Gadgetell Review: $99 smartphone battle

Products: Samsung Blackjack II; Pantech Duo
Price: $99 from AT&T with contract
Ratings: Blackjack II 8/10; Pantech Duo 7/10
Pros: Blackjack II: Decent update to a good phone. Lavish new finishes, wider and brighter screen. Internal GPS.
Duo: Smaller LxW form factor, double sliding keypad and QWERTY is just plain fun. Gaming is fun on wide screen
Cons: Blackjack II: Software bug turns backlight on, led flasher added to front is uncontrollable.
Duo: Slow to type on wide QWERTY slider, Can’t get to messages sometimes?
Overall: Two decent phones for different folk. I couldn’t get typing fast on the Duo, and that hurt its performance for me. The Samsung would be the phone I’d reach for first between these two.

For the past month, I’ve had the privilege to get some quality hands-on time with the Samsung Blackjack II and the Pantech Duo, both offered by AT&T right now for just $99 (terms, conditions, first-born rules apply). It is one thing to play with a phone for a minute in the store, it is yet another to live with and rely on one. For me and my usage style, this test comes down to 3 big things: input, battery, livability. The rest of the feature spec, again to me, is all wants – not needs. So how did these two big guns fair?

Input
Here is where these two phones really differ. The Blackjack II has a classic candybar form factor, while the Duo goes for a Helio Ocean-esque dual slider. Having learned to thumb on a candy bar style phone, I was predictably fast on the Blackjack and painfully slow on the Duo. The Duo’s buttons didn’t have a comforting click when pressed and made me unsure of my typing. I was easily 2x as fast banging out emails on the Blackjack. I just couldn’t get comfortable typing on the Duo. Blackjack II wins this hands down.

Besides, I found I like to open and close the Duo way too much. Almost like a nervous tick, I found myself sliding the keypad open and shut repeatedly at parties, leaving me feeling a bit like Rain Man.

Battery
I burn batteries like a lifelong smoker downs Nicorette gum tablets. Both phones left me wanting multiple batteries to cart around (I’ve got two extras for my Blackjack I inches from me at all times) and resulted in power-downs at inopportune times. Both let me down, but Pantech’s battery seemed to burn faster; one minute I’d be looking at 50% battery life and the next minute I hear the jingle the phone plays when it is about to shut you down. I’d call this one a draw.

Livability
Phones should be small, so as to fit in your front pocket. The not slim Pantech, makes the biggest bulge in the pocket, but felt better there, thanks to being narrower than the Blackjack II. The Pantech felt more like a “phone” should and less like holding a shoe to your ear as is the case with the Blackjack II.

But their were issues with the Blackjack II. The odd quirk of the phones screen turning on when retrieving mail, which can be as much as every 5 minutes. Besides being an annoyance, it burns battery time; how this got by quality control I know not. The internal GPS is so remarkably, ridiculously slow to connect that I thought about using the Bluetooth GPS unit just so I could get on with my life. GPS was not meant to be this slow and detracted from how much I liked TeleNav 5.2. I won’t even touch the inane incompatibility of just about everything from batteries to charging cables,to custom fit gear from one version of the Blackjack to another.

Annoyances could be found with the Duo as well. Occasionally, the phone would decide not to grant me access to messages. Oh, the messages were there, but the phone refused to let me navigate to them. But I did like the wider screen, especially for the GPS navigation, but I couldn’t find a good way to hold the phone horizontally with the keypad extended to get the screen rotated correctly.

Overall
The Blackjack II wins this test, but I fear that is more because it is what I am used to. Both are speedy Windows Mobile 6 phones -with all the good and bad that the name implies. I’ll miss the upscale look of both phones: Blackjack II’s wine color with faux leather texture and Pantech’s metal finish.
I just couldn’t get used to the wider QWERTY keypad and found it annoying and slow every texting moment. I have to believe that folks used to big keypads like on the the EnV or similar would find the Duo darn near perfect.

But not me. Even though I name the Blackjack as the winner, I don’t think the folks at Samsung will be high-fiving over this review because, and I am being brutally honest here, I am kinda happy to be going back to my old Blackjack I now that the testing is over; trading new quirks for old quirks.