the battery life the phone is advertised as offering 250 hours stand by time and 180 minutes talk time. This doesn't really mean much to me as I never talk for a continuous 180 minutes to test out these claims or theories. In terms of realistic usage I find I have to charge the phone every two days at least, this does involve me sending about twenty texts a day, making two or three short calls and accessing the internet several times a day for varying amounts of time. The battery doesn't last as long as other phones I've had but then again the screen size is much larger on this phone and in terms of applications there is far more you can do with this phone which obviously depletes the battery. I don't really want to generalise about the battery as it does depend how often you use it and what for, the battery has six bars on it and these will give you a warning when the battery life is getting low.

The phone is easy to use; the main screen has all your usual icons at the top such as the clock and the battery life along with a small arrow on the left hand side indicating that there is a pull out menu available showing widgits. These widgits are merely picture links to things such as Facebook, the music player and your calender so you can choose some of them to store on your main screen for easy access by simply dragging them across. There are three main screens and you simply need to slide your finger along the screen vertically to move through them. Each screen can hold different widgits and you can arrange them how you wish, for example having all the social networking ones on one menu screen and they can be customised to have different backgrounds too. At the bottom are four icons for keypad, phonebook, messages and menu which you simply need to click on.

The main menu is accessed by clicking on the small hexagonal button towards the base of the phone. The menu this has three different screens which are needed to showcase all the different options. You can move between the screens by simply sliding your finger horizontally across the screen in either direction. All your typical facilities can be found here such as Call Log, Music Player, Messages, Camera, Alarms, Settings and so on. There are also some new options that I haven't come across before such as Google, Internet and Wi Fi. The menu icons are all self explanatory and although it does take a bit of getting used to I quickly found out where the icons were that I used a lot and so now hardly bother with half of them. I prefer this icon style menu to simply having a list of the various options too, it's easier to see what it is you are looking for and also looks more modern I think.

Now onto the main question that worried me a great deal before I actually ordered this phone, the touch screen facility. I've heard some horror stories about touch phones but I'd just like to say that none of them apply. I absolutely love the touch facility, the phone is so responsive to even the lightest touch - I have acrylic nails and it even responds to the lightest touch of my nail. I've had no problems getting used to it and have found it to be very sensitive but not to the point where if you simply hover over one button it will select it. You really don't need to exert much pressure on the screen at all and I can honestly say I prefer this to the old fashioned keypad. The display on the screen is brilliant; it's bright with high contrast so you can see it outdoors in the sunlight much easier. The resolution is 800 x 480 pixels which apparently makes it the best screen even seen on a Samsung phone to date!

Rather than go into every single application on the phone I'm just going to touch on the main ones. Firstly making a call is extremely easy; you can either select the keypad option from the main screen and manually enter a number or select the phonebook option from the main screen and either scroll through or search your contacts. You then can either use the green call button on the screen or the manual press button at the base of the screen, the same applies to end a phone call. Writing a message is easy, simply go into messages and then choose create a message (or email). Typing on the phone can be done as you normally would by clicking twice on a "2" for a "b" or three times on a "7" for an "r." Or you can opt to use the predictive text which is again very similar to a keypad phone and the phone will automatically predict what words you could be spelling with your combination of letters.

Something that never seems to completly impress me is the message and ringtone volume of many phones but this one is much better. The speaker can obviously have it's volume raised or lowered using a simple two part key on the side of the phone and the sound quality is excellant. The message and the ringtone volume can be altered as you see fit and the phone comes with a range of tones available. You can also easily download new ones if you're not happy with the selection which I must get around to doing! When I got my phone the vibration mechanism was constantly on which means that even when typing a message, each time you hit a key you will feel a mini vibration, this can be turned off if you wish. The alarm also has a fairly loud ringtone which is good for me as my old phone was far too quiet and it never actually did the job of waking my up properly!

Another big factor for some people is the camera, with the Jet you get a 5 megapixels camera which is really good quality. I was surprised at the clearness of the photos and the different range of options that are available when it comes to taking photos such as the different flash options, the auto focus option, the smile detection, etc. According to other online sites this isn't the best quality camera that's available in a phone right now but it's certainly not a bad camera either. I tend to only use my phone to take the odd picture when I haven't got a camera handy so it certainly does the job as far as I'm concerned. The video camera also allows you to record videos and it can play back those videos in high resolution in DivX and Xvid formats without conversion although this means nothing to me! A second camera on the front of the phone means you can video call over a 3G network.

There are a number of features that I was quite surprised at and genuinely quite like; for example you can turn the phone on its side while writing a message and it will present you with a full computer style keyboard. You can also shake the phone and tilt it certain ways to achieve certain functions such as changing a song on the music player, viewing photos, etc. In terms of the internet there are direct links to sites such as Facebook and Google which I really like. I found the internet to take a little getting used to although now I love it and can find my way around it easily. The different key options that come back when you use the internet in a small frame around it allow you to perform simple functions like go back, save to favourites and zoom in (this frame can be hidden to allow the internet to take over the full screen too). The web browser also has the ability to support flash and multi windows too.

So what else do you need to know? Well in terms of technical properties I've not got much knowledge but from my instructions booklet I can tell you that it has an 800 MHz processor which is apparently even faster than the new iPhone processor. The phone also operates on a new Dolphin style web browser meaning you can have up to five different windows open at a time. The internet is really good on the phone, you need to be quite precise when clicking to enter a new web address but you can enlarge the size of the text. It's got fast web browsing with HSDPA (whatever that might be) and 2GB of built in memory which Samsung predicts will store 1,000 songs. The music player is capable of playing most common music formats as it has a DNSe, a 3.5mm audio jack and an FM radio with RDS so you can see the station and the name of the artist and / or the song playing too!

I personally adore this phone, I think everything about it is great and apart from the battery life not being a little better I have no complaints whatsoever! I was worried about changing to a touch screen as I have tried to work some of my friend's slightly older models and always found it was a bit hit and miss whether or not I selected the right key or whether it even registered my choice. However there's no problems here, the call and message facilities are great, the internet browsing is brilliant, the selection of widgits makes it much easier for me to find what I want and I can't honestly think of a bad thing to say about this phone. In terms of price it will vary depending what contract and network you opt for, I think I've seen it for around £20 or it's £429 on Carphone Warehouse to buy it Sim free. I'm on Vodafone for 18 months and managed to get them down to £25 a month with unlimited internet and texts and 600 minutes a month, bargain!

Thanks for reading.

Summary: A new touch screen phone from Samsung.

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