Brandon Miniman
12-03-2006, 06:33 PM
When I first received the BlackJack evaluation unit from Samsung, I was surprised to find an additional battery and external battery charger included with the device. Why would such a small device need two batteries? I soon found out how hungry the BlackJack was for power – very hungry. My initial reaction was that I was using a bad battery, since the unit had been used before by another reviewer before getting to me. After doing a bit of research, I found that the BlackJack is indeed notorious for being power hungry.
How power hungry? Well, I’m happy as long as I can keep my screen on max brightness (or one level under) while having Bluetooth and Direct Push enabled with a good bit of web browsing, all without charging the device but one time per day. With moderate usage, I found the power meter to be down to about 1/10 in the evening before I placed the device on the charger. If I were to use the device heavily during the day, to, say, stream a movie from the internet, then it’s likely that I’d never make it to the end of the day.
Samsung is known to be poor at optimizing their WM devices for good battery life, hence the inclusion of the second battery. Something that I found to help battery life, though, is disabling “accept incoming beams” in the Connections setting menu. This should be turned off from the factory, but not in this case. So for battery life, the BlackJack gets a low score. An extended battery is available for $39.99 here (http://www.phonecycle.com/batteries/modeldetails.asp?modelid=808&brandid=13) (which increases capacity from 1000mAh to 1800mAh), but come on, I shouldn’t have to buy a new accessory to get decent longevity from my cell phone.
Navigation: Day 1 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3914), Day 2 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3919), Day 3 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3920), Day 4 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3921), Day 5 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3926), Day 6 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3932), Day 7 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3935)
How power hungry? Well, I’m happy as long as I can keep my screen on max brightness (or one level under) while having Bluetooth and Direct Push enabled with a good bit of web browsing, all without charging the device but one time per day. With moderate usage, I found the power meter to be down to about 1/10 in the evening before I placed the device on the charger. If I were to use the device heavily during the day, to, say, stream a movie from the internet, then it’s likely that I’d never make it to the end of the day.
Samsung is known to be poor at optimizing their WM devices for good battery life, hence the inclusion of the second battery. Something that I found to help battery life, though, is disabling “accept incoming beams” in the Connections setting menu. This should be turned off from the factory, but not in this case. So for battery life, the BlackJack gets a low score. An extended battery is available for $39.99 here (http://www.phonecycle.com/batteries/modeldetails.asp?modelid=808&brandid=13) (which increases capacity from 1000mAh to 1800mAh), but come on, I shouldn’t have to buy a new accessory to get decent longevity from my cell phone.
Navigation: Day 1 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3914), Day 2 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3919), Day 3 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3920), Day 4 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3921), Day 5 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3926), Day 6 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3932), Day 7 (http://pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=3935)