Samsung S8000 Jet preview: First look

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 7.2Mbps
• Form factor: Touchscreen bar
• Dimensions: 109 x 53.5 x 11.9 mm, 99g
• Display: 3.1 inch 256K-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.