In March I bought a BlackJack II off eBay US, since I wanted a cheap smartphone with a keyboard. It was very cheap, had HSDPA (important) and ran Windows Mobile 6, so I was pretty happy. But not long after I got it I realised it just wasn’t quite right, especially after having used the Nokia N95 8GB for several months.

I found the BlackJack II too have a rather poor radio, it’s signal strength was always pathetic. Worse than that, often when it would lose signal it would not reconnect to the network properly, therefore calls, messages and emails didn’t come through. Rebooting the phone at least once a day because the signal wouldn’t be detected or the data connection wouldn’t connect even with signal bars showing was a major PITA. Perhaps a ROM update would fix this, but I haven’t seen one.

It was also a bit sluggish, and with the speed I typed it would often miss keys. Ask Judie, she will tell you a lot of convos we had where I was using the BJII had quite a few missing letters

The camera was rubbish, which really annoyed me after using the Sony Ericsson P1i, followed by the N95 then the N95 8GB. All these had great autofocus cameras. The one on the BJII is garbage.

Going back to the N95 8GB was like returning home from work. It was just more relaxing and nicer to use. These days Series 60 v3 is FAST (even faster on the N82 I’m testing), easy to use, simple and powerful. It just feels more together than Windows Mobile Standard.

Other than the camera, the hardware of the BlackJack II was great, it was just let down by the sluggish software.