CrunchGear

Thats awesome. The battery life seemed to be its only drawback. I wonder if this battery actually extends the life of it by a 1/3. That would be sweet. I assume it would add some bulk but with the Blackjack being so thin to begin with, I don’t think it would be that cumbersome. Keep us posted on the availability and the prices.

Amit

Well, I received my blackjack yesterday that I won on CrunchGear!
http://crunchgear.com/2006/12/08/reader-response-week-two/

I’m pretty sure the battery is gonna be an issue, but we’ll see. I think the first day you get it, you tend to keep it on the whole time, and play with it, hence my battery burned down in about 6 constant hours on it.

One of Amazon’s reseller is carrying it http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-SGH-I607-BlackJack-Extended-Battery/dp/B000M13RSE/sr=8-1/qid=1166552604/ref=sr_1_1/102-5767333-7084946?ie=UTF8&s=electronics

I wish there was a docking cradle like my 650 where I can charge the blackjack and the spare battery at the same time. Right now, it’s one or the other.

On the blackberry itself, coming from the 650, there are definitely a few shortcomings. The biggest is IM, I was using Verichat (which is now discontinued), and this thing comes with OZ… blah! I just downloaded Agile, and that isn’t anywhere near as good as verichat either.. So this is a big bummer.

The other is Microsoft Direct Push, I tried it for a few hours, and got frustrated. I then activated goodlink on it. Much better as goodlink has folders in exchange, although a few things like letter shortcuts and not being able to select multiple emails at once is kind of annoying.

The screen rocks, and the cingular video is pretty cool. 3G when connected is pretty fast, but on the peninsula in the bay area, it’s a bit spotty.

Volume is very loud, and bluetooth is awesome! Treo650 bluetooth was horrific.

I’m getting used to the keypad, and yes, the middle dialpad circle is poorly designed as you keep accidentally press the adjacent keys when selecting things, it should have been raised a bit like the treo.

I’ll give a few days on the regular battery, but will probably order the extended as well :)

In general, I find that most smartphones don’t have the battery capabilities necessary. To their credit, most smart phones these days are running three wireless receivers simultaneously: the cellular network, the high speed network, and then the bluetooth for the headset. However, there needs to be a lot more research done on battery technology before a smart phone can actually become useful without an “extended” batter or an extra battery.

I actually saw one of these batteries on a Blackjack today in the Cingular store. I went in to complain about the charge jack cover that’s flapping on the side of mine, and saw the slightly thicker battery on one of the employee’s phones. It was just a TAD bit thicker, certainly manageable. And the new Blackjacks ship with these new batteries. I think I’m going to switch mine out for a new one. (the battery life really is horrible!)

The best way to improve batt life is to upgrade the firm ware at http://www.samsung.com. My blackjack, with the std batt, went from 1-2 days per charge to about 4 days per charge.