Samsung S8000 J?©t review

Samsung’s J?©t has a lovely OLED screen with amazingly bright colours and a high, 800×480 resolution.

Only LG’s Viewty matches it for size, but the J?©t’s screen blows the Viewty’s away for quality. The 800MHz Qualcomm processor makes the J?©t feel zippy, and the touchscreen benefits from the extra power, although it’s not always completely responsive.

Samsung’s mobile browser is based on the same Webkit engine as Android’s and Apple’s, and is fast and easy to use. The J?©t supports ActiveSync, so you can synchronise contacts, tasks and calendar over Microsoft Exchange. It doesn’t work with Google accounts, though. It comes with useful social networking apps, including one for sharing photos on Facebook.

Widgets can be dragged to the home screen, but while they made it look messy, there are three screens to spread them across. A shortcut menu along the bottom gives access to common apps and the menu, which has three screens full of settings and apps. The large button below the screen switches between the widget screens and the menu.

Text entry is via an onscreen numeric keypad or a surprisingly responsive QWERTY keyboard that you access by turning the phone to landscape mode. Annoyingly, the phone only supports landscape mode for text entry and viewing multimedia – the web browser works in portrait mode, so if you’re filling in a web form and you want to use the QWERTY keyboard, you have to switch the phone back and forth between portrait and landscape mode. The camera is average, with poor colour accuracy in low light, but has great detail in dark areas and very little noise.

The J?©t isn’t quite as smart as an Android, Windows Mobile or Apple phone, but with ActiveSync and a widget catalogue, it’s the smartest Java phone we’ve seen so far. If you don’t need sophisticated applications for viewing or editing office documents, but you want to organise your social life and entertain yourself on the move, the J?©t is an excellent choice and wins our Best Buy award.