It's a smartphone-eat-smartphone world and touchscreen multimedia gadgets are the elite squad. But non-smart devices want a piece of the action too, so all sides in this entertaining campaign are throwing everything they have on the battlefield. A mighty contender is rising from the Samsung camp and we had an exclusive meet-and-greet as it marches to the end user.
The Samsung S8000 is not a smartphone alright, but it sure has jet-set kind of talent. Multimedia is definitely its game with a 5 megapixel shooter, cool music player and D1 video recording. The best thing though is that the Jet lives up to its name with simply no gaps in the specs. Fast data, including impressive upload speed, a high-res OLED screen and DivX/XviD support are topped with Wi-Fi and GPS, so the S8000 Jet makes a strong bid for a full time job as a multi-skilled full touch sidearm.
Samsung S8000 Jet official photo
Here's a quick summary of the main specs of the Samsung S8000 Jet.
Samsung S8000 Jet at a glance:
- General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 3.6Mbps
- Form factor: Touchscreen bar
- Dimensions: 109 x 53.5 x 11.9 mm, 99g
- Display: 3.1 inch 16M color WVGA AMOLED touchscreen, 480 x 800 pixels
- Platform: Latest TouchWiz 2.0 UI with Motion UI, Media Gate 3D and Smart unlock, fast 800MHz application processor
- Memory: 2GB/8GB/16GB integrated memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
- Camera: 5 megapixel auto focus camera with dual LED flash, geo-tagging, image stabilization, face detection, Smile Shot, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) and D1 video recording at 30 fps
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, TV out
- Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate and turn-to-mute, electronic compass, FM radio with RDS, DivX/XviD video support, DNSe and SRS sound effect
- Battery: 1100 mAh battery
With the Samsung S8000 Jet, Samsung are starting a whole lineup of devices (some of them smartphones) that run on the TouchWiz 2.0 interface, which includes an attractive 3D Cube launcher and a bunch of other niceties.
The TouchWiz 2.0 available on Samsung S8000 Jet comes with the exclusive features Motion UI and Media Gate 3D. The 3D Media gate is an intuitive six-sided cube UI that you flick on screen for quick and easy access to six key multimedia features, such as Photo album, Music player, Video player, FM Radio, Games and internet. The Cube-like central button below the display is a clear indication of the Samsung S8000 Jet belonging to the 3D Media gate pack.
The Samsung Motion gate a.k.a. Motion UI is Samsung's own motion recognition engine which brings you access to your multimedia favorites as well as speed dialing just by tapping, tilting or flipping the handset.
Samsung have also enabled the S8000 Jet with the Smart unlock feature, previously known as Gesture lock. It was first featured on Samsung S5600 and Samsung S5230. Smart unlock allows users to simultaneously unlock the phone and open a menu item or an application, or even dial a contact, just by drawing an alphabet letter on the unlock screen.
The Cube-like interface is quite reminiscent of what LG have with their S-class interface. The LG cube however has only four usable faces, while with the Samsung implementation you put all the six faces to good shortcut use.
Speaking of the LG S-class interface, you cannot help but compare the feature set of the S8000 Jet to that of LG Arena. The two are so similarly matched that it seems Samsung are targeting direct opposition with the already available Arena.
To match the LG lively and fluid UI, Samsung have staked on powerful hardware with a 800MHz application processor in its core and a wide range of new transition effects, which we'll show you on video later on.
Samsung S8000 Jet held in the hand
A battle royale draws near, so join us in this preview as we introduce the contender in the Samsung corner - the S8000 Jet. The hardware scoop awaits on the next page.
Bear in mind that the device we're using for this preview is in the early stages of development so the software will undergo even further changes before mass production. Certain features are missing and we'll try to note those as we go along.
The Samsung S8000 Jet is a touchscreen device and its design is hardly revolutionary - hey, there's a big screen on the front and a few buttons. This form factor doesn't really lend itself to much variation. The Samsung S8000 Jet front is quite sleek with black glass framing the display, while the surface around the buttons is made of a matte material that helps keep fingerprints away. The front of course is dominated by the display. The 3.2-incher is a bit bigger than the LG Arena screen. Considering the two phones are almost the same size, Samsung definitely win this round over their compatriot rival. And with a WVGA resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, the S8000 Jet punches its weight with other devices offering the highest resolution on the market. The only thing that stops it from being perfect is the resistive display. Or at least that was our first thought. But when we started tapping on the S8000's screen, we instantly forgot the technology behind it. It reacts to even the slightest touch just as a capacitive screen does, with the added bonus that you can use anything you want to interact with it - stylus, pencil, nails, gloves, etc. Writing, scrolling, typing, zooming - everything is as easy as on the capacitive screens of Samsung's M7600 and S8300. Sadly, there is always something to spoil the party and that is the disappointing sunlight legibility. There are three hardware buttons below the display - Call and End keys obviously and the center button. Now, the center button deserves some attention and if you take a closer look at it, you'll see that it is in fact a 3D Cube. The cube is a button that activates the Cube launcher, which will obviously be the UI focus in the new Samsung devices. The video-call camera and an ambient light sensor are above the display. On the left side of the phone you get the volume rocker and on the right side are the hardware Lock (or Hold) key and the task switcher / shutter key combo. The latter is not a single button as we've seen in a number of recent Samsung handsets but a rocker-style control where the shutter key is tangibly raised. This can be half-pressed to handle auto-focus. All controls are easy to operate in both single and two-handed use scenarios. The top does not surprise at all - it houses a 3.5 mm audio jack and a standard microUSB port with a protective cover. The phone charges off the microUSB port - just like most of its recent siblings - and is quite useful as you can leave the charger at home when traveling if you have a computer with you. The bottom is not very interesting - only the mouthpiece is there. As usual, the 5 megapixel camera lens is on the back of the device along with the dual LED flash. It is not protected by a lens cover but there is a slightly raised edge surrounding it. The back of the Samsung S8000 Jet also hosts the small loudspeaker grill, which is flanked by a small nub so the speaker isn't muffled when you put the handset flat on a desk. Both the camera and the nub are on one side, but they don't project as expected and the device remains almost flat when placed on a surface. The lack of stereo speakers is a shame, especially given that otherwise the device is a very capable portable media player. Under the back cover you'll find a 1080 mAh battery and the SIM and microSD card slots. Typically for the latest Samsung devices the memory slot is under the back cover and even though it's hot-swappable, you still need to open the cover first. If the S8000 Jet is meant to compete with the Arena successfully, it should have much more internal memory than 500 MB or at least a conveniently accessed microSD slot. The Samsung S8000 comes with the latest implementation of the TouchWiz user interface, which is basically a pimped up version of what you saw on the Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH. However here it performs quite better as obviously the hardware has been updated. The handset has four different homescreens which you can fill up with widgets of your choice. In case you need a refresh, the widgets basically are handy mini-applications for customizing your handset. Some of the widgets are more practical such as the calendar or the world clock, image gallery and the mp3/radio player, while others are just pointless but fun. The transition effects are the biggest change to take place on the S8000 Jet in comparison to the previous TouchWiz handsets. You now get to pick between three different sets of transition styles all of which are smooth and cool-looking. They give so much life to the user interface and we almost never saw them lag (the rare exception is the photo contacts app which seems to take about half a second to open) - a commendable achievement. No point trying to describe the nice transition when we can take the easy way and give you a short video. Making a sweeping gesture from left to right on the widget screen opens the Photo contacts screen. The whole thing mimics a 3D environment and shows pictures which you can use as references to your phonebook. You can scroll them up and down and dial or text the one you want. It's a trendy and cool interface, but we're not sure it's incredibly practical for everyday use. Then there are several features that were not present on our device, but should be on in the final unit. The Samsung Motion gate a.k.a. Motion UI featured on the Samsung S8000 Jet is Samsung's own motion recognition engine which brings you access to your multimedia favorites as well as speed dialing just by tapping, tilting or flipping the handset. Samsung have also enabled the S8000 Jet with the Smart unlock feature, previously known as Gesture lock. It was first featured on Samsung S5600 and Samsung S5230. Smart unlock allows users to simultaneously unlock the phone and open a menu item or an application, or even dial a contact, just by drawing an alphabet letter on the unlock screen. Each alphabet letters from A to Z can be set as a gesture by the user to perform the various actions in question. For instance, you can use it to start apps like the music player, messaging menu, the web browser, Java apps or the dialing keypad. To complement the available GPS receiver, the Samsung S8000 Jet also comes with some new on-board 3D map navigation software Samsung Mobile Navigator developed by Samsung themselves. It makes use of the electronic compass that's on board and allows for vehicle and pedestrian navigation. With the Samsung S8000 Jet Samsung also introduces their new WebKit-based Dolfin web browser, which is an in-house developed application. The new web browser supports Flash and allows up to 5 pages to be open at the same time. Multiple downloads in the background are also supported and there is also an AdBlocker. One-finger zooming is also quite advertised by Samsung possibly as a reaction to iPhone and LG two-finger pinch zooming. Whatever the reason, we first saw that zooming on the original Samsung Omnia (image gallery and Opera 9.5 web browser) and we totally loved it. The new web browser really sounds the part and we hope to see it soon in action on a more final S8000 Jet unit. The new Samsung S8000 Jet has three different methods of text input. The first one is the traditional thing - typing on a customary (albeit virtual) 3x4 alphanumeric keypad. Tilting the phone on its side automatically converts that keypad to a full-fledged on-screen QWERTY keyboard. The 3.2" display provides enough space for this layout, especially given that the number keys and symbols are in a separate screen that toggles on and off upon a tap. Typing is generally comfortable by touchscreen standards. The final option is to use the stylus and write the letters on the screen. In general, handwriting recognition is very intuitive and in most cases got our scribbling right. Along with the standard 3.5 mm audio jack and the microSD card slot, the S8000 Jet music functionality is complemented by the great music player usually found on Samsung devices. The music player allows filtering tracks by author, album, and genre. Automatic playlists (recently added, most played etc.) are also generated and can subsequently be used as filters. If that doesn't seem enough, you can create your own custom playlists. The music player can naturally be minimized to play in the background. The music player also has a dedicated widget, allowing quick access to the full version of the application with a single tap. You can also start, stop and skip tracks direct on the home screen. The equalizer offers the standard presets like pop, jazz, classic, etc. but it also packs three options thanks to the DNSe sound chip - widening, dynamic and surround effects. There is also a virtual 5.1 Dolby enhancement which can only be applied when headphones are plugged in. Continuing our trip down the road, the three different visualizations are a nice touch to the music player and the album browser seems to take after Apple's Cover Flow, something we strongly approve of. Last, but certainly not least, the player is nicely touch-optimized for fast forward and rewind, just like the Samsung S5600 and S5230. This adds up to an excellent music application that can fully replace your portable MP3 player. The Samsung S8000 Jet has two different picture galleries. Both of them are optimized for touch operation and are very user-friendly. The first is an inherent part of the file manager and accessing it is as simple as opening any folder that contains images. It allows sorting your images by date, type, name, and size. Once you open a picture to view, you can sweep you fingers across the screen to see the next images without having to return to the image list. Alternating portrait and landscape modes is automatic thanks to the built-in accelerometer. You can also zoom in on a picture to see greater detail. The alternative to the picture gallery is the Photo browser. It has its dedicated icon in the main menu and is the quickest way of accessing you images. It allows sorting your images by time taken, name or color. That last option is pretty funny but not exactly useful as it orders images according to the most dominant color in them. As usual,the two galleries also have another Samsung proprietary accelerometer-based feature. It lets you browse pictures in fullscreen landscape mode by simply tilting your phone to its sides. Tilt scrolling is fun to begin with. But after a while it gets annoying: you have to be careful not to tilt the handset too much since the slant determines scrolling speed and you can easily miss an image or two. The Samsung S8000 Jet packs a 5 megapixel camera unit which should deal with most users' photography needs. The dual-LED that complements the shooter is hardly an inspiring performer but then, no one really expected it to be. At least it can be used to provide light when shooting video, something that's not possible when using devices with a xenon flash. The S8000 Jet camera UI has been altered to provide a better touch experience. It is very comfortable with the most frequently used shortcuts only a tap away. The range of settings offered by the S8000 Jet is on par with the i8910 Omnia HD flagship. From manual white balance and ISO to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast - it's all onboard. Various effects are also at hand as well as face and smile detection. The smile shutter tries to make sure the person you are photographing is going to be smiling in the photo. You just press the shutter and the camera will automatically detect when your subject is smiling and take the shot. Blink detection is also available but it only alerts you to the fact that the person in the photo you just took has blinked. This one certainly is more of a marketing gimmick than anything else and it really would have been more useful if the camera delayed taking the shot instead. In other words - help us avoid taking a crappy photo rather than yelling at us for doing so. The geotagging of images is also enabled this time around and this is certainly good news. The Samsung S8000 Jet puts the built-in GPS receiver to use, recording the location of each photo in the EXIF. Unfortunately due to the early pre-release status of our unit we cannot provide you with samples from its camera. Being so early in its development, it had some issues which prevented the camera from actually saving the taken photos. The Samsung S8000 Jet offers video recording up to D1 resolution (720 x 480 pixels). The S8000 Jet can also record slow-motion videos, something that many of its high-end siblings can do already. Unfortunately the camcorder seemed to have the same issues as the still camera so we cannot say anything about the actual quality. However judging by the company's recent performances in this area (check our S8300 review), we are sure the S8000 Jet will not disappoint. The Samsung S8000 Jet will really be remembered around the office. The combination of its colorful interface and decent specs add up to a neat and fun device to look out for. The S8000 Jet has undoubtedly set its sights on the LG Arena and its S-class UI, and which one is better is going to be a matter of personal taste. Both are very user-friendly, with the S8000 Jet having a slight edge in terms of performance. However, the Arena can stake a claim for your money with a simpler, and perhaps sharper, overall design. Of course the Arena has already been on the market for some time and by the time the S8000 Jet appears it might already have won the battle. Then again, Samsung can take their time to prepare and they might have some tricks up their sleeve to make the S8000 Jet a more attractive option. At the moment, the two devices are comparable, but one of them is in pre-release status. We'll be curious to find which way the scales will tip once Samsung launch the S8000 Jet. We'll be looking forward to seeing more of the S8000 Jet around.Samsung S8000 Jet 360-degree view
Design and construction
Size comparison: Apple iPhone vs. Samsung S8000
The display is great
As big a screen as they could fit, beats the LG Arena's by 0.2" 
The buttons on the front are large and easy to hit
Videocall camera and oversized ambient light sensor
One rocker on each side plus a hardware lock button
The microUSB slot, audio jack and the power button • the bottom side
The back looks bare and cheap
The microSD card slot is hot-swappable but under the rear coverTouchWiz user interface but with a twist
The TouchWiz UI has been spiced up a little for the S8000 JetText input options
There is an alphanumeric pad for traditionalists
The QWERTY keyboard is reasonably comfortable
Handwriting is available on the whole screen, in one large box, or in four small boxes.Music player is really cool
The music player is up to scratch
Spiced with a pinch of cover flowGallery
The traditional gallery is nice and simple
The Photo browser is also present5 megapixels worth of camera
The camera interface is really thumb-friendlyD1 videos: sounds sweet
Camcorder UI is pretty much the same as on the still cameraFirst impressions
