Samsung S8000 Jet review: Airborne

Messaging is nicely organized

The Samsung S8000 Jet messaging department is an exact copy of what we saw on the Samsung M8910 Pixon12. The handset has a shared editor for SMS and MMS and a separate one for emails.

The SMS and MMS editor is the familiar intuitive application which allows you to add the recipient from your phonebook, from your recent contacts or punch it in manually. You can also add a whole group in the recipient field for mass messages, instead of adding contacts one by one.

Sending Dexter a message

The messages can be broken down into up to 15 parts for sending if you exceed their maximum character limit (standard 160).

Email support is also duly covered. There's a Gmail icon in the Google menu but all it does is open the gmail.com webpage in your browser. You might as well use it if you prefer web-based access but the native email client seems the far better option to us.

The greatest problem we had with it is that it didn't automatically detect the settings for Gmail so we had to enter them manually, but once that's done, handling email is a breeze. Still most other brands are already providing some automatic configurations for the email clients on their handsets and maybe it's about time Samsung did something about it.

The email client could not configure out mailbox settings automatically

The downloading email limit is 5MB, enough for receiving most types of files. If you receive an office document as an attachment, you will be able to view it as well.

As far as text input, the Samsung S8000 Jet has support for all three options that touchscreen handsets can offer. The first one is the traditional thing - typing on a customary (albeit virtual) 3 x 4 alphanumeric keypad.

An alphanumeric keypad is the first text input option

Turning the phone on its side automatically expands that numpad to a full-fledged on-screen QWERTY keyboard. The 3.1" display provides enough space for this layout, especially given that the number keys and symbols are in separate screens that toggle on and off upon a tap. Typing is really comfortable by touchscreen standards, once again the very sensitive display and the haptic feeback count in favor.

The full QWERTY keyboard is easily the most comfortable typing method on the Jet

The final option is handwriting recognition. While very intuitive and precise in most cases, the lack of embedded stylus is almost ruling it out as an option. If you don't mind your stylus (mind you, there isn't one in the retail box so you will have to find it yourselves) dangling on the side of the phone, be our guest.

We cannot see handwriting recognition working without an embedded stylus

File browser cuts it

True to its pedigree, the Samsung S8000 Jet is equipped with one of the most elaborate file managers you can find on a feature phone. It can display the files and folders on the phone memory or the memory card, and even both at once with matching folders nicely brought together.

There are folders for different types of files (images, video, sounds) and this allows the handset to sort the memory contents. However, you are not forced to follow this structure - you can place your files wherever you want and the phone will have no problems handling them.

There's nothing to complain about the file browser

You can copy or move files - both one by one or in bulk, and you can create and delete new folders (except the default folders, like Images, Sounds and so on).

When deleting multiple files you can choose to delete protected images, contact photos and so on. By default those options are off so you won't accidentally delete a contact photo or a ringtone.

Files can also be sent via Bluetooth, again one by one or in bulk. Throughout the whole file manager, you can pick files you would like to lock to prevent accidental deletion.

Luckily, the Jet has almost no issues handling memory cards unlike some of its siblings which we recently reviewed. Initialization and reading a 16GB memory card isn't the fastest around but it isn't frustratingly slow either.