Samsung
S8000 Jet

The Jet was a quad-band EDGE and dual-band HSDPA 3.6 Mbps phone. It used Samsung’s proprietary software platform and its TouchWiz 2.0 user interface, rather than Android, Symbian or Windows Mobile, which at the time were being used on a growing number of new phones. Furthermore, Samsung marketed the Jet with the provocative tagline of "smarter than a smartphone". To support this bold marketing statement, Samsung incorporated a number of premium specifications into the Jet. For example, it used a high-resolution, 3.1-inch WVGA active-matrix organic LED (AMOLED) display, the quality of which rivalled that of much more expensive high-tier devices at the time. The Jet also used an 800MHz application processor which made it far more responsiveness when compared with other phones. Samsung clearly felt that speed and performance was a differentiating feature for the Jet given that more expensive phones with using open software platforms such as Symbian were sluggish given the greater demands they made on the processor and memory. A "smart unlock" function enabled users to unlock the phone simply by drawing a letter directly on the screen, in a similar manner to the Android platform at the time and the Jet's interface also allowed users to initiate functions and applications by making particular gestures on the screen, which were interpreted by Samsung's Motion Gate technology. When it unveiled the Jet, Samsung highlighted the phone’s 3D Media Gate as an illustration of the experience delivered by an 800MHz processor. This provided the user with an interactive 3D cube-based interface to access six multimedia functions, which was similar to LG's cube-based S-Class interface on the KM900 Arena. The Jet was the first device to feature Samsung's own Dolfin browser, which was based on the open-source WebKit engine that was also used by Nokia and Apple on their high-end devices. To offer support for business users Samsung implemented Microsoft’s Active Sync protocol on the Jet allowing integration with Microsoft's corporate Exchange Server environment. This was a significant milestone for Samsung as it was the first time Active Sync had been deployed on a proprietary platform. This was another example of the Samsung Jet blurring the line between a smartphone and feature phone. A final feature of note was the incorporation of "one finger zoom". This made it possible to change the magnification of a webpage or a photo by moving a finger vertically up and down the screen. Samsung pinpointed this feature as an example of an advantage the Jet had over Apple's iPhone. At the launch event for the Jet, Derek Williamson, Samsung UK general manager, rather misguidedly described it as a "superior product to the iPhone". In the end, the Jet failed to live up to expectations and open software platform powered devices using Android and iOS went on to dominate the market. But it was a commendable effort by Samsung. The reality was that Samsung was backing multiple options including Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile and the Jet was a bold hedge to offer an alternative, more affordable, but capable phone.